The Believer

by Joakim Zander

  She tiptoes carefully down the stairs to the platform. But she doesn’t even get halfway before an incredible squeaking noise, steel screeching on steel, reaches her from below. It sounds like an incoming train is about to derail, like a disaster is under way.

  Instinctively she straightens, feels her head spinning even faster, the world turning around her. What’s going on? She can’t stay here, she has to know, so she speeds up, taking two steps at a time until she’s finally down on the platform.

  The smell of moisture and metal hits her. The noise from the train subsides and is replaced by hysterical, screaming voices. She registers as if in a dream that the train has stopped now, halfway into the station, like a weary manga dragon, smooth and white and exhausted.

  There are maybe thirty people in the station, some standing still, hands to their mouths or still on their ears, even though the station is oddly silent now.

  Suddenly someone screams. A man and a woman run toward the front of the train. The whole scene is surreal, as if a window has opened between the normal world, where you wait calmly for the Tube, to a world of chaos, where people scream at the top of their lungs and trains look like dragons and stop halfway into the station.

  She looks around but can see neither Patrick nor the leather jackets. She makes her way to the nearest person, a black guy in a suit around her own age. He looks calm, doesn’t scream, stands silently just staring at the stationary train, as if it were an installation, a huge still life of isolated chaos.

  “What happened?” she says.

  The man is still in some kind of shock, she realizes, his mouth is half open, and he can’t stop staring at the front of the train. Slowly he turns to Klara, his eyes not quite complying, as if they look past her, or through her. He points toward the train in a hesitant gesture of surprise and confusion.

  “Somebody fell on the tracks,” he says. “A guy. Just now.”

  32. BERGORT—THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2015

  IF NOT IGNACIO, then there’s only one other possibility, a betrayal that’s even bigger, and even more surprising.

  Parisa, Yasmine thinks as she winds her way through the commuters at the Slussen subway station. But why her?

  Why would Parisa betray her? Bergort’s loyalties are hard to grasp, even when you’re part of Bergort. But now after being gone so long, she knows nothing. Still she’d believed their friendship was stronger than this.

  But who knows? Maybe Parisa simply mentioned to Mehdi that she met Yasmine. Perhaps he’d drawn his own conclusions? The question remains why would Mehdi threaten her? All she wants to do is find Fadi. Find out if he’s alive. If he’s back.

  She can’t think straight in the subway among the dirt and tiles, and she pushes her way through the turnstile and out into the drizzle on Södermalmstorg. Gamla Stan is laid out like a pastel cake in front of her. When you say you’re from Stockholm, is this what people think of? A Stockholm of water and yellow plaster. A Stockholm of green islands and outdoor cafés. She’s never even thought of this as Stockholm. Her Stockholm is Bergort.

  She crosses the street and leans against the fence, looks down toward the water and the city. What’s going on exactly? Fadi is alive. It fills her with a strange tenderness. Happiness almost, or a hope for happiness. But also emptiness. And the guns under the bed? What is he mixed up in?

  Suddenly she misses David. Not the David she left a week ago in New York, not the David whose fist is still pounding in her temple. She misses the David she moved to New York with. The David who helped her understand she couldn’t stay in the concrete anymore, or not in that concrete, not Bergort. The David who made her realize that Bergort pulled her down and held her captive in its patterns and unequal, dysfunctional loyalties. She misses the David who worked all day and painted at night so they could escape together. That David had so much energy and love that if you squinted you couldn’t see the hole and the emptiness inside him. That David allowed her to ignore the consequences and warnings, and he gave her the courage to let go. And how has she repaid the debt? How did she reciprocate what he did for her when she needed it most? By leaving him when he needed her most.

  She sinks down next to the fence and exhales slowly. For almost a week, she’s been able to avoid these thoughts. But she knew she’d end up here eventually. That what she provoked in Brooklyn was only a transient spell and couldn’t protect her forever. But she couldn’t afford to give in to these thoughts now.

