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Ellie pulled Doris's door shut, and listened to the muffled voices inside for a moment. Her heart skipped faster, remembering Yusuf’s athletic physique, the towel slung low on his hips. Hadn’t it been Yusuf she’d seen outside Berliner Dom, wearing his solitude like a comfortable old coat? How many times had she seen him perform at the circus, at great heights, without taking in his chiselled face, the sadness in his grey eyes?
What a story had landed in her lap. She couldn’t be sure if her own affinity for the circus would help or hinder. Her parents lived a stone’s throw from Treptower Park and she knew this space like the back of her hand.
On paper, the location for the immigrant circus couldn’t have been more perfect. She’d heard her father tell the land’s history many times. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, this part of the city had been the home of an amusement park sponsored by the East German state. After reunification, the land fell into private hands, and was abandoned to the elements after its owner was caught smuggling a haul of cocaine into Germany in the masts of a Flying Carpet ride.
The circus had sprung up almost overnight a few years back, as if it had materialised from a tear in the sky. Treptower Park’s colossal Soviet War Memorial stood on the same grounds, a shrine to men lost in the Second World War, its focal point a soldier, sword in hand, a child in his arms and a broken swastika at his feet. The placement of the circus nearby sent a powerful anti-fascist message. Had the state’s flagship integration project really failed? It made the story even more juicy.
Marina would be thrilled if Ellie turned in an eye witness account of the violence between Dawud and Simeon, set against the drama of the circus in motion. This story wouldn’t fade into the reams of other information that seeped into the world each day. It would stand out nationally and cement her position at Berliner Allgemeine Zeitung.
Still, Marina’s lack of nuance as an editor irked Ellie. How could anyone fail to pity Simeon and the path that had led him here? How could she turn her back on the haunting sadness in the performers’ eyes? Last night had convinced Ellie that the human story of the circus deserved to be excavated. Perhaps she’d stumbled across an opportunity to showcase some compassionate, complex journalism. She longed to be more than Marina’s blunt tool.
To that end, she tossed out Marina’s idea of pen pictures of crime victims, and devised a three-prong approach to form the basis of her story: the papers Marina had given her; interviews with circus performers; and, possibly most interestingly, a visit to a local Imam about his community outreach work. Perhaps her curiosity about the real story here would even earn her brownie points with Marina.
She strode down the hallway in her boots, rummaging in her bag for her list of interviewees and their flat numbers. The walls rattled as she walked. With steel beneath her warm exterior, Doris had refused her permission to speak with Dawud and Simeon, and the ringmaster Emir had been unwell. Instead, she had offered to arrange other interviews. After few false starts, Ellie found flat 23, where Osman Malik resided. She rapped her knuckles against the door. The door opened a notch, and through the gap came a pink nose, which Ellie thought at first belonged to a dog, until the accompanying bleat informed her otherwise.
She jumped back. “What on earth?”
A broad, hairy hand reached through the gap and pulled back the creature. “Sorry. They won’t hurt you.”
They?
The man swung the door wider and the stench of excrement and unwashed flesh hit her. Ellie peeked past the man’s considerable girth to where three small goats lay sprawled on blankets. The fourth reached past the man again to prod her hand with a cold pink nose.
The man laughed. “She thinks you may have brought her some food.”
“I have cheese sandwiches for my lunch.”
“Hold onto them for dear life.” The shadows underneath the man’s eyes betrayed his tiredness. He waved his broad hands with a flourish. “Please, come in to my humble abode. Doris asked me to tell you a bit about myself.”
“I’d appreciate it, Herr Malik.”
He puffed out his chest at the mark of respect, and Ellie warmed to him, despite the stink, the skittish goats and confined space. Who was she to judge? Maybe those subject to the worst twists of fate made the best humans; bad luck eliminated the pride that made men brutes.
Inside, Osman’s room measured perhaps three metres squared. There were no windows, and only a single lamp hung from the ceiling. A slim bed occupied one corner of the room, and Ellie struggled to imagine Osman in it. She’d grown accustomed to seeing him balance his giant body on thin stilts. Here, he seemed a caged animal. On the wall hung a small, stained tapestry in bright blues and yellows.
He caught Ellie appraising it. “A gift from my wife.”
“It’s beautiful.”
Ellie perched on a lonely chair in the room, placed furthest away from the goats. One clanked its teeth against a drum filled with water.
Osman motioned to the animals. The cadences of her mother tongue were unrecognisable when he spoke it, as if he had invented a hodgepodge language all of his own. “Are you scared of them?”
