Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2)
Page 24
“I'm sure many of your parents have called or will call. Only a few incidents have occurred in Switzerland, all in the German-speaking cities to the north. A single mosque in Basel-Stadt was burned. I am recommending to your parents that they do not come get you. Italian-speaking Ticino is probably one of the safest places in Europe right now. However, if your parents do want you to leave, you will not be penalized academically, and will be allowed to make up your schoolwork.
“I would like to ask all of you to respect each other and not bring this conflict onto campus. The reasons for what is happening are extremely complex. Your teachers will try to answer any questions you have. Please be calm, thoughtful, and optimistic. Please be kind to our Muslim students. They are as confused as you are. If we cannot deal with this issue among ourselves with open minds and open hearts—” the headmaster's voice cracks here “—then there is little hope for the rest of the world.”
Kazan calls his father. “Do you want me to come home?” He means Amsterdam, although he does not think of it as home.
“The airports are closed,” Ahmed informs him. “Things are far too tumultuous right now. There's no guarantee the government will get this under control.”
“What do you mean? You think the Islamists might stage a revolution?”
“It's spreading all over Europe. France is in a state of civil war. Three cities in England have declared themselves Islamic States.”
“Shouldn't I be there to protect the family? I want to help.”
“Going to university will help,” his father says. “Maps will be redrawn. When things settle down, we will need well educated young men to be our leaders.”
It seems crazy. Europe is blowing up, and his father wants him to finish school? “How can I be a leader studying in some ivory tower?”
Ahmed is silent for a long time. “Do you go to mosque, Kazan? Do you do salat?”
“Not really.”
“I think it is time you start.”
At Berchtold Academy, classes continue as normal. Many Muslim parents collect their children, afraid they will face retaliation from other students. A few European parents come and whisk their children off to North or South America. One child is taken all the way to New Zealand.
Khalid Chahine stops by Kazan's dorm room and tells him that he and Michael are leaving for Syria to train for jihad. “About six of us are going. I know we've had our differences in the past, but you are Muslim. You have to take a stand. You have to stand with God. There are no moderate Muslims. Either you're with us or you are against us. Jihad is the obligation for every Muslim man.”
Kazan doesn't know what to say. Despite the pranks, he doesn't wish them any harm. “Don't get yourselves killed.”
Khalid grips Kazan's shoulder. “With any luck I will fall martyr within a short time and will go to paradise. Good deeds erase bad deeds, and jihad is the best deed of all.”
Kazan wonders if that is some sort of apology.
He and Laszlo stay to graduate and take exams for the International Baccalaureate. Two-thirds of the graduating class stays for the ceremony. Laszlo has been accepted into Harvard, but has been recalled to Israel to fulfill his service obligation. After getting accepted to university in Amsterdam, Zürich, and Cambridge, Kazan is told by his father to spend the summer in Zürich, and go to university there.
In their last days together, Kazan and Laszlo watch the latest news and take walks to their favorite spot, a granite ledge that looks out over Lake Lugano. They share a small flask of Schnaps.
“Why did your mother give birth to you in Israel instead of Italy?” Kazan asks.
“Her grandparents moved there from Denmark in 1948. I suppose she wanted me to have a safe place to go in case the shit hits the fan.”
“And now the shit has hit the fan?”
“Maybe.”
“You think you'll go to Harvard after your service?”
“Who the fuck knows what will happen?”
In the fading light, the water in Lake Lugano looks like liquid silver. Even after seven years, the lake still seems magical to Kazan. “You once said that the idea of an afterlife doesn't serve any purpose anymore because we are too happy.”
“Sure. If you only expect to live to thirty-two, and you're hungry and miserable all the time, the idea of heaven gives you a reason to put up with all the shit. But if your life is great, what's the point?”
“Do you still think that?”
“I wasn't thinking there might be another world war.”
“Is that what this is?”
“Maybe.”
“Chahine is so sure he's going to paradise as a martyr.”
