That’s what they told me to say when I arrived. It should be enough, but it feels like grasping at straws now, here in the dark with footsteps and crickets and unsecured weapons.
“Fadi from Stockholm?” the voice says.
He speaks hood Swedish, but not from Stockholm’s hoods. From the countryside, and I feel my muscles start to relax, and my heart starts beating again.
“Yes, yes!” I say. “Fadi from Bergort. Imam Dakhil sent me.”
That metallic clicking again, maybe he’s securing his weapon. He’s closer now, close enough for me to make out his silhouette, his scarf wrapped around his head like a mujahid, his dark soldier pants tucked into his boots.
“Yes, yes,” he says and laughs. “I heard you the first time.”
Now he stops in front of me. I can see he’s Somali, and that he has a sparse beard and long hair, his teeth gleam in the moonlight.
“Welcome, brother Ajam. Thank Allah, may he be exalted, that you arrived without any problems. I’m Abu Umar.”
*
Abu Umar leads me down a village street, where all the windows are gaping black holes, even though it’s no later than eight in the evening.
“Where is everyone?” I say. “Doesn’t anyone live here?”
“This is war, brother,” Abu Umar says and throws a quick, condescending glance sideways at me. “I thought that was why you were here, ey?”
“But,” I begin. “What do you mean? Are they dead?”
Abu Umar shakes his head and looks tired.
“Dead?” he says. “We only kill enemies and traitors, brother. They fled when the fighting was at its worst. Before we liberated this village, thank Allah, may he be glorified and exalted.”
“Were you part of that battle?”
I know I shouldn’t ask so much, since it only exposes how fucking green I am. But I don’t know anything. Everything is new. And I’m curious.
Abu Umar shrugs.
“Not in that battle, brother,” he says. “But in many others. As you too will be if Allah, may he be glorified and exalted, lets you.”
As we walk down a small hill to what appears to be a small, depressing square, I see a couple of houses where a faint light is burning. I get a whiff of mint and grilled eggplant.
“But a few are still here?” I say.
“There’s nobody left in this part of town, brother,” Abu Umar says. “No one but us. And this is where we live. You too now.”
We head up a small alley and enter the door to what appears to be an ordinary apartment building with broad, new stairs. There are no lights in here, but a weak, yellow light falls across the stairs as we climb up in silence. It reminds me of the light from the streetlamps at home, and I swallow something that tastes sweet and wet, maybe tears.
Abu Umar comes to a door, and without bothering with a key, pushes down on the handle and opens the door to a modern and dark apartment. We step over the threshold, and I see a dim light inside what appears to be the living room.
Two men are sitting on the floor around the faint blue flame of a small camp stove. They stand up when we come into the room.
“Shoo brother!” says the larger of the two and holds out his hand.
He’s tall and broad, not fat like Mehdi, but not exactly muscular either. Just a larger version of a regular person. A thick, smooth beard covers his broad chin, and his hair is hidden under a scarf like the one Abu Umar wears. I take his hand, which is warm and dry, and a little too easy to hold on to. I let go reluctantly.
“I’m Shahid,” he says. “Welcome, brother.”
The smaller and slimmer man takes my hand. He doesn’t have a beard, but he’s unshaven and has his hair hidden under an army cap.
“Welcome,” he says. “I hope Allah, may he be exalted, offers you an honorable death.”
He looks at me seriously, and I feel a discomfort so intense it surprises me. Everything we talked about with brother al-Amin. Martyrdom. How we long for it, how we can’t wait to enter paradise. In this dark room, in the middle of a ghost town, it doesn’t feel quite as desirable anymore. Rather than clean and beautiful, it now feels dirty and far too real.
“But we won’t die tonight, brus,” Shahid says and pulls out a pillow for me to sit on. “Tonight we’re going to drink tea and get to know our new brother, Fadi.”
He turns to me.
“Brother Tariq is eager,” he says. “He can’t wait for his virgins. It’s because he’s not married.”
