Fine, says Jameelah.
We have to stay for detention again. During ethics class, Jameelah kept making comments the whole time. It was about Christmas, and whether Jesus was really born on 24 December. Jameelah said that there was no way sheep would be standing around outside a manger in the middle of winter like it says in the Bible.
In Bethlehem everyone goes skiing, Jameelah said, and to be honest if I were God or the Messiah I would be totally insulted if my birthday was celebrated on a completely different day than the actual date of my birth.
Frau Struck had replied that Jameelah shouldn’t speak to her in that tone and that she shouldn’t carry on about such things.
I disagree, Jameelah said, it’s not verboten, but that’s when Struck went off.
Why are we talking about Christmas right before summer break anyway, I asked at some point, but that was a mistake because Struck said we should both be quiet or else we’d be kicked out of class and she had no desire to discuss the matter further. Struck hates it when anyone tries to discuss anything with her.
We were quiet for the rest of the class, we thought up good O-words, poke instead of puke, shot instead of shit, coke instead of cake, and we also played city-country-AIDS. Frau Struck realized what we’d been up to when she collected all of our notebooks.
Detention, she said then, detention for both of you.
Detention meant going to Tiergarten and gathering leaves with leaf-miner moth cocoons on them. We have to gather chestnut leaves because those are the ones the moths use. The pupae bite into the leaves like little pit bulls and then spawn like crazy when they come out. This year they’ve arrived early, so to keep the plague from getting any worse we have to gather leaves. Nobody seems to care that there’s no point, that the whole city is full of the moths, and that it just gets worse every year, with more moths and more damaged trees.
It’s just an arbitrary task, Rainer always says, they have to make you do something.
They’re a bit like us foreigners, says Jameelah, you just can’t get rid of them.
What Frau Struck doesn’t get is that we actually like to go to Tiergarten. There’s a boy there I like. He’s a gardener and he sits in front of the shed where we have to go to get the bin bags and rakes we use to gather leaves. He always smiles so sweetly at us when we show up, once again, and sometimes he smells of Weleda lotion, which I like.
So what did you guys do today, he asks.
Nothing, says Jameelah, we were just playing city-country-AIDS.
City-country-AIDS? What’s that?
It’s the same as city-country-river, only we use diseases instead of rivers. We don’t know the names of too many rivers, you know.
It’s nice and cool in the park. We walk around the lawn barefoot and collect leaves while trying to come up with more normal words that you’re not allowed to say.
UFO, says Jameelah.
UFO doesn’t count, I say.
Why not, says Jameelah, UFO is a normal word but you can’t say it too loud or believe in it or else everyone thinks you’re crazy.
Yeah but saying something and believing in it are two different things, I say.
Not at all, says Jameelah, words only exist because people believe in them, otherwise the word wouldn’t have been thought up, UFO is like the word God, the only reason we have the word God is because people believe in it.
Bullshit, I say.
Really, says Jameelah, do you think you would know the word leaf-miner moth if there was no such thing? Admit it, it’s just too deep a concept for you.
No it isn’t, I say.
They come from the Balkans by the way, says Jameelah, just like Amir.
Who does?
The leaf-miner moths, Jameelah says holding up the bag full of leaves, they emigrated just like Amir.
No way.
It’s true, I read it the other day in the free paper on the U-bahn.
All the things Jameelah knows. Sometimes it can be really annoying because it makes it difficult to say it’s bullshit when she says, for instance, all that stuff about belief and the existence of words. You can never tell someone they’re wrong when they think they know everything, especially when they actually do know everything.
We head to the outdoor pool. I love it there. I love everything about it, the smell of the chlorine you get as soon as you walk in the gate, the suntanned boys, the noise of the splashing water, the way the girls shriek when the boys do cannonballs, I even like the mouldy showers and the way little twigs and pebbles press into my back through the towel. But the thing I like the most is the food. Sometimes I think I would go to the pool for the food alone.
As we’re walking across the lawn, Jameelah suddenly stops.
Back there, she whispers digging her fingernails into my shoulder, Lukas is lying there all by himself.
I smile.
Come on, I say taking her by the hand. As slick and cool as possible we stroll on across the lawn.
Hi, says Jameelah when we stop next to Lukas, and her shadow falls across his face.
As if he’s just woken from a deep sleep Lukas suddenly sits up and yanks the white earbuds out of his ears. Strange that he even has an iPod, I think, considering that he learned how to count using dried peach pits at that crazy school of his. Laura told me that, and also that they hang tapestries in the corners so the kids don’t see right-angles and that instead of learning vocabulary words they build pizza ovens.
Hi, says Lukas and when he sees Jameelah smiling at him he smiles back.
I look at his earbuds again, which have dropped into his lap. They’re almost as white as his skin. Hopefully he’s put on a lot of sunscreen, I think, but then again people like Lukas are always conscientious about putting on sunscreen because they know when things are dangerous, whether it’s to do with the sun or just life in general. So people like Lukas rarely get burned by the sun or anything else in life.
I see Amir farther back on the lawn, he’s walking toward us and waving. Jameelah lays her towel down next to Lukas.
I have an Aladdin towel, Jameelah has a Coca-Cola towel, and Amir has no towel. It doesn’t matter, though, because I almost never go in the water and Amir just uses mine. I’m afraid of the water. Laura, Kathi, and the others from the planet sometimes laugh at me for it, but Jameelah and Amir understand even though they aren’t afraid of the water. Jameelah and Amir are afraid of firecrackers, but I never laugh at them for it. That’s how it is with friends. Which is also why I always get something for them at the snack kiosk with the money Mama gives me, she gives me money whenever I say I’m going to the pool. I walk over to the kiosk and buy a bulette for myself, a pair of chicken sausages for Jameelah, and french fries and Kinder chocolates for all of us to share.
Last year there was a stabbing at the pool, so this summer it’s crawling with security. I think it’s good because now people are afraid to steal things. But it’s not really as dangerous a place as it sounds.
What are you doing, I say watching Amir take alternating bites of fries and chocolate.
It tastes good, he says, try it.
No way.
Seriously, Amir says, it tastes kind of like meat, but sweet.
Steak and Kinder pie, says Jameelah.
I laugh.
If you barbecue beefy sweets for too long, says Jameelah, you get cinder chocolates.
Jameelah jumps up.
And if something goes wrong and your garden goes up in flames you’ll be left with a cindergarten.
Lukas laughs out loud. We lay around on our towels and continue to crunch words and then Laura, Kathi, and Anna-Lena show up. Once again Anna-Lena looks like she’s been freshly laundered on the gentle cycle.
Hey, she says to me, your sister is getting off with some guy back by the changing rooms, the brother of that girl Mareike Mauel.