The Brother

by Joakim Zander

  Yasmine sees those same empty, tired eyes in everyone she meets. It’s their cars that have been destroyed in the parking lot. Their grocery store that’s been set on fire, their children who can’t go out in the evenings anymore, and hardly during the day. And everywhere that red fist and star are sprayed. Everywhere that feeling of a threat, a siege, a countdown to chaos.

  Yasmine continues down toward the shopping center. The gun chafes her lower back a little, but she’s surprised how used to it she is by now. Ever since she saw that gangster outside Lydmar she’s kept it loaded, too.

  She was here just twelve hours ago, but even after last night’s destruction, she’s still amazed by how different things feel now, how normal. Broken windows at the grocery, milk cartons smashed against the dirty, checkerboard concrete. Still it’s nothing like the turmoil she saw last night. No screams, no fire, and no running, faceless boys chasing after running, faceless police.

  Two police cars are parked outside the grocery store, one police van and one squad car and four cops are leaning against them with paper cups of coffee in their hands and their hats pushed back on their heads. They’re doing their best to look harmless now, as if they’re something other than the dark shadows that ran through Bergort last night. But no matter how hard they try, they look like foot soldiers on leave. Like farmers’ sons who’ve become an occupying army without understanding how. They don’t look intimidating now, just naïve, almost innocent, as if they’re unaware of the hatred around them.

  She could almost feel sorry for them, but she knows that when evening comes, they’ll be masked again. When evening comes, they hide behind their shields and grids and their batons and punches.

  And the cops know that everyone knows that. So there’s something strained in their posture, something tense and unnatural. They see the symbols sprayed all over Bergort. They see the cars burning. They tell themselves they can protect this powder keg from its burning fuse. But deep down, they think it’s too late.

  *

  She sits on a bench in a sunbeam that streams down between two buildings. The rain has moved on, and the afternoon sun is hot again, but the sand under the forgotten spades and cracked, loose wheels of toy cars in the sandbox is still moist. It’s nearly three by the time she hears Parisa’s voice behind her.

  “Yazz?” she says. “Sorry I’m late.”

  When she turns around, she sees Parisa standing by the warped gate to the playground and starts walking toward her across the damp sand.

  “It’s OK,” she says.

  When she reaches Parisa, she looks into her eyes and gestures in the direction of the center of Bergort.

  “Quite the chaos,” she says. “Last night, I mean.”

  Parisa nods cautiously, as if she hadn’t really thought about it.

  “Ey,” she says at last. “That’s the way it goes, len. You know how it is. The cops start bashing us, and it’s payback.”

  Yasmine hesitates. Doesn’t Parisa know her guy is involved in this? That he’s some sort of leader?

  “Whose baby was that?” she says instead. “Your sister’s?”

  Parisa flinches, and her gaze glides out over the playground and the square, and the battered stores behind it, bathed in light. She shakes her head.

  “Did your mom have another baby?”

  Yasmine laughs, doing her best to dispel the tension that’s descended on them. But Parisa just shakes her head and looks at her again, something hard and rebellious in her eyes now.

  “She’s mine, Yazz. Nour is mine.”

  Yasmine takes a step back in surprise.

  “What? You’re kidding? You—”

  She breaks off, unsure of how to proceed.

  “Is that so strange, Yazz?” Parisa says. “Is that so fucking wack to you? That I might have a kid?”

  “No, no. Or, I don’t know, Parisa.”

  “Not everyone can run away! Not everyone can just say fuck it and move to New York.”

  “That’s not what I mean, sister,” she says. “I just mean… Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Why didn’t I say anything?” Parisa says, a small mischievous smile at the corner of her mouth now. “Why didn’t I say anything? You weren’t here, sister. It wasn’t like you called me every day, right? Not like you were Facebooking me all the time, sister?”

  The way she’s saying sister is the same way Yasmine said it yesterday outside Parisa’s apartment. Yasmine shrugs her shoulders now, feels Bergort creeping over her again, pressing down on her, pushing her closer. Feels its tentacles pulling her back. It doesn’t matter how far you travel.

