When I arrived at the hospital I was even angrier. Rainer said that Elias was in the middle of an examination. Heinz added, winking: “It might take a while. But don’t worry, stay with us. We’ll take care of you.” Both laughed.
I slammed my books on the table and went straight back out. There was a little park between the different wards, but it wasn’t quiet there either. The benches were constantly occupied by old people, the narrow paths congested with wheelchairs. I sat down on the only free bench and lit a cigarette. Not five minutes later a delicate old lady with a colorful hijab and golden front teeth sat down next to me. From her hospital pajamas she produced a bag of sunflower seeds, cracked them in her mouth, and spit the empty shells onto the ground directly in front of my feet.
“It’s not allowed inside anymore. The neighbors complain to the doctor.”
I replied in Russian, and her face lit up. She waved the bag of sunflower seeds in my face.
“Do you have a fiancé?”
“No.”
“A boyfriend?”
I nodded. She spit out a bunch of empty shells, satisfied.
“When I was your age I was already married.”
I shrugged.
“How often?”
“Excuse me?”
“How often?” She repeated. “How often does he hit you? Does he hit hard, with full force?”
“He doesn’t.”
“Everybody hits. My husband hit me. My mother-in-law. She, she hit the hardest. She was quite a hitter, that one. But my daughter-in-law was bad, too. I was in a hospital for two years.”
“Two years?”
“Yes. Two years.”
“Was it a locked ward?”
“Of course not, I’m perfectly clear in the head. What are you talking about? I was pregnant. With my seventh.”
I said nothing.
“As if six weren’t enough. I told him not to touch me anymore, but he kept on doing it anyway.”
I nodded.
“I didn’t want anymore. I went up on top of the closet and jumped. The abdominal organs fell out and here I was. And now I’m here again.”
4
I knew the man who knelt by the cash register to pick up his change. Black coat, silver hair arranged neatly around his square head. I didn’t notice him right away. Only later did I recognize his teetering gait and the pointy tips of his crocodile leather shoes. At school he passed us smilingly, the way you might pass a group of people whose faces you don’t need to discern. Windmill gave consultations and embodied the arrogance of a successful interpreter who wore the starched collar of his shirts turned up, spoke multiple languages to perfection, and got assignments from all the big institutions. Rumor had it that his voice was so agreeable over headphones that at one point he’d received a suggestive offer from a delegate of Liechtenstein. In most of his lectures he reached a state of ultimate self-reference.
Windmill stood at the register and paid for a sandwich. There was nothing but a cemetery, a funeral home, and a drugstore near the Northwest Hospital. I sat in the hospital cafeteria facing a watery soup that I couldn’t bring myself to eat. I kept imagining which bacteria were swimming among the overcooked potatoes and canned carrots. Elias had been in the orthopedic ward for two weeks and still had at least that long to go. We counted the days. The number seemed large or small depending on the mood.
Windmill gave me a smile. I cautiously smiled back. He came over and asked whether he could sit with me. All the other tables in the cafeteria were unoccupied. I nodded.
“You know what? I think we’ve met before.”
Again, I nodded.
“You were one of my students, weren’t you?” He smiled encouragingly. “Why did you drop out of my seminar?” He took a bite of his sandwich.
I remained silent.
“Russian?”
“A bit.”
I was about to elaborate, but Windmill waved dismissively and said, “I’d rather hear about your B-languages.”
“Russian, French, and English.”
“Any others?”
“Not as working languages.”
“But I’m sure you have C-options.”
I nodded and didn’t know what to say. Windmill peered at me. I nodded again and stared into my cup.
On my third day in Germany I went to school and was promptly demoted by two grades. Instead of practicing algebra I was supposed to color mandalas with crayons.
I accompanied my parents to the immigration office and there learned that language meant power. If you didn’t speak any German you had no voice. And if you only spoke a little you went unheard. Applications were accepted and dismissed according to accent. We waited until my parents’ number came up on the monitor above the heavy iron door. The wait was usually very long. The immigration office rarely managed to process more than five migrants a day, and we had to stand in line hours before opening to have a chance at getting our turn before closing time. I also accompanied my mother to parent-teacher meetings—a thoroughly tormenting affair. I sat next to her in the hallway, sporting a bowl cut, substantial eyeglasses, and braces. I stared at my feet and took turns being embarrassed about my mother and myself. The German, math, and geography teachers announced unanimously that my language skills were subpar and that I was out of place at this high school. Impatiently I translated this for my mother. The high school that I attended knew immigrants solely from tabloid papers and afternoon TV shows. In my class there was a girl whose mother was from Finland and in my year a boy whose mother was Dutch, but neither of them wore clothes purchased at the discount store, and both were Mormons anyway. There were no Arabs, blacks, or Turks. I trudged behind my classmates, tried to acquire the same clothing style and hobbies, neither of which we could afford. When the class was too loud I was blamed, despite the fact that I was too ashamed to open my mouth. For three years I hardly spoke a word and instead focused on a vague idea of “later.” I wove dreams: studied maps, read travel guides, and made lists of things I would need on my travels. I was sure that everything would be better once I left and started living, as a photographer, journalist, or stewardess. Our small town had an American military base and sometimes I thought about marrying a soldier. But I didn’t find myself pretty enough and later I learned that the soldiers’ wives stayed in Germany. But I wanted to leave.