“Chahine is an ignorant asshole. Promise me you won't get sucked into that shit. I'd hate to think I'd wasted the last seven years on you.”
Kazan almost cries. He is afraid to see Laszlo go. It feels as if he is standing on the edge of a great hole, and Laszlo has been holding his hand, keeping him from slipping in the mud and falling into a deep chasm.
He gazes out over Lake Lugano, and smells the spring flowers around them. He breathes deeply the cool air until his lungs hurt. As if it were the last time.
The next day, the news reports that Islamist rebels have taken over The Hague.
Fifteen, June 2020
Goat's Blood
The wedding is to take place at the Basturk country house in Aerdenhout, west of Amsterdam between Haarlem and the North Sea. It is a beautiful sprawling estate, yet the house is relatively modest, too small to call a mansion. The white Tudor facade has a gray-tiled roof and two wings on either side. It has nine bedrooms, and seven baths, with huge downstairs public rooms, including a 800 square foot library. A half dozen or more guest cottages, a pool house, and garages dot twenty landscaped acres.
Jana, Rafik, and I arrive early in the morning. We drive up a long gravel road that winds a half mile under plane trees to the house, and park in a large circular driveway. In front of the house, between two sculpted Italian cypress, stands Kazan's entire family. Waiting. A security camera at the estate entrance must have alerted them to our arrival.
Only Kazan is missing.
As we approach, a loud shrill fills the air. Leeleeleeleeleeleelaay! Gooseflesh races up my arms. The women are ululating—a dozen hungry vulture chicks, tongues flicking.
“They are welcoming you to the family,” Rafik tells me. He gives me a gentle nudge, and falls in behind with Jana.
Crossing the gravel driveway, I am quickly surrounded by women in burkas. The women shower me with kisses, their perfumed veils falling softly on my cheek.
Ahmed Basturk stands by the front door, all grins. After shaking hands with Rafik, he turns to my soon to be mother-in-law, Rabia, and gently kisses her cheek. Rabia coyly pushes him away, then points across the gravel driveway, shouting “Bak! Bak!”
I look to my right and see Faruk leading a fat goat from a pen across the yard. He lifts the goat into Rabia's arms. The goat bleats, wriggling to get down. It is a handsome goat, white with brown markings, a white goatee, and the eyelashes of a drag queen.
Rabia laughs, kisses the goat's head, and sets it down, holding it by its haunches.
Looking up at us and grinning, Faruk pulls a knife from his pocket and swiftly slits the goat's throat. Blood spurts from the animal’s neck as it crumbles to the ground.
I yelp in shock. Jana jabs her knees behind mine to keep them from buckling.
The Basturk women look offended, the men astonished. Hamza, Kazan's uncle laughs, then the other men start laughing.
Rafik hurries to my side and takes my hand. “When a new woman comes into the family, they slaughter a goat to welcome her. It’s okay. You are being honored.”
Rafik turns to the astonished family and explains to them my reaction in Turkish. Everyone laughs, nodding their heads toward me in understanding. Several of the women look doubtfully at me—wondering if I have some kind of wasting disease. They like their women submissive, but strong.
Wilting flowers are of no use to them.
Rafik tells me the Basturk's cook will immediately start roasting the goat for the wedding feast that night. “That makes me feel ever so much better,” I say. He chuckles, and everyone relaxes.
I look at the dead goat and think what a bitch it'll be to get blood out of the gravel.
The women whisk me inside, through the travertine entry, up the stairs, to the women's sitting room.
Since I have no sisters or female relatives other than my mother, Kazan's sisters offer to perform the halawa. They unceremoniously strip me naked, clucking and chatting away in Turkish, enjoying themselves. Fatma tells me they intend to “cleanse” me of all my body hair, except my eyebrows and head hair. To make me look prepubescent, I suppose. Childlike. Muhammad married one of his wives when she was eight. The thought makes me nauseated. I try to concentrate on something pleasant, but think of the poor girls, without breasts, barely menstruating, forced into marriage.
