I don't care if anyone sees us. I don't care if I'm hauled off to Chop-Chop Square. I am a molten ball of fire; gravity pulls him to me. Nothing exists, but us, and this force pulling us together. I want to consume him.
We take each other, urgent and brutish, finishing within moments, driven by forces I don't quite understand, but we must obey to survive. Not love, not sex, not primal. Before that. Something elemental. Like fusion.
He collapses on top of me and falls immediately to sleep. I hate to move him, but he's crushing me. He doesn't wake when I roll him off. My head finds its spot in the crook of his arm. I watch his chest go up and down as he sleeps.
I brush his chin with my fingertips, and his lips turn into the sweetest little smile. After a moment, his lips sag again to a pout. I tickle his mouth again, and he smiles. How remarkable. I think of Angus, and how, if I scratched this one spot on his right side, his hind legs would twitch. It never failed.
When Kazan wakes, he bends toward me and kisses me. “What are you smiling about?”
“I was wondering what you would think if you knew I had been comparing you to my old dog.”
“I'm scandalized,” he says, and gently tugs at my nipple with his teeth.
I sigh, feeling safe for the first time since I was twelve. He plays lazily with my hair, pulling out a curl and letting it spring back. He looks as if he'd be content doing that for hours.
The air is getting cooler, and we both sit up, sensing it's time to head back. Kazan puts an arm around me; we watch the tide rush in, aggressively slipping over the flat beach.
“Now are you sorry you married me?” I ask.
“You keep asking me that,” he says, kissing the nape of my neck.
“They don't like couples in the underground. It ties your hands as a subversive.”
“Are you kidding? Marriage makes you a subversive.”
“What do you mean?”
He runs his hand down the inside of my thigh, not to arouse me, but taking possession. “This, what we have between us, will always be a secret. Authoritarian states hate secrets. They can try to control us through indoctrination and intimidation. But they can never completely control what goes on between two people who decide to make one person the most important thing in their lives.”
“Is that what we have?”
Instead of answering, he kisses me deeply, then pulls back to look at me. His finger lightly traces my lips, then over my eyebrows, slipping down the tip of my nose. “When they can't eliminate intimacy, they try to restrict it, regulate it, manage it. But when two people love each other, everything else comes in second.”
“Sex saves the world?”
“Precisely. They'll never control this.” He marches a troop of kisses over my body, apparently eager for further engagement.
“So, no regrets?”
“You make it worth fighting.”
#
At dinner, I refuse to veil.
Most of the other tables are filled with IRH soldiers; none of them seem to notice or mind. I suspect soldiers filled with the spirit of jihad don't end up in this out-of-the-way outpost. Only slackers and converts who became Muslim to get a free university education, which they're entitled to after their service. I see one officer whisper to the waiter, who returns with an opaque mug. I'd bet anything it's filled with beer.
A middle-aged man and his wife sit by the window. She sees that I've taken off my veil to eat, and does the same. A tiny revolution going off in Schiermonnikoog.
Evi feeds us hearty old-fashioned Dutch dishes: kroketten, stuffed with fennel and turkey sausage, hutspot, a beef stew with potatoes, carrots, and onions, and raw herring, served with onions and pickles. Her signature dish is mosselen—mussels cooked with white wine, leeks, and onions, served with French fries. Everyday Kazan and I eat as if starved, which earns us warm smiles from Mevrouw Eman.
It's more than fresh air, exercise, and sex that makes us cram our mouths. It's as if in finally finding each other, we are filled with hope. As if invalids, whose fevers have finally broken, we sip our broth, desperate to recover and live.
A waiter approaches us with a large slab of fudge cake, with a helmet of chocolate icing and a posse of sugar-frosted raspberries. “Compliments of the gentleman over there.”
I thank the officer with a nod and a vague smile.
“Good, God, he's not coming over here, is he?” growls Kazan.
“Yes,” I say without moving my lips. “Be nice.”