Shahid laughs at his own joke as he pours hot water over mint leaves in a dented tin mug, which he hands to me. Tariq doesn’t say anything, just looks down into his own cup and drinks quietly.
*
Tariq wakes me up before sunrise, and we mumble prayers until the sun hangs somewhere behind the buildings. Then he disappears before I even have time to stand up.
Tariq and I share the apartment, because we’re not married. The others live with their families, the ones who have been here over a year already have children.
I don’t understand who we are, how many we are, or what our task is, either. But it seems like war is the brothers’ job. They go to the frontline, do their eight-hour shift, and when darkness falls, go home to their families again. Just like a regular job, like when I was working at the warehouse. The soldiers are mostly Syrians and Iraqis, and they live scattered throughout the almost deserted village in order to make it harder to bomb them. But it seems that we Swedes stick together.
There’s tea in a jar, and I struggle to get the camp stove started. I find a couple of flat pieces of bread and a little leftover hummus in a plastic jar beneath them. I’m still not hungry but force myself to eat the dry bread. No sooner do I finish than I hear the door open and brother Shahid comes into the room.
“As-salamu alaykum, brother,” he says. “Come with me, it’s time to get started.”
As soon as I get to my feet, he presses a gun into my hands. It’s heavy and cold and makes my blood race. A Kalashnikov with a wooden butt and a curved magazine. I don’t know where to point it, but Shahid has already disappeared out the door and is headed down the stairs.
We exit onto the dusty courtyard and take a gravelly path to a parking lot, where only a few burned-out cars stand. I shiver in the gray dawn, and Shahid tells me to stay put and goes over to a car that’s about sixty feet away. I have a thousand questions, but I push them away, force myself to do only what I’m told.
Shahid comes back and asks for my gun, which I give him. He turns and twists it, checking it from different angles before putting it to his shoulder and firing off a salvo at some jars he’s placed on the hood of the car. The sudden noise is deafening.
“Yes, yes,” Shahid murmurs and eyes something through the gun sight.
He takes a couple of shots at the cans. Then the choppy sound of machine-gun fire followed by a whistling sound and an explosion come from not far away. I crouch instinctively and look around for protection, the blood rushing to my head. It starts now, this is just the way it will be.
But Shahid turns his head and grins when he sees me crouching against the wall.
“Ey, what are you up to?” he says. “Wallah, you look so freakin’ funny.”
He aims the gun toward the ground and turns toward me.
“Are you afraid of that?”
He points the gun in the direction from which the hacking machine-gun sound came.
“That’s the frontline, brother, it doesn’t go anywhere.”
I stand up, legs still shaky.
“But that explosion?” I say.
“Barrel bombs that Bashar’s swine release from their helicopters. Get used to, it sounds like that all day here.”
He points the gun up at the gray morning sky.
“Get up now, and we’ll see what you’ve got,” he says, and hands me the Kalashnikov.
*
Shahid can’t spend the whole day with me, in the end he has to head to the frontline. When he mentions it, I feel my exciteme
nt and anticipation start to grow again. I’m close now, so close to what I want. But Shahid just laughs at me.
“There’s no frontline for you today, newcomer,” he says. “You take care of maintenance, and then we’ll see.”
And with that he jumps into an old Fiat, lays his gun in the passenger seat, and disappears in a puff of smoke, a small, fleeing cloud of dust.
So my job is to go shopping with the wives in a village farther from the frontline, and after that, to try to get the electricity working in one of the houses along with a Syrian man with a dialect so thick I can’t understand a word he says. As soon as I turn my back, I hear the women giggling at me, feel them staring and pointing. When the temperature falls, and the sun approaches the hills outside town, I drag myself back to my room and wait for the others to come back. I feel useless and superfluous. We couldn’t even get the electricity running.
*
I’m already asleep on my mattress when a buzzing phone awakens me. It takes me a moment to realize the vibrating sound is coming from my own bag under a window that looks out onto the deserted street.