  She has to steel herself.

  Slowly she stands up. David and Fadi. Her own mother. Everything she’s run from. Everything she needs to keep running from. How can you live when you’re constantly pulled in opposite directions?

  But she’s made her choice. She’s known since Fadi disappeared, since the news of his death. Since the news of his return to Bergort.

  She’s been given just one more chance to never betray him again. Slowly she turns around and goes back to the subway.

  There’s something in the air in Bergort. She senses it as soon as she steps off the train. Something prickling and crackling just outside what the senses can catch. A lingering air of tear gas and acetone, batons and burning rubber. She sees broken glass on the platform, sees stencils sprayed onto every column, sees it in the eyes of the commuters. Bergort is filling up. Someone has left the gas on, and all it takes is one little match.

  Yasmine recognizes it from other summers, other idle, unemployed summers. When frustration grew out of sandpits and empty refrigerators, closed recreation centers and lost football games. From the anxiety of the summer being all too short, from boredom because summer had been too long, the repetition and the lack of money, lack of will, lack of power. Summers when riots were sparked by almost nothing at all.

  She sees that now as she walks down the ramp toward the shopping center. Sees a pair of burned-out cars in the parking lot. Sees the eyes of the kids outside the Syrian’s shop, sees it in how they hold their cigarettes in the afternoon light, spitting and blowing smoke up toward the elusive clouds. Sees it in their eyes and their hyperactive focus. Hears it in their brief chuckles. It has begun now. The fuse is lit.

  Parisa isn’t at the salon, and Yasmine doesn’t want Parisa’s mother to see her, so she speeds up as she passes by on her way to Pirate Square. She sees the symbol sprayed everywhere. There’s something unpleasant about it, something that reminds her of totalitarian propaganda.

  The square is empty, and the checkerboard tiles remain smooth and slippery from morning rain. She walks past a stupid frozen chicken sign, and its complete lack of imagination suddenly enrages her, and she slams it as hard as she can. But it barely moves, just squeaks and wobbles in its rusty frame. She raises her eyes to the concrete and the satellite dishes.

  “Fadi,” she whispers. “Where are you, little brother?”

  Parisa’s building looks just like it always has, like all the other buildings always have. Ten floors of cracked plaster, balconies in peeling pastel, the lame attempt to lighten up the gray is irritating. The door is unlocked, just open it and trudge the seven floors up, because as usual the elevator is out of order.

  Climbing up the stairs is like traveling back in time: the echo of her feet on the steps, the cool air, the smell of garlic and hamburger frying somewhere, the muffled sound of a baby screaming. She thinks of winter nights when they had nowhere to go, when the bus shelters got too cold and the recreation center had long since closed. How they pushed open the door to a building where none of them lived and drank low-alcohol beer they bought from the Syrian and the smoke from their cigarettes was blue and stiff as it poured out into the cold through the half-open door, out into the glare of the streetlights. She can’t decide if that feels like a long time ago or yesterday.

  She’s out of breath by the time she reaches the seventh floor, behind her the echo of her own footsteps linger. The big gun chafes inside the waistband of her jeans. She approaches Parisa’s door and rings the bell while placing her finger over the small peephole.
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br />   Someone’s moving around inside, feet shuffling across the floor, a voice speaks soothingly, as if to a small child. The feet stop on the other side of the door, a moment while the person probably tries to look through the peephole, then the sound of the lock turning. The door opens a small gap, the door chain is still on. Yasmine can see a small child in Parisa’s arms.

  “Sho, Parisa,” she says.

  She turns her head, looks through the gap, smiles with her mouth, but not her eyes.

  “Yasmine?” Parisa says and even in the dim light Yasmine can see her stress level rise.

  “We need to talk, sister,” she says.

  Her voice is cold, obviously ironic. Parisa strokes the baby nervously across the cheek and shifts her eyes. She throws a glance over her shoulder, then leans closer to the gap and lowers her voice.

