This was the deportees’ holding tank at Frankfurt airport. The next flight to Beirut left in four hours. It was a little past three.
I huddled next to the young guy with the brushstrokes under his nose and contemplated the glowing end of my cigarette. His name was Abdullah, he came from South Lebanon, and in four hours he would be on his way back there. In front of us, on the floor, lay a fellow Turk murmuring prayers. Now and again he stopped, raised his head, and explained something to me in Turkish.
Abdullah cracked his knuckles.
“But maybe it’s just the way things balance out. The Eintracht team stays on top, and I go down, or the other way round.”
“So, if you shoot yourself in the head, the Eintracht wins the championship?”
His tongue made clicking sounds against his palate. “Fate is our master.” And, after a glance into the hallway: “No, there really is a law that makes things balance out. For instance-after I passed my college entrance exam, my girlfriend took off. Honest to God.”
I nodded and blew smoke rings. I kept thinking about ways to save these people from their flights. Attorneys, newspapers, church people-as long as I was not allowed to make a phone call because the immigration police believed that they had to put me on the evening flight to Istanbul, it was all pretty pointless.
One of my smoke rings floated right onto the praying fellow’s nose. He looked up, waved his arms furiously, and started talking a mile a minute. Maybe he had asthma? I shrugged and smiled apologetically. When he didn’t stop babbling-my smile was set in concrete by then-Abdullah got irritated and intervened.
“Please get it through your thick skull-he doesn’t understand a word you’re saying. He’s a Turk, all right, but he doesn’t speak Turkish.”
“Is that so? But why? Is he too stupid?” The guy’s upper lip curled disdainfully. “Or is he ashamed?”
His German was almost perfect, and I was annoyed with myself for having tried to communicate with him in a kind of sign language.
“I never learned it, that’s all.”
“What is your father’s name?”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“What’s his name?”
“Tarik Kayankaya.”
He waved his hand as if to say, “There you are.” Then he said: “Well, what did I say, you’re a Turk.”
“Amazing. You found that out, just like that?”
“You’re denying your origin!”
“Why don’t you just go on praying a little more? And I’ll stop smoking.”
His index finger shot forward and stopped, trembling, in front of my nose. “Tomorrow night you’ll be back home, and then you won’t be able to pretend you’re German!”
Abdullah spat on the floor. “Yeah, terrific. Then he’ll sit in the joint there, and get punched in the mouth three times a day, but when he gets out after twenty years, he’ll be able to order a cup of coffee in Istanbul in perfect Turkish.”
Abdullah flashed his gold teeth. The pious guy scrutinized him from top to toe, turned up his nose, and hissed: “I won’t be bought. I’d rather be in prison in Turkey than plead for asylum in Germany.”
He had hardly finished when there was some commotion behind us. A Kurd peeled off his blanket, cursing, and crossed two bedsteads to get to the patriot. He looked like a guy who took better care of his fists than of his chin.
“Man, you’re talking shit. You’re talking a bunch of unbelievable shit!”
The Turk replied in Turkish. He must have struck a wrong note: the next moment he was flying through the air, crashing against the wall, and sliding back down to the floor like a wet rag with a nosebleed. A murmur ran through the cell. The Kurd stood in our midst like a commander of armies. His gaze swept the assembly with a “try me” expression. He had to be a body builder or decathlon athlete; in any case, he seemed to enjoy throwing people around, and if the people happened to be Turks, that was even more fun. He just stood there and waited, long enough for the prayer enthusiast to scrape himself off the floor and to reel over to the Kurd again. One might have thought that courageous, but it was undeniably unhealthy, and Abdullah muttered “What a raving idiot!” The Kurd cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, and everyone present realized individually that there would be no joy in intervention. Just as the Kurd got ready for another throw, a door swung open and five cops came marching down the hall. Three men, one woman, and a dog, to be exact. Things got really quiet. The Turk and the Kurd retired into a corner. The patrol of five stopped in front of our cell, and the woman took a piece of paper out of her breast pocket.
“Chatem, Abdullah.”
Abdullah’s brown face turned a cheesy yellow, and I could no longer hear him breathe. The woman put her piece of paper away and unlocked the door. The men and the dog entered the cell. I motioned to Abdullah to remain seated and to keep his trap shut.
“Step forward.”
I got up.
“Come with us.”
“Where to?”
“Your flight leaves in an hour,” the woman explained. She was still standing in the hall. “We told you the wrong flight this afternoon.”
Surrounded by the men and the dog, I left the cell. A murmur arose behind me, some of the men uttered quiet curses. Suddenly a voice called out: “Allah yardimcin olsun!” The door slammed shut, and someone else growled: “He’s on the side of the cops, your Allah.”
My last glimpse of the refugees was the old guy in patent leather shoes. He was loosening his tie.
She had the modest hair pulled back in a bun, the unornamented hands, the compassionate voice and the pale thin-lipped face of a nun, combined with the furtive eyes of a feminist in all-male company. On her, the freshly starched and ironed uniform was as becoming as a cardboard box. Her feet were clad in brown hiking boots, and between her breasts hung a necklace of light blue stones. She played with it whenever she was thinking things over. I sat there for ten minutes, arms crossed on my chest, two cops standing guard behind me, on a wooden chair and watched her search for Abdullah’s passport in several metal cabinets, desk drawers, and file folders. Not a word had been said. On the wall facing me hung a calendar put out by the Border Guard. The picture showed one of its helicopters against a sunset.
I looked at the clock. If she had told the truth, Abdullah’s plane was leaving in forty minutes. To prevent his being on it, I would have to sit here for another half-hour. And the passport had to remain misplaced. It would be even better if she could be distracted from the search. I took care of that.
“May I go to the men’s room?”
“No.”
“I’m supposed to pee in my shoe?”
A washrag landed on my shoulder.
“Let’s keep calm, colleague.”
“Did you hear that, sister? He called me colleague. That’s defamation. Tell the guy-”