“There isn't such a thing.” I feel increasingly like a rat in a trap.
“Some are more rigid than others.” Jana stands and butts me with her hip to make me move over. She sits beside me with her back against the headboard. As if we were waiting at a bus stop. “Sometimes all we have are bad choices. But making a choice you can live with will give you greater happiness than indecision and worry.”
“I'm not worried.”
“Well, you should be.”
I cringe, remembering what went down only a few hours ago at the docks. Only sheer luck got us out alive.
Most women in the Resistance are married to converts, Muslim in name only. They make their own matches. Getting married to a true believer is an entirely different matter. I think of Pim or Janz or Garret. I could make my life with one of them, but Jana would never agree to such a marriage.
“I don’t understand why I have to get married at all. It's ridiculous.”
“It's the only way to keep you safe. Unless you have another bright idea.”
I am too exhausted to have any ideas, much less a bright one. There is a fourth option, one neither of us dare propose—renouncing the world, going underground, living as an onderduiker, an under diver, a dangerous, lonely life, hiding each night in a different safe house, completely isolated. I would never be able to contact my family or friends again. The thought makes me nauseated. The only thing keeping us going is those we love. “You didn’t marry until you were thirty. Not until you were pregnant.”
She laughs lightly, without embarrassment. “That was a very different time, liefje.”
“Do you miss Papa?”
“More than words can say.” She laces her fingers between mine, and rests her head on my shoulder. “I love them both, you know. But between Rafik and I, there is something deeper. It's hard to explain. Like the difference between buying a puppy, and rescuing a dog off the street. You love both, but the dog you rescue sleeps in your heart.”
“You're saying Rafik rescued you like a stray dog?”
Jana squeezes my hand. “We rescued each other. Some day I'll explain better. I converted and married a Muslim because of you, darling. I want you to marry Kazan Basturk for the same reason.”
“What's that?”
“Survival.”
An involuntary shiver shoots through my body. “But at least you chose Rafik! You knew him! You wanted to marry him! I don't want to marry!”
We sit in silence for awhile. Something slowly crumbles in me—my defiance, my independence, the sense that I can do it all on my own. I wrap my arms around my mother, clinging. I love her warmth by my side, her gravity. She has always made me feel safe. She smells of butter and zoute drop, the little liquorice candies she likes after dinner. “Was it hard for you to convert to Islam, Mom? You were raised Christian.”
She lifts my hand to her mouth and kisses it. “Are you worried I made a huge sacrifice for you? I didn't. My life is good. I did what I had to do, like any mother.”
“Ik hou van je,” is all I manage to get out.
“I love you, too.” Jana pats my thigh with reassuring vigor. “You'll see. Marrying the son of an Islamist is a good thing.”
I sit silently for a minute or two. My mind spins, looking for a way out. Maybe he already has a girlfriend. Maybe he'll feel forced into this marriage as much as me. Maybe he'll refuse to marry me. No, it is unlikely he'll defy his mother's wishes. He'll agree to the marriage, then do as he pleases. “You said he went to school in Switzerland?” I ask hopefully.
Jana smiles, confirming I eavesdropped earlier. “Kazan is twenty-eight. He's a good-looking boy. He has a good job. He has already said that he wants only one wife.”
Twenty-eight seems terribly old. “Can I at least meet him before we're married?” Most Muslim girls are now married without ever seeing their future husbands. Only after she says her vows and the veil comes off, does the bride see her husband clearly.
“I think Rafik will be able to manage that,” Jana says kindly.
And so it is decided. I am to be married.
How do I tell Pim?
Six, February 2013
The Mutability of Identity
“When your mother and I marry, you will need to change your name. To an Arabic name.” Rafik sits opposite Katrien's mother at the dining room table. Where Pieter used to sit.
Since the horrible weeks of the Great Purge, when Rafik saved Katrien on the steps of Centrale Bibliotheek, lifting her above a thousand stampeding feet, whisking her to safety, he has watched over them. The roads in and out of Amsterdam were shut down for weeks. Muslim mobs bombed coffee shops and bars, torched the red light district, and burned bookstores. Food was scarce. Rafik made sure Katrien and Jana had something to eat. On days when the rioting was close to their house, he spent the night on their couch, his pistol on the coffee table.
