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Yusuf ran as fear snaked through him.
Let them be okay, he thought as he neared the boys.
In the arena, Zul the clown started up his farce accompanied by laughter.
Yusuf fell to his knees in the dirt behind the stands. Simeon lay in a heap on the floor, his legs crumpled as if he were a mannequin, not flesh and bone. A long shard of ceramic lay buried in the boy’s chest, and a red flower bloomed across his tracksuit. His warm blood pooled on the ground in lumps as he bled into the sawdust. Yusuf’s heart hammered against his ribs. He searched for a pulse in Simeon’s slack wrist, not really knowing what to look for. He shuddered. He’d been certain that any discord between the boys had been buried that morning. What could have happened? He should have realised not to leave them alone together.
Simeon moaned beneath him.
Think, man.
Above him stood Dawud, perspiration dotting his skin, his anger spent. “I didn’t mean it, I swear,” he said. The words tumbled out, a shrill defence of the unforgivable.
Yusuf glanced up, throwing out sharp words in fury. “You fool.”
Dawud stumbled back, and Yusuf blocked him out. Simeon had to be his first priority.
A woman with ginger hair and a spray of freckles crouched down beside him. Vibrant green eyes radiated concern. This wasn’t a tourist; she looked German. “He needs an ambulance.”
“Can you?” said Yusuf, looking around for something to stem the blood flow.
“Right away.” She leapt up, clumsy in her boots, fumbling for her phone as she went.
Aischa appeared behind him. She thrust a scarf into his hands, moon eyes wide with panic. “Here.”
Yusuf took the scarf, pressed it against Simeon’s wound. The boy’s nut-brown eyes rolled in his head. Fourteen was no age. Please let him be okay.
A handful of spectators closest to the commotion twisted in their seats, half-standing, mouths aghast as if they had never seen its like before. Then all at once, performers formed a circle around them, using their bodies to protect the boys from prying eyes. Here were Amena, Aya and burly Osman, grief etched into the lines of his face. They looked on, as helpless as he. What now? Yusuf’s own panic surfaced. He pushed the blackness aside and focussed on the Simeon’s face. He felt again for a pulse, like he’d seen on the dubbed American detective shows Doris watched. The ones that pretended justice always won out.
Nothing.
His mind flashed back to another time in the dust, dust all around, his broken brother in his arms. A roar gathered in his mind, a whooshing he couldn’t escape.
Simeon coughed.
Relief flooded Yusuf and the swell of fear subsided, although it lurked still, black and uncompromising at the edge of his sanity.
The German woman came back and touched his shoulder. “The ambulance is on its way.”
“Thanks.” Yusuf motioned to Aischa to continue applying pressure to Simeon’s wound. Blood, as dark as a beetle’s shell, had stained her scarf black.
She fulfilled her duty with solemn diligence, hands trembling.
“We should call the police,” said Osman in his deep baritone.
“First Simeon. Then we deal with Dawud.”
Dawud shied away and crouched in a ball next to the popcorn stand. He vomited into the sand, great heaving ejections of bile and tears. He stood alone; his crime had rendered him friendless. If only he’d used words or his fists. Anything but a weapon.
Yusuf beckoned Amena closer. His mind whirred. “Tell Emir to close the show. Any reason–it doesn’t matter–just not the truth. Send the crowd out from the front.”
She rushed away, her long hair swinging in a ponytail.
Despair tightened Yusuf’s chest. The glittering edge at his neck itched. How could he protect them now, these boys adrift in a strange land without their parents and aunts and uncles, without their siblings and friends? Boys, more lost than even he. It hadn’t even been a year since Simeon had fled Yemen. The boy had escaped a war that had left the country in the grip of cholera and on the brink of famine. To die here, not of old age but of a stab wound, was cruel.
Where was the ambulance?
Yusuf pushed away the thought that emergency services responded with less urgency for a refugee boy than they would for native Germans. The world couldn’t be so bleak. “Osman, stand by the entrance to direct the ambulance crew. No one else comes in that way.”