The officer gives us a little bow. “I heard you were newly wedded, and wanted to give you my best wishes for a happy marriage. Inshallah.”
“Thank you.”
“May Allah grant you many sons.”
“I've heard chocolate is good for that,” I say flippantly.
He is caught off guard, then smiles. “Many blessings,” he says, then goes back to his table.
“Why do you think he did that?” asks Kazan, a tad jealous, I think.
“Perhaps he wanted an excuse to see an unveiled woman up close.”
“Or get a good look so he can identify you when he reports you.”
“He wouldn't. I think there was something gallant about his gesture.”
“Gallant? Seriously?”
I plunge a fork into the cake, and squeeze my lips around it. It's so moist, almost like a firm pudding. I groan with pleasure. “When the Germans invaded Holland during World War Two, we hated them so much. But you hear stories of kindnesses—a German soldier giving a poor family his rations, or passing over a Jewish family, or letting young men escape conscription. They weren't all bad. No more than the Islamists.”
“I think sex has softened your brain.”
For some reason, that strikes me as incredibly funny and I start giggling and chortling uncontrollably. I'm making such a scene, that the other female diner pulls up her veil, which makes me laugh even louder, finally stuffing my napkin in my mouth to muffle the noise.
The kitchen soon runs out of chocolate cake.
Talks on the Beach
Sleeping late, making love, eating, and long walks on the beach. We take luxurious naps in the heat of the day, making love until we fall asleep. Many long quiet talks.
Slowly we get to know one another.
I lie on the beach, my stomach as Kazan's pillow. His hair is dark, coarse, and springy. No matter how I muss it, it falls back perfectly into place. I am amazed how merely touching his body puts all my senses on high alert. I feel this tremendous pull toward him, and want to touch him all the time. I resist—I don't want him to feel like a pet rabbit—but in resisting, the pull is more palpable.
My parents raised me to be independent, and this feeling of needing someone alarms me. I begin to understand why Kazan had resisted intimacy. Every day the bond gets stronger. I tremble at the thought of losing him. The thought of him going on a dangerous mission without me tears me apart.
Little by little he tells me more about his past and his childhood.
He describes rolling hills of purple hyacinth and bluebells, waist-high grasses that rustle in the dry wind and scratch your thighs. Of spring, and blossoming cherry and apple trees. But mostly he talks about food, especially a thin soft bread called gözleme his mother made on an open fire. “It puffs up when it cooks, and when it's still warm, it's as soft as a baby's cheek. You tear it open, and the smell—oh, my God—you can smell flowers and honey and warm fields of wheat. You can taste the air of Anatolia. We eat it with spring scallions and salt. The soft bread, the crunchy bite of the onion, the salt—you can't imagine how good it is.”
“You're making me hungry.”
“At night, my mother tucked me in bed with a cozy yorgan, a quilt she made out of rags, filled with goose feathers. I slept in the hand of God.”
Kazan as a little boy snuggled in a gigantic palm. It makes me smile. “Did you ever go to Istanbul?”
“No. But I did see Ankara once . . . on the way to Switzerland. I didn't like it. A rundown modern city, with rings o
f dusty shanty towns on the hills. We didn't have much in the country, but we never felt poor. But the squalor of the city—you wouldn't believe the poverty. Scurrying crowds of beggars and street sellers and soldiers. Children wearing nothing but grubby T-shirts hanging down to their knees, living in shacks of corrugated roofing and refrigerator boxes. It gets cold there in the winter. We have snow. But the children had no shoes. I never wanted to see more of Ankara.”
“Your village was completely isolated from modern things?”
“You mean uncorrupted by the evil American empire.” He playfully bites my bicep. “Faruk, my God—he loved everything about America. When he was a baby, his first word wasn't anne or baba. It was America.”
“That isn't true.”
“It is. We picked up English from American movies. Faruk was fluent in English before he knew Turkish. He used to walk around the village playing the parts—'I'll be back!'” Kazan lets out a bark of laughter. “He knew all the stars' names. He'd read American magazines in the outhouse like pornography. I don't even know where he got them.”
