Do you think it still worked, asks Jameelah all of a sudden.
What?
The magic. Do you think it will still work even though, well, you know.
You’re good I think to myself but what I say is yeah I think so, the one has nothing to do with the other.
I wonder what Lukas is doing right now, says Jameelah looking at me with her big eyes.
Probably swimming. That must be what you do at Lake Garda, right?
Yeah, says Jameelah, probably swimming.
I saw a picture of Lake Garda once at the dentist’s office. Everything was green and right in the middle was the blue lake, just the way a holiday is supposed to look.
Yeah and he’s swimming in it right now, says Jameelah.
Yeah, I say taking the Tiger Milk out of her hand, he’s got it good.
I’m pretty sure I’m drunk but it has never felt as good as it does today. Sometimes alcohol is like medicine, especially when it tastes as good as Tiger Milk, so sweet and fruity, so healthy. I guess that’s why there’s alcohol in almost every medicine, it makes sense, so clear and invisible. You can wash everything away with it, grease, blood, and shit. You can wipe away the whole of god’s rotten earth with alcohol. And then all that would be left behind would be a clean, empty bottle.
I completely forgot that today is Sunday. There’s never anything happening on Kurfürsten on Sunday. The guys would rather drive around in the green countryside with their families or go to the movies or whatever it is they do, in any event they don’t come here. Not even the woman with the dog and the liquorice skirt is here. The sky is totally overcast. We pull the striped thigh-high stockings out of our backpacks, hop up on our usual electrical box, sit down, pull on the stockings and let our legs dangle.
Nobody’s going to come by anyway, I say, and if someone does it’ll be someone who’s desperate for it.
No, says Jameelah, if someone comes by it’ll be a nice guy who has just had a fight with his wife. It’ll be someone who drives once around the block and then goes home and makes up.
Or else an old lonely bastard, all the days are the same to them.
Or somebody we know, says Jameelah giggling, just imagine, Herr Wittner or whatever.
He would never do it, I say.
You’re so naïve.
I can picture Krap-Krüger, imagine if he turned up here all of a sudden, I say.
Jameelah laughs out loud, jumps down from the electrical box and starts talking in his voice.
Lovely sense of hospitality, the Iraqis, but, she says raising her pointer finger, they violate human rights.
I laugh so hard I nearly keel over.
Jameelah hops back up next to me on the electrical box and we let our legs dangle and look at the empty street.
What did he mean anyway, I ask.
Who, mean with what?
Krap-Krüger about human rights in Iraq.
Yeah, well, it’s still a war zone, says Jameelah, not officially. It’s not as bad as it was before but life is still grim there, it’s like a mini-war all the time. That’s what Krap-Krüger meant. And it’s true. But what’s it to him, he should take care of his own shit.
That’s why you came here.
Exactly, says Jameelah.
But your father and Youssef, I say cautiously, they died there.
Jameelah nods.
Did it have something to do with human rights?
They died because my father got involved. But also because of human rights, because a lot of people in Iraq still go by an eye for an eye, says Jameelah taking another swig. Everyone has to get involved, wherever you go. But it just makes things worse.
Is that why you cried like that, I ask softly.
Jameelah doesn’t say anything. She grabs her tobacco out of her rucksack along with the filters, the rolling papers, her zippo. I look at her hands and her black polished fingernails, her tongue as she licks the paper.
When something bad happens my mother always fears for us, says Jameelah, it’s from before. She flicks the zippo.
What did your father do that was so bad?
Listen do you not want to understand or are you really that stupid or both, she says looking at me angrily. If there’s no human rights then you don’t die because you did something bad but because nobody protects you, even Krap-Krüger understands that.
Sorry, I say.
Sorry my ass, says Jameelah.
For a while neither of us says anything.
Sorry, Jameelah says at some point, but you know I really don’t want to think about it or talk about it or anything else. Not now, understand, not when everything is so uncertain. I just don’t get it, I mean, they can’t just send us away.
Stop saying that, I say, they’re not going to send you away, you’re crazy.
Jameelah frowns.
My mother, she says, I think she must have done something wrong.
Done something wrong, how?
No, not done something wrong, just said something stupid at the immigration office, something they shouldn’t know or something they didn’t need to know.
Like what?
Nothing bad, says Jameelah, nothing illegal or whatever if that’s what you’re thinking.
I’m not thinking anything.
It’s nothing like that, it’s just that my mother always wants to be so correct about things you know, always wants to be totally honest.
I know, I would never think she’d done anything bad, it’s more that I think you’re getting worried over nothing, I say and take her hand. But she pulls her hand away and jumps down from the electrical box and walks over toward a car that’s cruising past very slowly. The window is rolled down. The guy at the wheel of the car is bald, he looks old, he has to be over forty, and he’s not the best looking guy either.
So, says the guy, got any plans for the day?
It’ll cost a hundred euros, says Jameelah leaning down to the open window all slick and cool.
The guy rummages around in his glove box and then hands her two fifty euro notes and she tucks the money into the top of one of her stockings. I have to smile because it always looks so real, as if we’re real hookers, only this time with the whole leaning-into-the-car-window thing it looks almost like Pretty Woman.
Just a second, says the guy as we are about to get into his car. He points at a baby seat secured to the backseat, I have to put that in the trunk, he says.
When he’s done with that he says step right up, like at the circus. I have to laugh. The interior of the car smells like the pine tree air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror and there are cookie crumbs all over the backseat. At my feet is a ten-pack of Capri Sun juice packs that must be for his kid.
I’m Stella Stardust by the way, says Jameelah, and this is my friend Sophia Saturna.
Can I have one, I ask holding up a Capri Sun.
Sure says the guy stepping on the accelerator.
We wouldn’t even have needed to go in the car since the guy drives only a couple of blocks and then stops in front of a Thai bar at Nollendorfplatz. Thai bars all look the same with pink neon out front and the windows full of little Buddhas and those golden cats with the left arms that wave nonstop. Those cats scare me. Inside everything is sparkling clean, the bar, the little tables with the plastic flowers and candles in the middle, the floor, the windowsills. Everything looks as if it’s constantly mopped and wiped down, even the fruit machine that’s sitting in the corner next to the little dance floor.