The Islamic Council decided to keep a civilian police force, the Amsterdam-Amstelland. At first they were ordered to surrender their weapons, but soon were instructed to take them back. All non-Muslim officers were fired. Rafik, with his calm and practical demeanor, rose quickly in the ranks, and is now Hoofdcommissaris, the Chief Commissioner. His office in the Hoofdbureau is in the Oud West on Elandsgracht. The officers love him because he does not let the Islamic Council push them around.
Rafik wears a beard now, worn short with attractive stripes of gray on his mustache and chin. It is hard for Katrien to see him as the same person.
Katrien knows Rafik and Jana have done nothing to cause their being thrown together. They did not cause the Great Eurabian War. They did not cause the Occupation. They did not cause her father's murder. Yet they clasp hands, looking guiltily at one another.
As if they had imagined something like this in the past. Being together. As a couple.
“Your mother likes the name Salima,” Rafik suggests. “Salima means peaceful, flawless, faultless, safe, and healthy.”
Katrien snorts through her nose. She doesn't feel any of those things. She feels the exact opposite. She feels violent and angry. She's so mad, she could spit. She counts her numerous flaws, and blames herself for her father's death. She hasn't felt safe since she was eleven.
“I suppose I am healthy.” She squints at her mother, who blanches, bracing for more sarcasm.
“I think Salima is a beautiful name,” adds Jana lamely.
“Why do I have to change my name?” Katrien challenges, firing on Rafik. “I never once saw you kneel on a prayer rug before the Occupation. You are no more Muslim than we are.”
“I go to the mosque every day,” Rafik says. “I pray five times a day.”
“Only so you don't lose your job.”
Rafik looks stung. He nods, then pats her hand, his face full of compassion. As angry as she is, Katrien does not pull away.
“How can we just become Muslim?” Her tone is plaintive. Resisting the inevitable.
“They have classes at the mosque,” says Jana. “Joury's mother has agreed to sponsor us. We'll both go, then say the Shahada in front of witnesses.”
“That's not what I mean. I mean, how can we just change gods?”
Jana exchanges looks with Rafik, rolling her lips as if to say, I knew this wouldn't be easy. “The important part of all religions is the same, liefje,” she says, gently. “The part that makes you stop and see how beautiful the world is, that makes you see God in all things. That makes you understand that you are a part of everything. God doesn't care if you worship him as a Hindu or a Muslim or a Jew or a Christian. People make up religions to try to understand God. To explain life, the universe. They invent rituals and prayers to try to get closer to Him. But God doesn't care what words you mouth. No one can see into your heart. Speak whatever words they tell you to speak, but love with your heart.”
Katrien glares at her mother. “Why didn't you ever take me to church? You didn't have time?” Her tone is acid, meant to hurt. “I loved church.”
She recalls slipping
into Westerkerk after school. How she loved the tall white nave with gray molding, the simple Romanesque arches, the ornate gold and silver organ, the dark wood pulpit, that hovered high above like a spaceship. She loved the quiet, the soft light slanting in from the windows, the sweet smell of sage. No one bothered her, and she could sit there for as long as she wanted. Thinking about anything she wanted. Sometimes talking to God, even though no one had ever taught her to pray. She had imagined the tourists who walked in stopping for a moment and noticing her. Who is that devout little girl? She looks so peaceful.
Westerkerk is now a mosque. Females are not allowed into the prayer hall.
She feels robbed, robbed of the God she never knew. Robbed of her father. Robbed of her childhood. Robbed of her dreams and aspirations.
“Nobody seems to care that all the churches are mosques now. They call themselves Muslim so they can get food coupons. Nobody cares!”
Rafik and Jana sit silently, taking it.
Katrien's neck goes weak, her chin falling to her chest. It finally sinks in. She has no choice. Choice is for a different time, a different place. She will become a Muslim. “What about your name?” she asks her mother softly. An understudy, meekly accepting a new role.