  “Not here,” she says. “Not now.”

  Yasmine feels anxious and frustrated, anger building inside her. She just wants to grab Parisa and pull her out onto the landing, throw her down onto the stone floor, and scream at her: Who the fuck are you, bitch? What are you doing to me?

  But the baby on her arm makes all that impossible, and Yasmine allows her fury to slide away.

  “So when?” she hisses.

  “Tomorrow,” Parisa says and lowers her voice even further.

  Something gleams in her eyes, and she nods her head almost imperceptibly backward toward the apartment.

  “I know something about Fadi,” she whispers. “Just wait until tomorrow.”

  Again, a glance over her shoulder.

  “The playground. At three o’clock.”

  33. SYRIA—JUNE 2015

  I HEAR THE ENGINES in the distance, cutting through the silence where I sit in the open window facing the street. The moon is almost full, the village silver under the dim light, and the shadows are long and black. The brothers are down at the guesthouse, and I can smell grilled lamb from up here in the apartment where Tariq and I often sleep.

  I should be down at the guesthouse too, but during my feverish call to brother al-Amin earlier today, he asked me to wait here and take pictures of the cars and let him know as soon as they’re on their way.

  It takes a minute before I see the bright headlights of the first car appear at the end of the street. They’re approaching fast, and I soon count four vehicles, not like the dusty, shitty cars we drive, but two black SUVs with tinted windows and two pickups with large machine guns mounted to their beds. I pick up the phone and take a few pictures and text them directly to brother al-Amin before going down to the guesthouse.

  I’m halfway there when I feel the phone vibrating in my pocket, and I pick it up. There’s a photo of an Arab man with heavy, tired eyes and a huge grizzled beard, maybe he’s in his fifties, maybe younger. It’s hard to know with brothers who’ve been here a long time, battle ages you, as if one year equals five.

  “If that’s the leader of your guests, then we’ll put the plan into action,” al-Amin writes. “He’s wise and strong. Confirm when you’ve seen him. Inshallah, soon we’ll have the traitor, brother!”

  I can feel the blood pumping through me, and I hold my Kalashnikov closer, and study the picture carefully. I don’t understand exactly how brother al-Amin is going to solve this, but I’m sure the dog will soon be punished, and it fills me with joy as I speed up my steps.

  The guests have stepped out of their cars and are standing with the brothers around the grill I built earlier. Just a couple of blocks of cement with an iron grate over them, but the smell of the lamb Mona marinated for hours is spicy and garlicky. We don’t usually eat badly, just modestly and purely so as not to detract from our prayers and Allah. I haven’t eaten large chunks of tender, grilled lamb since I got here, and I notice how hungry I am.

  The guests are dressed like us, the same worn camouflage and scarves, the Kalashnikovs thrown over their shoulders. But there’s something about them, something in their attitude, the way they stand, which makes it obvious they belong to another division. I think of Red and Blackeye and you. I think how we all looked the same, even if you were older. But we weren’t the same. It was clear from the beginning who would die on the frontlines and who would leave in their SUVs with tinted windows.

  Brother Shahid sees me and waves me closer.

  “This is brother Fadi Ajam,” he says in Arabic to the group. “Our newest member. Like me he’s from Sweden, and he’s repatriated, Allah be praised, to help us free our Arab brothers and sisters. ”

  “As-salamu alaykum,” the guests say.

  “Wa alykum salam,” I reply.

  That’s when I see him. The man from brother al-Amin’s picture. I see his grizzled beard in the glow of the fire, I see his tired eyes. He looks like he’s at least fifty, maybe older. Suddenly brother Umar is standing next to me.

  “You know who he is?” he whispers in Swedish.

  I shake my head.

  “He’s from Yemen. Responsible for training camps and foreign soldiers.”

  He lowers his voice even further.

  “Rumor has it he’s totally ruthless.”