  “Whatever,” she tells Parisa. “She’s sweet, len.”

  Yasmine’s got her eyes on the ground now. She was the one who came here full of righteous anger. But that’s how it always turns out. Nothing is permanent here except chaos.

  “Is it Mehdi’s? I mean, is he the father?”

  Parisa doesn’t say anything, just nods with the back of her head.

  “Come on, Yazz,” she says. “I wanna show you something.”

  Yasmine just looks at her.

  “What?”

  “You wanna know about Fadi? That’s what you said. You don’t give a shit about the rest, you’re just looking for him?”

  “I don’t give a shit about the rest, whatever the hell it is. But if he’s alive I have to get a hold of him. You understand that, right?”

  She feels her fury growing again. Parisa and all of fucking Bergort. All this shit and stagnation and mysterious connections and guilt, guilt, guilt.

  “Come on then,” Parisa says, turns around, and starts walking.

  44

  Bergort—Monday, August 17–Thursday, August 20, 2015

  The following days are simple. On Monday, we load ourselves into that worthless fucking Mazda and drive out to the middle of nowhere. Just Mehdi and me. We listen to old Pirate Tapes classics and Mehdi raps along to the chorus with his worthless, stressed-out asthma-flow, always half a beat off, always saying the wrong words. It makes me laugh, and for a brief moment, I almost forget who I am, forget who I’ve become.

  We park the car and take tiny walking paths out into the middle of a forest, just like mushroom pickers, I swear, just like fucking Swedes. It’s quiet out there, just the clanking of the plastic bag filled with empty bottles and cans Mehdi’s carrying. When we get far enough away from the small gravel road to feel secure, we line up the cans on some old logs and back up about sixty feet. I open the bag I took with me from Syria and lift out the well-worn Russian gun.

  Of course Mehdi’s seen guns before. I remember Räven’s face many years ago when he showed us a rusty old revolver. So fucking proud. But you already knew by then he was on his way out, you could see the heroin in those dead fucking eyes, you could see how close it was, so we didn’t even get that excited, just kind of depressed, and just a few months later he was dead, poor bastard.

  But this is different. This comes from a war, and Mehdi’s hands tremble as he holds it for the first time, his eyes glistening.

  “Shit, brush,” he says. “Where’d you get ’em?”

  “Took them with me when I came,” I say. “No one keeps an eye on all the weapons down there. It took a week to get home on trucks and buses. Couldn’t exactly check them in at the airport, right?”

  He holds up a gun and aims it toward the pine trees.

  “Have you been in a battle with this?”

  He looks at me with an admiration I haven’t seen from him before, a willingness to believe whatever I tell him. So I tell him about the front, about the barrels al-Assad’s pigs rain down on us, about our homemade grenades, about how the brothers hold their rifles above their heads and shoot through the gaps in the concrete out of the ruins, how it smells like sulfur and the desert, I tell him how many pigs the brothers have killed. And when he asks if I killed someone, I nod hesitantly and look away.

  Because the only ones I’ve killed are my brothers.

 
*

  We sit down on a couple of stumps and Mehdi starts gobbling down a Twix, without offering me one, just like usual, and it irritates me, even though I know he’s done so much for me. But when I see him cramming chocolate into his mouth and smacking his lips it makes me angry. Why the hell are we out in the woods? Why does he need to learn to shoot? I hear his hissing fucking breath coming from the stump. I lean back against a tree trunk and look at him.

  “Are you ever gonna tell me what the hell this thing you got going on is?” I say. “Why the hell are we out here in the woods like a couple of Swedes?”

  He looks up at me and slurps in such a way that chewy toffee flows out of the corner of his mouth.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he says. “You mad or something?”

  I shake my head.

  “Whatever. But surely you know what kind of shit is going down in Bergort, brother. The riots? What the hell is this about?”

  He nods quietly.

  “It’s starting to grow now. This weekend it’s gonna explode, brother. We have our shuno who’s fucking coordinating, you know?”