“I am lucky. Jana is also an Arabic name. It means fruits of paradise.”
Katrien's chin jolts up, eyes wide with astonishment. Rafik chuckles. Jana titters. Then all three start laughing—raucously—howling, until tears come to their eyes.
They haven't laughed like this in a long time.
Quran Tajweed
Salima and Jana eat dal with pita at a halal restaurant before heading to the mosque for class. A loudspeaker hanging in the corner softly plays Fairuz songs, lilting and plaintive.
“I thought music was banned in public places,” Salima says.
“Maybe they mean outside public places. Or Western music. Maybe the mutaween have other things to worry about.”
All restaurants must be halal, or else pay an extra tax. Salima doesn't know what food has to do with God, but it is cheaper and easier to change one's eating habits than pay the higher prices. Ironically, only rich Muslim men high in the bureaucracy can afford to eat at European restaurants.
Fairuz's continuous wail puts a knot in Salima's stomach, and the dal sticks in her throat, not going down. “She sounds like she has a splinter in her foot.”
Two Moroccan men at the next table overhear her and laugh. Jana freezes and lowers her head, but the men smile at them, not unkindly.
“We'd better go,” says Jana, quickly paying the bill.
They walk down the block in the drizzle and enter the mosque. They take off their shoes, put them on the shoe shelf, then head to the restroom. They perform wudu, washing their faces and hands, then enter the women's prayer hall.
The room is empty of furniture, except for a few benches against the wall for the elderly and disabled. The red carpet is new. Round circles of light from a cupola dot the walls. A shelf with Qurans on one wall, with a stack of kneeling pillows below.
It smells pleasantly of incense, new carpet, and moist abayas. But under those smells, the faint odor of the old beer factory, which the building once was.
Women are arriving for a Quran Tajweed class. Women in all shapes and colors. Turkish, Somali, Malaysian, Sudanese, Indian, Dutch. Each woman whips off her burka like a magician's cape.
Joury waves to Salima, who joins her in a large circle of girls, sitting on the floor. Jana sits with the older women.
The teacher walks in. Her name is Um Aboulela. She is a friendly, overweight woman, originally from Sudan, who wears wire-frame spectacles and a black hijab. She smiles a lot and looks as if she is thrilled to have so many students.
Um Aboulela sits on her knees, which makes her higher than the others. Her voice is deep and clear, the Quran open on her lap. She adjusts her scarf, tucking in strands of hair that have escaped.
At first Salima was hostile to learning the Quran, but, over the last few weeks, has come to think of it as an exotic language class. She enjoys learning how to pronounce the letters correctly, when to blur two letters together, pronouncing the n in a nasal way.
Here the Quran seems to have nothing to do with the collapse of her city and the murder of her father. Yet she knows it has everything to do with it.
After reading a passage from the Quran, Um Aboulela usually starts a discussion on Islamic customs and their theological basis. Today she discusses the hijab.
“Muslim women wear the hijab because Allah has instructed us to wear it. 'Women should lower their gaze and guard their modesty. They should draw their veils over their breasts and not display their beauty.' In the Hadith it is reported that Asma, the daughter of Abu Bakr, came to Muhammad while wearing thin clothing. He approached her and said: 'O Asma! When a girl reaches the menstrual age, it is not proper that anything should remain exposed except this and this.' He pointed to the face and hands."
“My mom says a girl is like a jewel," one girl interrupts. “When you have something precious, you want to hide it and keep it safe until that treasure is ready to be found.”
Um Aboulela purrs her approval. “That is correct. The hijab is not merely covering up, but, more importantly, is your behavior, manners, speech, and appearance in public. Wearing the hijab is intended to reflect one’s personal devotion to God.”
Um Abolela's fingers nervously tug at her scarf by the hair line. “Westerners see the hijab and think it is a sign of women's oppression. But if a woman wants to be evaluated for her intelligence instead of her looks, if she wants to stop men from treating her like a sex object, then she must veil. We want men to be attentive to our minds, to take us seriously and treat us as equals, and not just chase us around for our physical looks.”