Osman dragged Dawud to his feet and took him outside to await the ambulance. He pressed the boy into his rugged chest and held the sobbing child fast. Beside them, the heavy velvet-lined tarpaulin gaped open and Yusuf imagined Simeon’s soul passing through.
The house band stuttered to a halt. “Ladies and gentleman–” Emir’s voice filled the tent. “This evening’s performance must now come to an end.” A cry of disappointment washed over them. Emir continued, soothing, jovial, apologetic. Old Sayid instructed the band to strike up a never-ending merry loop at odds with the dying boy, and the crowd dispersed.
“I want my mother,” said Simeon in his native tongue, his pallor a sickly hue, his eyes glazed.
The German woman knelt next to him, stroking his hair, talking to him all the while, though she didn’t understand his words nor he hers.
“Be strong, Simeon,” said Yusuf.
He willed Death to stay away. Just this once. As if prayers had ever worked before. Who had failed these boys? The country they had fled, their dead or absent parents, the country they had made their home, or the makeshift family that had come together around them like a car cobbled together from old parts? Would Silberling punish them for what happened tonight?
The circus tent emptied, and the last remnants of magic of the night fled. One by one, the performers learned of Simeon’s plight. They gathered around him, a circle of love, while Aischa and the German woman tended to him. Eventually, in came Osman through the curtains, a sombre giant, his arms wrapped around Dawud. They led the ambulance crew to Simeon. The medics pierced the circle, stern faces dressed in red, the colour of death and danger. They moved aside the kneeling women and began work, calm and methodical, asking questions all the while, attempting to undo the damage Dawud had caused.
The spectacle was over.
Yusuf slipped away through the rain, past the waiting ambulance with its flashing light and the silhouette of Silberling behind the darkened glass of his car. He braced himself against the wind, pushed on past swaying trees to the tiny, lightless box he called home, and wept.
Yusuf awoke naked in his bed. His costume lay in a ball on the cold floor beside him, still caked with Simeon’s blood.
Simeon.
He rolled out of bed, grabbing a threadbare towel for his hips and shower gel that smelt of Western men to him, as if certain scents indicated a higher civilisation.
He was thankful for the meagre apartments provided to the immigrant circus by the German state. They curved in a semi-circle around the big top, more akin to battlements than a home. Last night, the apartments had rocked with the high winds, as if they were boats on the ocean. Erected as hastily as the circus tent, they had no foundations to speak of. A safe haven, but perhaps also a reminder of their precarious situation as immigrants. None of them had papers yet; their status could be rescinded at any time. Still, immigrants were a grateful sort of people. Who ran from the arms of untold horrors and demanded more than a hovel to recover?
The block was comprised of little more than a series of interconnecting cubes arranged on one level beneath a canopy of trees. It had been stacked in three rows. Single occupants lived in the smallest cubes at the front of the building, with space for a bed, a chair and a light. Next came larger cubes for pairs: lovers, siblings or friends. Often the loneliness became so unbearable that even strangers decided to share a bed. The largest cubes comprised the rear of the building, reserved for families of three or more. Rarely did families survive the journey to Europe intact, and so the large units stood empty as a reminder of loss or as communal spaces to unwind, pray or dine together, as if they could erase the memories of the families left behind.
Yusuf sighed as he trod wearily along the slim corridors, making out voices every now and then through the paltry wall divisions. Some doors he passed had been decorated with pictures or dried wreaths, others painted a bold colour in defiance of the rules.
He washed and scrubbed himself clean in the communal showers, before rinsing his costume and wringing it out. Simeon’s blood disappeared down the drain, pink and diluted. Then he fastened the damp towel around his waist and hung his costume over the shower railing before padding to the far corner of the dwelling where Doris Kaun, the only German in residence, lived. Her door stood ajar, but he knocked anyway.
“Herein.” She smiled gently, and put down her tea on the worktop.
“You young men, so proud of your bodies that you forget to clothe yourselves. You should have seen me in my heyday.” She hugged him briefly. Her silver hair brushed his chin. “Sit. The kettle’s already on–I’ll make you some tea. You must still be in shock.”
“How is Simeon? Have you heard?”
The kettle whistled. “He’s not out of the woods yet, but he is young and you did well to apply pressure to the wound. The doctors think there is every chance he’ll live.”