  I shrug.

  “And what happens when it does, brother?” I say. “What the hell’s the deal? Don’t shoot anybody, asshole.”

  It’s not that I care about the cops, but it just feels so fucking useless. Shooting some cop in Bergort. I think of the kids I saw on that first evening I got back, cawing and flapping around Camp Nou and the playground. What happens to them if they see guys like Mehdi trying to shoot cops?

  “No, relax,” Mehdi says. “I’m not stupid. And I don’t give a shit about any of that? I’m getting paid by the Serbs, you know? A thousand a night, brother. To create some chaos? Back in the day, we did it for free!”

  He laughs, and I spit in the moss before I look up at him. And I get it. It’s natural. This is how we grew up. It’s drilled into us. There’s always a hustle somewhere. Always one more layer, always some ass-backward, phantom possibility under layers of bullshit and chaos. Always one more thing that can go to hell. Never further than our own noses. Never further than the next pay check.

  *

  That afternoon Mehdi comes to the door of my hiding place, my cave. He looks stressed-out, his eyes jumping around the room like little rabbits.

  “Shoo, brother,” he says, giving me a hand and a half hug.

  “What’s going on?” I say. “You look stressed.”

  He pulls the metal door closed behind him, enters the room, and looks at me seriously.

  “There’s someone keeping an eye on you,” he says. “Someone knows you’re back. You know how this works, it’s just a matter of time before everyone knows.”

  I sit down on the mattress. It was only a matter of time, even though I was careful. Things move fast out here.

  “How did you find out?”

  “I have my contacts. And this person is asking questions about the symbols, and it makes me worry. You know, this is big shit we have going on out here. The people involved… You know? The ones who are paying? They’ll go batshit if somebody unravels all this before it’s ready, brother. You don’t want to mess with them, believe me. And if anyone sees you, you’ll lose your chance for revenge. We have to be careful now.”

  “Who’s seen me?”

  Mehdi’s eyes flutter away before he looks at me, annoyed.

  “Somebody you don’t know. You better fucking stay inside now if you don’t want it to come out that you’re back. Damn, you’re haddi, brother. It may be fucking Säpo. We don’t want Säpo snooping around here now, just a few days before this starts.”

  I’m confused.

  “But what the hell, brother,” I say. “Who is it? Is one of the traitors asking around? One of the men who sent me to Syria?”

  I feel my mouth go dry. I’ve been hiding, sneaking around, barely out in days. How could they have discovered me?

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mehdi says. “You need to keep a low profile for a while, then you can have your revenge, like you want.”

  *

  So we move an old PlayStation and a TV down to the basement. Plug it into a socket out in the hallway. Mehdi’s too stingy to lend me his new one, so I sit around with his old PlayStation 3, playing old, fucked-up FIFA and Halo games. On Tuesday, Mehdi picks me up, and we drive into the woods, where I teach him how to shoot with a pistol while he babbles on about riots and chaos.

  I look at Mehdi, all hesitancy and wheezing breath, see how he flinches when he fires the gun, closes his eyes when he pulls the trigger and misses so badly that I almost start to laugh. A thousand a night to burn down Bergort. Masks and baseball bats and throwing rocks at the cops. We’re not kids anymore, and it makes me feel sad and empty. Nothing ever happened for us; we never got a break.

  *

  On Thursday evening I stand across the street from the traitors’ meeting place. I see them arrive one by one at Dakhil’s apartment. From the other side of the shopping center, from the other side of Bergort, I hear the uproar of the kids getting worked up for the riots tonight. It’s still too early. There will be some quiet before the explosion. Just like the last two nights. But every day it’s more and more intense.

  I don’t know why I’m here tonight, sitting on the bench outside the apartment. Usually I go home as soon as I see that they’ve left, as soon as I see that al-Amin is not with them. But tonight I just can’t leave, despite Mehdi’s warnings.

  The evening is warm, and I’m tired and lonely. I guess I have nowhere else to go. Maybe I feel that inside me. But I decide to wait here.