“Did they know about Faruk?”
“From the time he was around four. It's probably why Baba sent him to America.”
“Do you miss your village?”
“I miss my family.”
I guffaw. “We are drowning in your family. How can you miss your family?”
“They were different in Turkey. You know what I miss most? The picnics. The smell and warmth of the animals. The earth.” He passes his hand over my hair, and sings:
Bir dalda iki kiraz
Biri al biri beyaz
Eğer beni seversen
Mektubunu sikça yaz
On one branch, two cherries
One is red, one is white
If you love me
Write your letter quickly
Wave it, wave it, your handkerchief
Night comes, give me my love
Night comes, give me my love
On one branch, two walnuts
Between us, rivers and seas
You there, and me here
Nothing is left, worry or color
Wave it, wave it, your handkerchief
Night comes, give me my love
I know the folksong. Rafik used to sing it while I sat on his lap, my hands on his as he strummed his guitar. I feel myself falling down into a soft patch of miner's lettuce, deep in a forest, falling into my husband. It frightens me, and I have to break the spell. “Tell me more about the food,” I whisper, my voice cracking.
He growls and rubs his stomach. “There's this layered wafer cookie called gofret. And sticky diamonds of cake, oozing with orange honey. Newspaper cones of salted marrow and sunflower seeds. Skewers of grilled lamb intestines. Sounds horrible, but they are truly delicious. Crunchy cucumbers.” He leaps out of bed. “Christ, I'm starving. Let's get something to eat.”
Another time I tell him of my childhood before the Islamic Republic of Holland, of sailing, of parties at Hans and Marta's, of biking for hours on the Nord Holland dikes. When I tell him about watching my father murdered on the library steps, he takes me into his arms and lets me cry.
One morning when we go for our walk, we see a string of people holding hands way out in the mudflats. It looks like Death leading off the villagers in The Seventh Seal, and part of me wonders if the Islamists are right and the Apocalypse has come. Later Evi explains to us that they are engaged in wadlopen, mudflat-walking, a sport among the locals. They go trudging from one island to another, feet slipping and sinking into the mud. They hold hands to keep their balance and because the tides can come rushing in, unexpectedly. Some people can become muddled in the featureless horizon, and will lose their way if separated. “It is a kind of meditation,” she says. “Like walking through a Zen garden.”
“You mean the ripples in the mud?” I interject.
“Exactly. It puts you in touch with nature's flourishes—the tiny crabs and cockles.”
“An odd sport,” says Kazan.
“Expensive, too,” Evi agrees, “if you figure on ruining a perfectly good pair of shoes every time you go.”
I am surprised the Islamic Council hasn't banned wadlopen—holding hands between unrelated men and women. Strictly haram. Perhaps they figure the number of enthusiasts are so small, it isn't worth bothering with. Perhaps they don't even know about it.
I feel this overwhelming respect for the mud walkers—traipsing through the mud as if there were no Occupation, no war, following their existential passion.
Only the mud, the endless horizon, and a line of people holding hands.
#
In our last few days, I feel such a sense of dread in returning that I find it hard to relax. I'm not the same person I was when I came here. I don't think I can go back. All I want to do is escape with Kazan to some place safe. Our talks turn more serious.
I tell him about my friend Joury. He tells me about his roommate Laszlo at Berchtold Academy, and his adolescent crush on his mother. And how he joined the Resistance.
“After we graduated, Laszlo and I drifted apart. It's strange—I thought about him almost every day, but I never wrote him. One day I decided to look him up and called his mother to get his number. We met at Goethe Platz in Frankfurt. It was great to see him. We promised to keep in touch, but we didn't.”
Kazan then tells me how he was kidnapped on an errand to find pastries for Uncle Osman, and found himself blindfolded and tied to a chair in a country house up in the mountains. “I'm shitting my pants, thinking I'm going to be murdered, and in walks guess who.”