In the eleventh grade I had a German teacher who suffered from hair loss. Neither her colleagues nor her students forgave her for that. When she couldn’t take the humiliation any longer, she passed it on. It was a quiet, wan winter afternoon in the airless classroom. The German teacher also taught social studies and we were on the topic of immigrant delinquency. Everybody was in favor of immediate deportation of criminal aliens. Specifically, we were talking about the Mehmet case. Although I wouldn’t want to run into this Mehmet guy in a dark alley, I failed to grasp what set him apart from German criminals. He’d been born in Germany, raised in Munich, and attended only German public schools. The only difference was he didn’t have German citizenship. My teacher made sure to tell us exactly what was wrong with him.
When I couldn’t take the discussion any longer, I took my craft scissors out of my pencil case and approached the teacher. I stood facing her, scissors in my right hand. At that moment, I knew I could do anything I wanted. I tore the wig from her head. Somebody gave a loud laugh as her scalp was revealed, almost bald with only a few streaks of limp hair. She didn’t resist. Just looked at me, shocked. I pitied her, because—like me—she was a victim. But unlike her I’d decided to defend myself.
I was expelled. My mother was horrified, my father amused and a little bit proud. I knew that now everything would get better. At first I wanted to give up school altogether and instead go on a trip around the world, but I had neither the money nor a German passport. Therefore, I switched over to the Max Beckmann School in Frankfurt and moved in with Sibel. I was seventeen.
Now I spoke five languages fluently and a few others like white trash Germa
ns speak German. But I didn’t have anything that resembled free time.
“What are you doing here?” Windmill asked.
“I’m visiting my boyfriend.”
He nodded and didn’t ask about Elias, which was all right by me.
“And you?” I asked.
“I’m going to give you my card. Let me know if I can help with anything.”
Even after Windmill had long finished his meal and left I still held his card in my hand.
5
The room was overheated and stuffy. Elias didn’t say a word and neither did I. Heinz had been released a couple of days ago and Rainer was being examined.
“I would cover it with a blanket if I could,” said Elias.
I pulled my knees to my chest and rested my head on them, a position in which I saw neither Elias nor his wound.
“Are you not going to look at me until I’m completely healed?”
“I just can’t look at your leg.”
“Why not?”
I paced the room. Elias followed me with his desperate, tired eyes. Still, at his core he was healthy, and I envied him this. He lowered his gaze.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be able to bear this,” he said.
“Are you breaking up with me?”
“I can’t help you.”
“Did I ask for your help?”
“Why don’t you finally tell me what happened to you? You didn’t emigrate until 1996. And by then, you didn’t really have to anymore.”
“Didn’t really have to anymore? What do you know?”
“Exactly. What do I know?” Elias repeated bitterly.
“You sound like the immigration office,” I said, interrupting him.
He took a deep breath and said, “It’s impossible to have a relationship like this.”
“So, that’s it? You’re breaking up with me?” I yelled.
“No!”
“Then none of this bullshit.”
I stormed out and slammed the door behind me. We had this conversation rather frequently and it got worse every time.
In the restroom I held my hands under the warm water. First the backs, then the wrists, until finally I held my head under the jet. Water dripped onto my feet. I thought about running away. It would take me two hours to pack and be out of the apartment. I could survive in most countries. Actually, now that I thought about it, I didn’t really need anything. I could just go.
I went back in. Elias smiled and reached out for me. I took a step closer to the bed. The sun died in the sky and flooded the room with warm light.
“There was a child and a father. The father wanted to bring the child to safety. It was a ten-minute walk to her grandmother’s apartment. The child wasn’t even seven years old and she felt that something had changed over the past few days, but couldn’t say what. That was what the child was thinking about when next to her a woman hit the asphalt. The pool of blood slowly reached the child’s shoes and the tips of the shoes soaked up the red. The blood was warm and the woman was younger than I am today. The child pushed back a strand of hair and a bit of blood remained on her cheek. It could have been worse, the grandmother said later that evening, as she cleaned the bloody crust off the child’s shoes.”
Elias took my hand in his, kissed my palm, and covered my arm with small kisses. Then he reached out for my face, stroked my cheek, and pulled me in close.