Salima lowers her eyes, confused—women can't work, can't walk freely in the streets. Their testimony in court is worth half a man's. Her inheritance rights are half a man's. How is that equal? She is about to ask and satisfy her impertinent curiosity, when two mutaween swoop into the room like great hawks. They yank a young woman up from the floor and drag her out.
The women scramble for their face veils and burkas. By the time they turn around, the mutaween are gone, the woman's screams echoing in the marble hallway.
“What did she do?” asks one girl.
Um Aboulela shakes her head sadly. “Her husband found contraceptives in her drawer. Anything that interferes with a man's right to father children is haram.”
“What will happen to her?”
Knowing the grim options, they sit silently, until Joury pipes up, “I guess she doesn't have to worry about getting pregnant anymore.”
Madrassah
The muezzin wakes Salima at 6 AM, blaring from loudspeakers mounted on top of Westerkerk, four blocks away. At least she's never late for school. She sits up in bed and whips off the covers. Laura Dekker sneers at her conformity. “Easy for you,” Salima retorts. “You can just sail away.”
She washes, rolls out her prayer rug facing Mecca, performs the salat, then goes down to breakfast.
Jana never does her prayers, except when she is at the mosque. Salima fears she will forget the words and be found out, and asks her to practice with her. Jana shrugs. “I don't understand Arabic. If praying is talking to God, I prefer to do it in a language I know. I assume an omniscient God understands Dutch.” When Salima mentions it again, Jana pretends she doesn't hear, and sets a plate of syrup-smothered poffertjes on the place mat in front of her.
“Bismillah,” mumbles Salima before she stuffs a forkful of dripping pancake into her mouth.
“Eat with your right hand,” Jana reminds her. When Salima gives her an evil look, Jana says, “Well, at least one of us should know how to do it correctly.”
Salima switches her fork to her other hand. It's hard to get used to, but her mother is right. It is the little things that will give you away. In WWII, English spies had to learn to hold their cigarettes like the French. Slip u
p at the wrong time and . . . .
The rules don't bother her that much. Grownups always have rules. These are just different rules.
She puts on her headscarf and heads out the door.
It used to take her longer to walk down Prinsengracht, all the tourists lined up an hour before the Anne Frank House opened, clogging up the sidewalks, causing bicyclists and pedestrians to veer around. The bustle of the city is gone. Amsterdam is a strange place without its restaurants, cafés, and bars. Without its tourists. The gloomy weather becomes oppressive. Like a widow, whom nobody bothers to visit, sitting in a dark corner in a heavily curtained room.
It does, however, make it easier to get places.
Salima enters her madrassah, and takes her seat in the very same classroom she left on the day of the Jenever Theater massacre. The model of Petra still sits on a table, pushed in the corner.
Salima wears a dark green head scarf with sixteen other girls. Her classes are limited to studying and reciting long passages of the Quran, Dutch language study, Arabic, Islamic studies, and home economics. Although it is illegal, her mother and Rafik homeschool her in a more liberal curriculum—English, math, science, history. They hide her text books behind the wardrobe.
She and the other children hand in a weekly checklist their parents have signed confirming their daughter does her daily ablutions and prayers.
Her teacher's name is Leila, a reserved middle-aged Egyptian, who once taught mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. When women teachers were no longer allowed to teach at the university level, she took a job at a madrassah. She is kind, but often loses patience with the young girls, who have considerable difficulty learning Arabic. Her own enthusiasm for rote teaching is limited, and every once in a while, she will stray from the set curriculum.
“You want these girls to be good wives. How can they be good wives if they can't balance a checkbook or look after the family's finances?” The principal agrees with her, but will not let her use any math textbooks. She sneaks in mathematics during cooking classes—measurements, ratios, algebra, even geometry—her eyes twinkling with enthusiasm. She finds math beautiful. The girls know what she is doing, and keep it secret. For her birthday, they made her a pie, decorated with cranberries with 3.141592 written across the crust.
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