“This is Fadi,” I say when I dig the satellite phone out of the bag’s outer pocket.
“Brother Fadi!”
It’s brother al-Amin’s voice bouncing, warm and static, up above Bergort through space and all the way here into my solitude a few miles from the front.
“We don’t have much time, this is expensive!” says brother al-Amin. “How are you? Have you arrived?”
I’m so happy to hear from him that my eyes fill with tears, and I sit down on the rickety windowsill and tell him everything as fast as I can. About the trip through Turkey in the minibus, the border, and how dark it is here at night. About the brothers and my useless day. And brother al-Amin lets me go on, lets me get everything out, even though it’s expensive.
“It’ll get better,” he says finally, laughing. “You just got there yesterday? Just relax.”
My cheeks get hot, and I feel ashamed. It’s true, I got here yesterday, what did I think would happen? I can’t even shoot. How could they send me to the frontline?
“Sure,” I say. “Sorry. I’ll be patient and wait for Allah to choose a role for me.”
“It’s good, brother,” he says. “No news otherwise, I guess? Regarding what we talked about. You remember?”
The traitor. Of course I remember.
“I haven’t heard anything yet,” I say as quietly as I can.
“No big plans discussed? No visitors?”
“Nothing yet.”
“You know all of that may be what the traitor is looking for,” brother al-Amin says. “As soon as you hear something, we’ll get our chance. The most important thing is that you keep your eyes and ears open and be ready when the time comes.”
I hear the door to the apartment open and what is probably Tariq’s shuffling steps across the stone floor.
“And remember that you can’t share this with your brothers, Fadi,” he says. “Not even that you are in touch with us. The fact that you have this phone may be enough for them to be suspicious.”
Outside my door, I hear Tariq getting closer to my room, his steps getting louder.
“I have to go,” I whisper, and press the red button.
I’ve just stuffed the phone into the pocket of my combat pants when Tariq pushes the door open with his Kalashnikov. He’s grimy and dirty from the front and has an exhausted, disgruntled expression on his face.
“Who were you talking to?” he says.
I swallow and feel the heat of the phone inside my pocket.
“No one,” I say. “Allah. I… was praying.”
He looks at me for a moment without saying anything. He doesn’t believe me, but the lie is untouchable. He turns around without a word and leaves me alone.
I wait until I hear him go into his own room before I slump down on my mattress on the floor. Tariq’s suspicious expression, his foxlike stealth and arrogance. What’s his problem? Is he worried? And about what? Being exposed?
28
London—Thursday, August 20, 2015
Klara is leaving the office early. She felt empty and tired after the wine at lunch and with the stress to finish the report, but now, after having uploaded it to Charlotte’s folder, her energy has returned.
After all the turmoil surrounding the computer, it feels almost liberating to have a mission, a plan, or at least a direction. To find out what’s hiding at 3 Formosa Street in Little Venice.
Which is why she doesn’t jump onto her bike to head home to Navarre Street immediately like she usually does, but instead heads in the other direction, toward the river. This afternoon’s sudden and heavy rains have moved on and taken the oppressive heat with them. She feels like she can think again.
*
She walks out onto Waterloo Bridge just far enough to see the enormous city spread out on either side of the bend.
She lights a cigarette and smokes it, leaning against the thick, damp railing, where the remaining drops of rain look inexplicable in the bright afternoon sun. The cigarette burns out, and she throws it over the railing, bends over to watch it fall down toward the brown river. When she can no longer see the butt, she closes her eyes.
*
She blushes at the thought of her lunch with Charlotte. It was a mistake to bring up Stirling Security. Charlotte’s reaction was unmistakable and as close to hostile as she’s ever seen her. There’s definitely something amiss. And the question remains, What is Patrick doing inside his shadowy chamber? Stirling Security, Ribbenstahl, and the Russian Embassy.