6
The sky was gloomy and commuters waited on the platform. Completely identical groups of students entered and exited. The S-Bahn stopped every two minutes. I couldn’t concentrate on my flash cards and instead observed the students. The boys were dressed in public housing fashion. The girls utilized their cellphone screens as mirrors and tried to fix their hairstyles. The gangsta peer group boasted with Turkish-Arabic pseudo-syntax. The underage ones bid their fellow students goodbye with “OK then … bunun üzerine, bye.” Fields, new buildings, and train stations now only appeared from time to time and they yelled at each other. “OK, like, bye!” Houses and people started to look like loaves of bread that had not fully risen. I was glad that my youth was over.
Officially, we were part of a contingent of Jewish refugees that were allotted to strengthen the Jewish communities in Germany. But our emigration had nothing to do with Judaism and everything to do with Nagorno-Karabakh.
In the beginning of 1987, a campaign was launched in Armenia to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh into the Armenian Soviet Republic. At that time, both Azeris and Armenians lived in the territory. Mass demonstrations by Armenians were held in Yerevan, the first of their kind in the Soviet Union. On February 20, 1988, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast declared their secession from the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic. Clashes followed, and the first wave of Azeris had to flee. Then the situation escalated. But nobody expected the Sumgait Massacre. It all started with a small demonstration. Supposedly it was Azeri refugees from Kafan who had gathered in the city center. The police didn’t do anything. Over the next two days, multiple Azeri gangs raided the city and turned it into a death zone for Armenians: they broke windows, set cars on fire, and looked for Armenians. Apartments were trashed and plundered, the residents debased, abused, and raped. Several people were mutilated with axes—to the point that their bodies couldn’t be identified later. The murderers often couldn’t tell Azeris from Armenians as there were no distinguishing ethnic features and most Armenians spoke excellent Azerbaijani. I was on my way to the conservatory with my mother when the first rumors reached Baku. We were standing in the line for bread and the woman in front of us told another woman in Russian that her friends’ car had been stopped, the passengers had been ordered to get out and recite the Azerbaijani word for hazelnut—fundukh. “Say fundukh!” the attacker yelled. “If you can say fundukh you are a Muslim. Then you have nothing to worry about.” My mother explained to me that Azeris and Armenians pronounced the word differently. That was the only explanation she could give. About thirty people died during the pogrom. Almost all 14,000 inhabitants of Armenian descent fled from Sumgait.
Over the next months and years there was to be more violence, displacements, rapes, and pogroms on both sides. The national movements gained backing, the status of Nagorno-Karabakh remained unresolved. Then the Armenian parliament decided that Nagorno-Karabakh belonged to Armenia. Two days later the Azeris declared that it was, in fact, their land. Armenians left Azerbaijan and Azeris left Armenia, and few did so by choice. We collected clothes and food for the ever-increasing number of refugees. The first time I saw a boy my age begging in the city center with stumps instead of legs, I was infuriated because I understood that this wasn’t the result of an accident, nor had he been born that way. My father was sent to Karabakh as an observer and often for days on end we didn’t know whether he was still alive.
The fight for power and oil was raging. In Baku the National Front was founded. Meetings were held in factories and offices. Arms, purchased from Russian soldiers (illegally, of course), were stashed away. Back then, a Kalashnikov was a hundred dollars, a tank three thousand. Our neighbor became a fervent nationalist, too. When she attended assemblies my mother watched her son Farid.
The hatred was nothing personal. It was structural. The people didn’t have faces anymore. No eyes, no names, and no professions—they became Azeris, Armenians, Georgians, and Russians. People who’d been acquainted all their lives forgot everything about each other. Only their alleged nationality remained.
On January 13, 1990, members of the National Front, refugees from the annexed territories, and supposed KGB agents went from one Armenian apartment to the next. There was a system to it. They had lists with Armenian addresses. Their visits meant looting, rape, mutilation, and murder. They killed people with knives and sticks. It wasn’t uncommon for people to fall out of windows. I was not allowed to leave the house or ask questions.
My grandfather, who was living with us at the time, was a dark-eyed, dark-haired man with pronounced cheekbones. In the tram, on his way t
o the university, where he taught inorganic chemistry, he was taken for an Armenian and beaten up. Three days later he died of a heart attack. I found him that morning in his favorite chair. My father locked the door to his room. It had been his father.
My mother, drenched in tears, called her mother. They argued for a while until my mother hung up and told me to get dressed. She packed a bag and handed it to my father. It was quiet in the streets. Next to some houses lay smashed furniture. And glass. My father dragged me by the arm, told me to hurry up. My grandmother lived only three streets away. When I arrived at her apartment my childhood was over.
All Russians Love Birch Trees Page 3