“You're kidding.”
“No, I'm not.”
“I asked him what the fuck he wanted from me. I was pissed. You don't know Laszlo, but he can be incredibly reserved. He untied my blindfold, fed me, and gave me a beer to calm me down, then told me why he was there. He had served four years in the Israeli military service, then went back to Florence, expecting to get on with his life. One day a man, clearly Israeli military, stopped him in the street and handed him an envelope. Inside was an address. He went there and met a shabby-looking bureaucrat, who asked him if he wanted join the Mossad. He said no, but in another two weeks, he got another envelope with a different address, and the same guy said, 'Your country needs you. Western civilization needs you.'”
“I imagine it isn't easy to say no to the Mossad,” I quip.
“No.” Kazan smiles.
“And Laszlo recruited you?”
“Not exactly. He told me that the diamonds I transported for Uncle Osman were buying arms for UNI troops. I was dumbstruck.”
“You didn't know?”
“I had no idea. I felt incredibly stupid. And angry. It really woke me up.”
“He wanted you to work undercover?”
“Yes. I was perfectly positioned to give them vital information. Where arms were being delivered. Amounts and what kinds of arms. Where they were from. The names of people involved, where they lived, their positions. I didn't know any of that, but I knew I could find out.”
“So you've been working undercover for Mossad all this time?” I am not completely shocked. I think about the Jericho pistol in his safe.
“I started out as an informer. Because of my diamond deliveries, I have special papers that permit me to travel almost anywhere in Europe and the Middle East without being searched. Like a diplomatic pouch. Then I realized I had the perfect opportunity to organize Resistance chapters all through Europe and the Slovakian countries.”
“Your work as Reynard?”
“Yes. Getting us prepared.”
“The invasion will be soon?”
Kazan takes my hand and gently turns it over. “Very soon.”
“Do the Islamists know?”
“Sure they know. Why do you think they're cracking down?”
“That's why you were at the Friday meeting. To discuss the invasion.”
“Yes.”
I scoop up a handful of sand and let it sift ou
t between my fingers. “I think Luuk might be the one who told the Landweer. It's odd he's the only one who got away. The Landweer chased him a few blocks, then turned around.”
Kazan's eyes widen. “We'll keep an eye on him. Isolate him from any important information, or feed him some false intelligence. It's a shame. I really liked Luuk.”
“Do you feel bad about arming the Islamists?”
“It's a good place to be. I have done it for so long, they don't suspect me when things go wrong—when the Resistance interrupts shipments, or they get dysfunctional weapons. They blame the sellers.”
“Your father knows you were arming the Islamists?”
Kazan nods, uncomfortable talking about his father. “It isn't ideological for him. War and terrorism is big business, and he's a businessman. He saw the clash of civilizations way back in 1979. He figured if Islamic fundamentalists could take over a huge country like Iran, then they would make a play for all of Levant and northern Africa. Then Europe. He realized there was a great deal of money to be made.”
I feel a sick squeeze in my stomach. “Uncle Osman knew?”
“No. I don't think so. Uncle Osman was a purist. He loved diamonds. He loved old things. He didn't really care much about the selling part.”
“Your father used Osman's contacts.”
“Yes. You could say Ahmed runs a terrorist-support organization. He sells to anyone willing to pay the price. ISIS would never have happened without him. He knows terrorists need safe houses, safe transportation, supplies of food, clothing, supplies of documents, and people to dispose of everything after a job is done. All those Toyotas ISIS has? My father. But most of all, they need weapons. And since he was already in the diamond business, it was a perfect way to move money around. Terrorists favor big cities, certain hotels, rental agencies, and restaurants. He has a vast network of people on modest payroll, at key crossroads, whose job is to deliver packages and report on new faces.”
“He used you like another one of his couriers.”
“That's right.”
“Doesn't that make you angry? I mean, if he wanted you to work for the Islamists, shouldn't he have asked you?”
Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) Page 33