I could really use a drink right now.
They prepare a mixture of sugar, rosewater, beeswax, and lemon juice, boiled in a big pot in the kitchen, smear the paste all over my body, and let it dry. I am just about to fall asleep when, in one graceful yank, they start ripping off strips of wax. I scream with pain. They only laugh, showing no embarrassment—or mercy—when it comes to ripping out my pubic hair.
The slaughtered goat had it easy.
Their ministrations seem more appropriate for a corpse than a bride. Perhaps that is the point. I am dying as myself, to be reborn as a wife.
They call in Leyla, Rabia's mother-in-law, who cuts a length of thread with her teeth, dips it into a bowl of rose water, and calls out, “In the name of God, the Merciful, the All-Knowing,” then sets to plucking my eyebrows, twisting and tightening the string until I cry out in pain, coaxing my caterpillar eyebrows into pencil arches.
After I am hairless except for my scalp and eyebrows, they rub my body with milk and honey, scrub me with woolen mitts, then douse me all over with a mixture of Vaseline and rose essence. They wash my hair with henna, and paint my stubby nails. I tell them it is forbidden for a woman to paint her fingernails, but they giggle and ignore me. A vile symbol of female subjugation as far as I'm concerned, making it impossible for a woman to do any real work. Ever try shooting a M40A1 sniper rifle with nails?
My hair is swept back, then piled high. Plump ringlets tumble around my face, topped off with pearls. My face is painted and powdered. I worry my scalp is going to rip from the strain.
I am a chicken, plucked and marinated, ready to be roasted.
My cynical mood lifts when I see my wedding dress. A pale pink confection with silver embroidery on the skirt. Up goes the zipper, and I step into silver slippers. The sisters coo and gasp and flutter about, tugging and flouncing the skirts, telling me I look beautiful in pink. They don't know pink is the color of the Resistance. Suddenly it all seems a bit easier. Wearing the color of defiance, I won't be a complete fraud. The women are pleased I seem to like the dress.
The only thing missing is the diamond necklace and matching earrings, gifts of the groom. The heavy gems feel like a noose around my neck.
Before they veil me, they roll in a mirror. The image shocks me. My dark curly hair and dark eyes framed in pale pink and silver—the colors of dawn. Not bad for a former guttersnipe.
They top it off, with a shimmering silver wedding veil studded with diamonds.
Off we go, across the yard to a large white tent, me, a tethered pink dirigible.
Several hundred wedding guests have arrived, all milling about, helping themselves from long tables piled with smoked salmon and quail eggs. As soon as they see me, they start ululating again. “Leeleeleeleeleeleelaay!” A hundred women shrieking—enough to rend open the earth—which I sorely wish would happen.
Swallow me, please.
As with everything else, the wedding celebration is segregated. The men's celebration takes place in a smoke-filled room somewhere in the enormous house.
I try to spot my mother. She must be in the crowd somewhere. All I see is a sea of veils.
My father, the groom, and the groom's father emerge from the west wing of the estate. Walking with them is an imam, dressed in a white robe and turban, with a black beard to his chest.
For whatever reason, Kazan is dressed in traditional Turkish garb. Slim black pants embroidered with gold fleur-de-lis, a wide yellow-and-orange striped cummerbund, white shirt, a short turquoise bolero jacket, and red fez. With his dark coloring and matador figure, he is breathtaking.
My groom. Oh, God. The reality of this absurdity hits me hard and I sway, the veil clouding my vision, my mind. I feel as if something huge and carnivorous and black is about to devour me. Rafik catches my elbow, leading me on, preventing any last-minute break for freedom.
The real marriage ceremony, the nikah, was performed last week. It probably took place in a mosque, the formal exchange of legal papers. Neither I nor the groom were deemed necessary. Like selling a donkey. The marriage today is just for show.
I could really use a drink, now. My mind drifts, recalling a particularly sublime bottle of Cavaldos Pim bartered from a French smuggler and shared with the group last week. Oh, Pim, my heart's brother. Where are you?