  I turn to look at brother Umar, but he looks away. We never criticize anything when we sit drinking tea and talking in the evenings. But you can read between the lines that many of the brothers have a difficult time living with some decisions. The attacks in Europe. Mass executions. I know that Umar and Shahid think as I do, that it’s the wrong approach, barbaric, and pointless. The battle is here. Liberation is here. We can live as Muslims here. The rest can wait. But we say nothing. We leave it to Allah, may he be glorified and exalted.

  Now I turn my gaze back to the man with the gray beard again. Brother al-Amin wrote that he was wise, he’ll help us uncover the traitor. That’s the most important thing now. I’m so hungry, but this is important, and when brother Umar moves on, I slowly make my way away from the fire until I’m sure no one is looking at me. Why should they care? I’m basically a servant, a gofer.

  I sneak around the corner and out the back of one of the buildings. From the front you hear the occasional shot. Evenings are quiet, the brothers who are there now only hold our position. Cautiously, I take the phone out of my pocket and dial brother al-Amin. He answers on the first ring.

  “Brother Fadi,” he says. “Is that our man?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It’s the man in the picture. The leader. What do I do?”

  “Go back to the fire,” brother al-Amin says. “Eat and behave like usual. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  And with that he’s gone. No as-salamu alaykum. No Allah, may he be exalted. I stand there, quietly, with the phone in my hand.

  How did he know we have a fire?

  But I don’t have time to think further before I hear steps behind me on the gravel. And before turning around, I hear the metallic sound of a rifle’s safety being disengaged.

  34. LONDON—THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2015

  KLARA TURNS TOWARD the rails again. It’s as though the platform and the big white dragon are trembling under the yellow overhead lights, as if the people around her are moving jerkily, clumsily, and she struggles to get her bearings. She sees several people, two or three—she can’t seem to count anymore—move to the front of the train, the driver opens the door, he’s on his way out of the train. But it seems like he’s moving in slow motion, eyes scrunched up, his fists knotted.

  She hesitates, but her feet move as if by themselves toward the small group of people gathered at the edge. A woman has jumped down on the track, another leans over the edge of the platform. They talk loudly, yelling at each other, but their voices are strangely subdued, Klara can barely hear them. The driver is in front of the group now. He’s angry.

  “What a fucking idiot!” he roars. “In front of my train!”

  His voice isn’t muted, it’s shrill and horrible, and he beats his fists on the train so hard that the plastic or metal, or whatever it’s made of, thunders. Then he turns and collapses, empty and wrinkled like an empty ball
oon, with his back to the train. It seems like he’s crying, like he’s shaking with sobs, and someone squats down next to him and gets him to sit down on the platform with his legs straight out like a child.

  And her legs move her closer and closer to the edge of the platform, apparently unaware that she wants to stay where she is, that she wants to turn around and disappear. But suddenly she’s right in front of the track, and even though she wants to close her eyes and turn away, neither her eyes nor neck seem to obey her, and she bends over the tracks.

  And then she sees him. And doesn’t even notice that she’s screaming until someone puts an arm around her and leads her away from the edge, toward the middle of the platform and sits her down on a green, scratched wooden bench.

  When the shaky film ends and her vision goes back to normal, the platform is full of firefighters and paramedics, stretchers, bags that look like they contain important lifesaving instruments. But it’s far too late to save any lives.

  Next to her someone is talking to a police officer, not a bobby in one of those helmets, but a regular police officer in a hat and a belt full of pockets, but no gun.

  “Then he just stepped right out in front of the train,” the voice says. “It was as if he stumbled, as if he lost his balance and kind of jumped by mistake.”

  “You saw the whole thing?” the officer asks.

  “I think so,” the voice continues. “From the corner of my eye.”

  The voice is so pleased with itself, so pleased to be such a splendid fucking witness. Klara turns toward it and sees that it belongs to a man in his fifties, wearing a suit, short sideburns. Affluent, accustomed to being listened to. But he didn’t see this. What he’s saying isn’t true.