  *

  I have almost dozed off when I finally see him on the cracked asphalt of the parking lot. He locks the door to a small car, a Golf maybe, with a click and a beep and starts walking toward the apartment building at a rapid pace.

  Brother al-Amin. Same clothes, same leather jacket, and small kufi. He has a phone pressed to his ear, and he’s talking quietly. I freeze to the bench, stuck there, unable to move. All I can think about is that phone, if it’s the same phone he used to call me a few weeks ago. If it’s the same phone that wiped out my brothers?

  He’s inside the door before I’m able to collect myself, collect my thoughts.

  Al-Amin hasn’t disappeared. Maybe he always comes late now? Maybe it’s the first time this week he’s been here? Maybe it’s the last time? Maybe he’s been on one of his fucking missions. The adrenaline starts pumping inside me. Is this my chance? My only chance? All the brothers are gathered here. My whole body vibrates. I have never thought beyond this. But I’ve dreamed of it. And now it’s real.

  I stand up on the bench, try to see up into the window, but the curtains are drawn.

  I don’t know how long I stand there, paralyzed, unable to think one simple thought. But before it passes, I see the door open again and the brothers stream out. One by one they disappear over the asphalt until only imam Dakhil and al-Amin are left. They are too far away for me to hear what they say, but they seem to be done now, and shake hands, hugging one another briefly. Then imam Dakhil turns to go back to his apartment again, and al-Amin heads for the parking lot. Before they separate, I hear it.

  “See you tomorrow, after Friday prayers.”

  I sink back into myself, and my focus returns, sharper and harder than ever.

  See you tomorrow.

  Yes, I think and close my eyes, we will.

  45

  Bergort—Friday, August 21, 2015

  They walk away from the shopping center in the sun, down toward the low-rise apartment buildings where she and Fadi grew up, past them, then out toward the mangy little field with its thistles and dandelions. Behind that there’s a little grove where she and Fadi used to play when they were young, where she used to tell him about Ronia, and he got so afraid of trolls and robbers that he’d start to shake. Where they used to pretend they were grilling hot dogs at dusk and would sneak home numb and giggling to the darkness and silence of home.

  “Where are we going
, Parisa?” Yasmine says now.

  “You’ll see,” Parisa answers quietly. “Almost there.”

  The grass is high, and Yasmine, suppressing the thought that there are snakes hiding and crawling there, hurries to keep up with Parisa.

  When they arrive at the grove she stops.

  “Up there,” Parisa says with something forceful and impetuous in her voice now. “You go first.”

  “What the hell,” Yasmine says. “You brought me here. You’re the one who had something to show me.”

  Parisa sighs.

  “Whatever you want,” she says and climbs easily up to the sun-warmed rocks.

  Yasmine waits a second and then follows.

  *

  She realizes she’s been deceived as soon as she steps into the grove. Two men in wide jeans and long-sleeved, dark T-shirts stand in front of her. They don’t say anything, and all Yasmine can see are their little eyes peeping out through the holes in the ski masks they’re wearing. Ski masks identical to the ones the kids wore yesterday.

  She feels adrenaline streaming through her, the world flashes around her, and she turns her head to look at Parisa, who has already turned around and started running down the slope without looking back.

  Now the men approach her, and she backs up. They don’t say anything, just walk quietly toward her with their arms out, black leather gloves ready to grab her. Finally, she turns to run, to escape, to leave all of this, whatever this is, behind. But then she sees a third man in a black ski mask coming toward her from the bottom of the slope, and she realizes there’s no way out.

  She sees that the man headed up the slope has on a shiny tracksuit and a green tattoo winds up from his back to his neck and in under his mask. In her fear she’s watching all this from the outside, standing in a pale grove under a pale sun, with three masked men around her. She’s alone here. Completely alone with these men.

  She screams after Parisa: “What the fuck, sharmuta? What have you done?”

  But Parisa doesn’t answer her. Her back has already disappeared between the trees.