“There were two more murders before the one of the great Yussuf Bansuri?” I ask.
“Tarek and Abdul, my dear brothers, have died in an ambush carried out by the crusader,” the Imam complains. “May Allah punish him,” he adds with a hiss.
“When did it start?” I want to know.
The Imam takes his time. My straight question seems to annoy him. It obviously makes him feel uncomfortable to discuss a family matter with an infidel like me. He looks in my direction as if to discern what to make of me. “A little over two weeks ago we found Tarek in his tea house with his skull shattered,” he lets me know. “The shisha was still in his hand. I swear, when I get my hands on this crusader I’ll have him tortured. For weeks. Months. Inshallah!”
“Yesterday Ramsan Alchanov was murdered,” I inform him. “An ace of clubs was found with his body.”
The Imam flinches as if struck by lightning. “The crusader kills like a coward,” he tries to mask his deep confusion with a platitude. “Crusaders or Jews, it’s all the same to me. They poison the minds of our young men, seduce our women, and rob us of our culture. If this Christian isn’t apprehended soon, I’ll take the fight out of the Ghetto, inshallah,” he grimly declares.
Bansuri didn’t know anything about the murder of the Chechen, this much is clear. He seems to be shocked, even. Now, I’m really confused. Why should he mind so much, that a Chechen’s been killed? Might he see a connection to the series of murders, which are news for Natasha and me?
With a flick of his hand Bansuri motions to one of his bodyguards to see me out. The audience is over.
8
The Copt’s getting more and more paranoid. Lucas and Quasim continue to encourage each in their hatred of the Lemons. Now, they even badger me to get them some fertilizer to build a bomb. It had to lead to problems eventually that they do nothing but hang out in an underground ticket booth on a subway platform brooding, without ever seeing the sun. Lucas is right of course when he says that the Lemons have been persecuting the Copts for centuries, suppressing them and destroying their culture. But you can’t dwell on the past forever. Life has to go on. Again and again I try to talk sense to him and to cheer him up. Quasim is no real help in this. Most of the time he just sits on the sofa, doesn’t say a word, and numbly stares into space. These bad vibrations are simply more than I can take. I’d love to just walk away and leave the two of them to their own devices. Maybe I’d better look for another place to stay in the Ghetto. There might not be any apartments available, but the tunnels under the city offer many hideaways up for grabs.
I’m not sure what to do. For some reason Lucas has grown to me. Maybe it’s because he’s an honest and decent guy, qualities I’d like to claim for myself. Therefore, it hurts twice as much that he’s blaming me and my drug-dealing for the moral decay all around. He accuses me of infesting the Ghetto with dope. The fact that it’s my only option if I want to make a living, doesn’t count. Even though he also benefits from my business, as I often grumble. The money for meat in the refrigerator had to come from somewhere, right? However, I’d never say so to his face. Not, as long as he’s down like this. I don’t want to find him with his wrists cut when I come home. When I casually mention that the Imam plans to build yet another madrassa, this time in Zehlendorf, Lucas sits up. I just let him vent his anger against the Lemons. Quasim will join the chorus, meaning that the two of them will leave me alone.
Anja’s getting more and more demanding when I take her out. Her blatant materialism exhausts me. All these endless shopping orgies in the fancy fashion stores along Kurfürstendamm. Fortunately, these places now have lounges for stressed-out guys that even serve free drinks. One day Anja points out a diamond necklace to me and tells me, how much she likes it. Hint, hint. She smiles at me. Sex is very involved that night. She pleases me with her mouth for the first time ever. She must really want these baubles. Which reminds me to severely cut down on the free dope samples and to raise the price for Khalid. Priorities. I don’t run a charity organization and I’m not a good Samaritan either. Once I’ve paid the admission fee to her innermost sanctuary, the demands will hopefully stop for the next few months.
Natasha calls me a couple of times a day, demanding regular reports on my progress. I can’t do anything but ask her for patience. She’s told me that the DNA on the poker cards they’ve found is useless. The worn-out cards have gone through too many hands. Fortunately, there hasn’t been another attack since the assault on the school. But we’re living on borrowed time. The storm will break loose eventually. We both know it.
I fill some vials with neurotoxin, arm my briefcase, and pocket four spare magazines for my Uzi. The Glock’s set back on escalation, step one. Tonight I’ll lay in wait. If this roof-runner shows his face, I’ll catch him red-handed.
9
The muezzin’s just calling folks to five o’clock tea, when I make my way up to the roof of one of the Stalin buildings on Frankfurter Allee. I watch life unfold on the street, lined with car wrecks and garbage heaps, until dusk starts to settle. Wannabees, performing wheelies on their pimped-up motorbikes. Men, beating their wives with belts without worrying about witnesses. Boys, getting a whipping from their fathers. Nothing out of the ordinary. Patiently, I wait until the sun is low on the horizon. Veiled women, six children in tow, scurry home through the twilight to seek shelter inside their apartments until the next morning. It’s not just criminals who live here. But after sunset only gangbangers populate the buildings’ doorways. As electricity gets shut off in the Ghetto, the streets are quickly growing dark. The coughing bouts of sick children fill the night. Does life on other planets look like this, too? Do people who live many light years away also congregate in their places of worship to march in circles around the fragment of a meteorite, lost in trance?
The next morning I’m yawning so much that I almost unhinge my yaw. Besides a few junkies and some teens who stole out of their rooms in the middle of the night nobody has shown up on the roof. I walk down the stairs and leave the Stalin building. Today, I’m not in the mood to return to the subway tunnel.
“Hey, Hauke, yalla,” a homeless guy addresses me. He’s sitting on the stoop of a porticoed doorway. It’s Umit, one of the worst boozers I’ve ever met. He’s close to fifty, his face bloated after thousands of alcoholic binges. Coarse skin, the bags under his eyes could be mistaken for balconies. He’s virtually evaporating booze. His ripe odor keeps the Sharia police away, I guess. Stink to fend off the Islamist guardians of virtue. Life can be really strange sometimes. Umit always carefully combs back his curls. He gels them almost lovingly. He must be very proud of them.
“You’ve fucked with Jihad, yalla,” he slurs.
Jihad. I’ve totally forgotten about this little punk. We’ve left off at escalation step one, if I remember right. “How do you know?” I ask.