Yusuf slouched with relief, as if worry had pulled him taut. “And Dawud?”
Doris poured out the boiling water onto a peppermint teabag and pushed the steaming mug towards him. Her voice cracked with age. “I vouched for him. I’ve emphasised the trauma in his past but his future here hangs in the balance.”
It was Doris's job to help the refugees settle in, to be their listening ear. Talks with her had been instrumental in improving Yusuf’s grasp of German, and in helping the performers feel anchored to their new home. She coordinated their integration lessons in the German language and law and culture, provided information on voluntary initiatives such as Kreuzberger Himmel which had sprung up in response to the surge in refugees in the city, and offered a hand of friendship. In exchange for her efforts, Doris received food and board. Widowed, with fiercely liberal instincts and her children grown, the job suited her.
The toilet flushed, and the bathroom tap sloshed. Yusuf spun in his chair.
“Sorry, I should have said I have a visitor,” said Doris.
Yusuf hadn’t even noticed she had poured out two cups of tea in addition to her own. The door opened and a woman entered the living room. He shuffled in his chair and rearranged his towel, suddenly feeling self-conscious about his state of undress. The woman tucked a strand of her long ginger hair behind her ear as she approached them in her clunky boots.
He froze. “You.”
Doris looked from one to the other. “Of course, you met each other last night. Yusuf, this is Ellie from the Berliner Allgemeine Zeitung.”
“Ellie Richter. Nice to meet you.” She held out her hand to shake his, unfazed by his nakedness.
Heat rose to Yusuf’s cheeks as he grasped her hand in his. He frowned. “You’re a journalist?”
Her eyes sparked with intelligence. “You’re an acrobat.”
He smiled. “Thanks for yesterday. For calling the ambulance for Simeon, for staying with him.”
“I hope he’s going to be okay,” said Ellie. She turned to Doris. “Maybe I won’t stay for the tea after all. There’s a lot going on right now for you all.”
“If you’re sure?” said Doris.
“Certain. Thank you.” Ellie swung her satchel over her shoulder and closed the door behind her.
Yusuf raised his eyebrows. There was little point in speaking to journalists. Too often they already knew what they wanted to hear. “What’s she doing here?”
“She’s doing a story on the circus. She wanted some background information, that’s all, and to speak to some of you.”
A frisson of fear embedded itself in Yusuf’s belly. He’d learned over the years to ignore his instincts at his peril. Basking in attention during a performance made sense to him: he could control that environment. Nothing good, however, could come of increased media attention on refugees. The narratives they endured always came slicked in negativity. The best way to be happy in a new land was to fly under the radar. “That’s why she was there yesterday?”
Doris nodded. “It’s not a great time for media attention, but who knows? Maybe some good will come of it. Bigger audiences, more understanding. Silberling’s ever ready to stick the boot in when once, he would have leapt to the circus’ defence. He’s a slippery eel, that one. I’m sure he’s realised the election will be here in the blink of an eye.”
“Will he make things difficult for Dawud?”
“I don’t know. The department is investigating. Simeon refused to talk to the police.” Doris placed a calloused palm on his hand.
Yusuf’s sadness crashed over him like a wave. “Dawud needs us. They can’t send him back. He won’t make it. I can’t let that journalist stir up trouble.”
“It’s going to be okay.” Doris reached out for him, pulling him into a hug, but Yusuf remained stiff, a husk that love couldn’t penetrate.
Syria might just be a memory for him now, but his experiences had forever honed his senses. Yusuf could sense danger out on the streets of Berlin by the prickle on his skin, the guarded looks of strangers, and the way men bristled and women crossed the road. Try as he might to plant his roots in Berlin, it could never be home. Not while his kinked hair, brown skin and foreign accent marked him out as different. While the refugees performed on stage like monkeys to the script assigned to them.
Monsters lurked beneath the veneer of progress in this city. Ghosts accompanied him when he passed old buildings. The crumbling stone and creaking wood in Berlin shuddered with the weight of the past, when millions of ordinary people had met a brutal end simply because they suddenly didn’t belong.
And still, the world turned.