Rafik says my name, bringing me back.
Four men and I stand under a rose arbor.
I peek out the side of my veil, and, for the first time, get a good look at Ahmed Basturk. Average in height, thick through the chest and belly, fleshy lips, trim gray beard, elegant gray suit. I think he looks like a Brussels Griffon. He's the only one of the men who deigns to look at me, his deep-set eyes covering me slowly from head to foot, nodding approval. He gives me a smile—Kazan's horsey white grin.
With Quran in hand, the imam looks at Rafik and announces that I am now married to the groom as agreed. He then asks Kazan if he accepts me as his wife from this time forward, to be under his care and protection. The imam doesn't bother asking me anything. After he reads passages from the Quran, he blesses the wedding. The men look pleased.
Signed, sealed, and delivered.
I glance up to find Kazan staring down at me. He lifts my veil and studies me for a few moments, his face expressionless. It is the first time we have seen each other since the “inspection.” The first time we have stood a foot apart, and have looked into each other's eyes.
What a look! Those intense amber eyes. An expression of surprise, humor, curiosity, what-the-fuck-let's-get-it-over-with. And resolve. It's the resolve that makes me stiffen, my lips harden. His kiss—brusque, percussive—tastes of resolve.
He pulls away and breaks into a grin, waving to the crowd. The women start chortling again, like a thousand turkeys getting slaughtered.
I stand looking at the crowd, dizzy with horror, not sure what's going on. I finally see Jana standing with the Basturk women. Of all the absurdities in the world—my mother is wiping away tears of joy.
The men laugh and slap each other on the back, as if they have signed a peace accord. Ahmed Basturk steps toward me smiling and leans down to kiss my cheek. He smells of cigar smoke and cologne. I focus on his hooked nose, his enormous nostrils, cornucopias of bristly gray hair. “Ahlan wa'sahlan. Welcome to the family. You are a very brave woman,” he says laughing.
I smile discretely, stifling a sob, and at the same time wondering why he chose the word brave. I know his reputation as a ruthless businessman, yet here he is tender and protective. His eyes look at me warmly. My heart feels as if it were being crushed in a vice. What have I gotten myself into?
Kazan turns and throws a handful of gold coins from a small blue velvet bag into the crowd. “Leeleeleeleeleeleelaay!” shriek the women, greedily scrabbling over one another for the coins.
“Come, my love.”
With the ululating females now happily stuffing their faces, Kazan takes my hand and we sneak away, snaking through the crowd. Dizzy, barely able to make my limbs move, I shuffle behind.
What's HE doing here? I stumble and my knees give out. Kazan catches me, his arm around my waist, his face smiling, eyes concerned, wondering, I suppose, what kind of wuss he's married.
He half carries me to a waiting black Mercedes Benz. I stop dead in my tracks, my feet skidding in the dirt. The car of the mutaween!
How many times have I trembled at the thought of getting shoved into one, arrested, hands cuffed, unable to break my fall. Shirzad wouldn't arrest me on my wedding day, would he?
Kazan tugs my elbow, and hoists me into the back.
Wedding Night
We are driven back to Amsterdam, through the city to Westerpark, and pull up to an old warehouse, redesigned in Dutch Modern. Chic, industrial, glass and stainless-steel, with exposed beams of rustic wood, from the original warehouse. We slip into a covered parking structure. The driver parks the car, gets out, and walks us to an elevator. Kazan nods, and the driver gets into an Opel, presumably his own car, and drives away.
Kazan punches a code on a keypad, and we take an elevator several floors. It opens directly to his apartment, to an all-white foyer, with black-and-white tiled flooring. In the middle is a huge round block of petrified redwood, made into a table, with an enormous bunch of white lilies. Large modern abstract paintings hang everywhere. Kazan opens two double doors to a palatial room, the main living area. All tiles, chrome, and burnt-orange leather furniture. The far wall is glass and leads on to a balcony that overlooks Amsterdam.