“I’ve seen them at the circus. I didn’t expect them to be here. Frau Kaun, the warden, allows this?”
He flashed a mischievous grin. “As long as they behave. They have their own barn but it comforts me to have them with me.”
“Last night must have been difficult for you.”
Osman splayed his hands. “We are family.”
“How about your own family? I can record?”
He bobbed his head.
She pressed record on her phone and placed her notepad with her prompts on her knees. Being prepared made her more confident.
Osman drifted off, occupying a space and time thousands of miles away. “My wife died when the boys were young.”
“Are your children here with you?”
“Amar is 23. Bilal is 19. Bilal is stronger than his brother. The muscles on that boy! He helped his brother after the waves rocked the dinghy. I could see their heads, but it was chaotic. I lost sight of them.”
Ellie’s breath caught in her throat. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Bilal would never have left his brother behind.” A ghost of a smile passed his lips, and he rubbed his bald head. “They’d be telling me now, ‘Papa, your home stinks. What would Maa say?’ I always say, when my boys return, the goats will go back to the barn.”
The happy ending hung between them, and both knew it was impossible Osman’s sons would return. “You’re from the Middle-East?”
“From Yemen. At first, I was stubborn. Who would want to leave their home? We slept underneath furniture in case of an air strike. Then our neighbour’s house disappeared overnight. All that was left was a hole in the ground. That night, we escaped with what we could carry, and took shelter underground. Still the bombs fell and the bullets whizzed.” His voice broke, and he seemed to shrivel in size. One goat snuck close to its master where he slumped on the bed. Osman twirled his fingers in its coat. “I needed to keep my boys safe. They are all that is left of my wife and me. We moved three times. The fighting and the cholera got worse. How could I protect my family? What could I feed them? And so we came. To start a new life. Even before we made the journey we were swindled, time and again. I would pay smugglers with what little I had, and there were promises, but the men would never return. We began to lose faith. And then, a man came and told us to be ready. I hid my fear from my sons. I knew how dangerous the journey would be. We’d heard stories of boats sinking, of families freezing to death trying to cross borders. But what choice did I have? Now, there is only one mouth to feed.”
Ellie willed herself not to cry. Osman’s tragedy was so great that it seemed selfish to make it her own. “What was your trade in Yemen?”
“A butcher. These days, we barely eat meat. It’s unhalal and expensive–unless it’s pork.” He laughed. “The Germans and their sausages.”
“Good old stereotypes.” She smiled. “Don’t forget the cabbage. And this new life in Berlin, how do you find it?”
Osman’s face clouded and he bit his lip, revealing teeth blackened from tobacco or lack of care. He shrugged. “We are safe, but it isn’t home. People like me are not important creatures.”
Ellie leaned forward, forgetting the goats. “Why do you say that? Hasn’t the government made you feel welcome? Haven’t the people been considerate?”
“In my country, we bring food to new arrivals. We welcome them into the community. We don’t take no for an answer. If they are quiet, we talk until they begin to talk themselves. It is love.”
“And what have you found here?”
He shrugged. “At first, I couldn’t speak the language.” He’d not yet mastered the rhythms, the hard consonants, and he chose each word with care. “I can communicate adequately now but my native accent sticks. We do not share the same linguistic roots, or even alphabet. Speaking to Germans can be daunting. I worry they will be impatient with me.”
“I think mostly they would appreciate how hard you’ve worked to learn the language.”
“Perhaps. I think my appearance makes it harder.” He gestured to his large frame. “I’m a big man. It’s hard to forget my presence, even when some people would rather not see me. It would be better to blend in. It would be easier.”
Ellie resisted the urge to negate his experiences because they made her uncomfortable. She wanted to convince him this city could be a utopia, somewhere for him to realise the dreams that had been stolen from him in the land of his birth. But how could you start anew after losing your wife and children? So instead, all she said was, “I see.”
“Do you? I look at you, and I see a chance my children never had, just because they happened to be born elsewhere. I wonder what they could have been. I’d give anything to hold them once more.” He sank his head into his arms.
He hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye to his boys. She remembered being nineteen, with life stretching out in front of her. She had felt bullet-proof. How unfair for his sons to have faced their mortality so soon.
Osman wept, loudly, unapologetically, and the goats flocked to him.
What comfort could Ellie offer him? As she left, she laid a hand on his shoulder, and two stories took shape in the folds of her mind: one a story of misfits, grief and happenstance; the second a story of the other, of crime and recriminations.