She leaves the bridge and walks along Lancaster Place and Bow Street, past the tourists and their late-summer pints, around Covent Garden, their laughter and shopping bags. She pushes away the idea of stopping for a glass of wine. Once she’s finished with what she needs to do. Only then, when she’s earned it.
She follows the meandering shopping streets around Covent Garden, up through Seven Dials and continues on to Old Compton Street and up toward the Tube station at Oxford Street. Somewhere far away she hears drums and whistles and something that sounds like chanting. Another demonstration, a meaningless riot. This summer is full of them.
She’s never been to Little Venice—except for Kensington Gardens, she’s actually never been north of the Westway—and even though she knows the area is famous for its beauty, she finds the canals and greenery surprisingly picturesque. Here there are no speeches or drums. The streets are almost silent, only a taxi or an occasional BMW, no tourists, not even a stencil of a Guy Fawkes mask or an anarchist-A. The neighborhood seems to be a sanctuary for an upper middle class with creative jobs, flexible hours, and children in Montessori. Subcultures and the discontented need not apply. Neighborhoods like these always made her nervous. The complacency in these oaks, these canals with their small houseboats safely moored, these empty streets. But appearances can be deceptive, she thinks. Somewhere in this Potemkin village the person who stole her computer is hiding.
*
It doesn’t take long to find 3 Formosa Street. The door is wedged between a tasteful café and a clothing shop with a selection of orange silk scarves and airy, natural-colored linen skirts tailor-made for the area’s wealthy bohemians. She’d already decided when she checked the map that the pub across the street would be the perfect place to wait.
Wait for what? She’s not sure. Judging by what seems to be three separate doorbells next to the door, the house seems to contain more than one apartment. She doesn’t dare go and look more closely, not yet. She’s decided to be careful, start by surveying the door this evening. Watching who goes in and out. What she’ll do with that information, she’s not exactly sure.
The Prince Alfred pub on the other side of the street fits in well with the area. Or, rather the area fits in well with Prince Alfred, as if the area itself were here to give Prince Alfred’s Victorian façade a sufficiently polished surface to mirror itself in. Wherever you turn there’s engraved gla
ss, a black cast-iron pillar, and ornate woodwork. She walks through the door to the bar, hesitates a moment before she feels the words “orange juice” forming on her lips. But at the last moment, she swallows them and orders a glass of white wine. She sits by the window that looks out onto Formosa Street. Just a glass while she waits, she thinks. That’s not the end of the world.
But the evening ends up long and uneventful. The pub slowly fills up with ideal representatives of the English middle class while a gorgeous blue darkness slowly falls on the street outside.
The streetlamps light up, one by one. She’s on her third glass of wine, and has momentarily left the door to 3 Formosa Street unattended for a moment, when it finally happens.
The first thing she sees is a silhouette from the corner of her eye, and she turns her head in a flash. A tall and lanky figure digs into the pocket of his chinos outside the door. It takes a second for her to realize who it is. But there’s no doubt. The person on the other side of the street is Patrick Shapiro.
29
Stockholm—Thursday, August 20, 2015
Yasmine stops short and squats down while throwing a quick glance across the parking lot. The rain is good, it keeps people away from the open asphalt and inside under a roof. It makes her task easier.
She stands up quietly, her eyes on Ignacio’s calm, swaying figure. He has headphones on and is quietly rapping along to some song, completely in his own world, doesn’t even seem to care about the rain. She feels her fury growing again.
Of all people—him. After they shared so much. So many nights in the studio and in Red’s living room down in the low-rise apartment buildings. So many days of dreaming and cutting school and not giving a shit. Maybe the only one she ever really counted on. And he subjects her to this. When all she wants is to find Fadi.
When she stands up, she can feel how the weight of the gun pushes her jeans lower on her hips.
When Ignacio is within reach, Yasmine jumps down from the loading dock and calmly walks toward him, still with her hood pulled down over her forehead. He doesn’t notice her immediately, but he must be aware that someone’s coming because his jaw stops moving, maybe because it’s embarrassing to be seen rapping to himself.
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