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Ellie travelled by S-Bahn a few stops away from the circus. Adventures waited around every corner. The hum of the train soothed her as an adult; as a child, it had excited her. The railway line clattered as she made her way to street-level, a few hundred metres away from where the Berlin Wall had once stood, to Imam Saeed’s community centre.
It made sense that he would have set up shop here. Neukölln was home to a vibrant Turkish community, and more diverse than other districts in the city. Hermannplatz pulsed with life: loud, busy, weird and colourful. The streets teemed with kebab shops and Middle-Eastern goods, where corpulent, head-scarfed older women gossiped. It was a far cry from the polish of other Berlin districts, but in some ways it had more heart.
She arrived at the address that he had given her on the dot of 11 o’clock. The road traffic suddenly receded, and Ellie grew tense. She thought nothing of crossing through Neukölln late at night. Her street smarts usually bordered on recklessness, so the prickles that rose on her forearms as she entered the courtyard belonging to Imam Saeed surprised her.
The building itself looked innocuous enough, with no religious markings on the outside. In fact, it could have been a youth hostel. Illegible graffiti had been strewn across sand-coloured brickwork, and milky windows hid the inside of the two-storey building from view. Bikes and an old moped, as well as a miniature football goal, stood in the courtyard.
Alien environments didn’t faze her; neither did the all-male environment Doris had alerted her to. She turned her magnifying glass on herself, as she would on a story. Was it the religion that disturbed her? She prided herself on her tolerance, but she couldn’t be sure. The usual arbiters of choice–gender, class, sexuality, religion–made not one iota of difference to Ellie. As a child, it wasn’t the flute or the violin, those most feminine of instruments, she had showed interest in. As rhythmically-challenged as she was, it had been the drums that had captured her imagination. She hadn’t even winced when her father took her along to boxing matches as a child. It struck her as odd that her home city could still hide pockets that set her on edge. She prided herself on knowing every nook and cranny. Her personality and her job demanded it.
A voice startled her. “Frau Richter?” said a young boy.
“Yes.” She adjusted the scarf she’d loosely arranged over her head, unsure as to whether her meeting with Imam Saeed would take place in a prayer hall.
“Follow me.” Bare legs protruded from his maroon football kit. Thin wisps of hair dotted his top lip. He couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. He pointed to the scarf on her head. “You don’t need that.”
Ellie stuffed it into her bag.
Inside, the quiet of the courtyard erupted into raucous chatter. She found herself in a shabby hall with unadorned windows and dove-grey cornicing. A motley assortment of chairs had been arranged in two semi-circles, and a man she assumed to be Imam Saeed held court.
“Our guest is here,” said the man. He wore a mid-length white shift dress atop trousers in the Muslim way. A padded kufi hat sat on his head, and a grizzled beard covered the bottom half of his face.
The boy darted away, leaving Ellie alone.
“Come, join us. You can take my chair,” said Imam Saeed. His shoulders stooped and his eyes gleamed with kindness. “We’re nearly finished here.”
The seated individuals, whose backs had been turned to her, swivelled in their chairs to take in the stranger, revealing young men of differing ages. Yusuf Alam stood out amongst them, and her heartbeat sped up at his scrutiny. Wary recognition flashed across his chiselled face. His hair curled around slightly protruding ears. She marvelled at life’s synchronicity; four times in as many days they had crossed each other’s paths.
Ellie sat and, for the first time, considered that she could be the alien, even here in her own city. Who were these men gathered here? Did they consider themselves Germans or foreigners? Did it matter?
The Imam turned to the men. “Before we end, let me remind you of your duty as revealed in the Holy Qur’an. Where is the charity we should find in our hearts?”
A voice piped up. “Are we to show charity when we are shown none?”
Ellie strained to see the speaker.
Around him, the crowd nodded.
Imam’s Saeed’s voice soared above the rest. “That is the will of Allah. He alone has the right to judge.”
The man stood. He had closely shaved hair and a goatee. “I understand what you said about the refugees, really I do. But why can’t we be angry? Why is the German man better educated than me? Why is he richer? I was born here too. Why does he have a job he wants whereas I must be grateful for the scraps? Showing charity is a privilege for the powerful.”
Men and boys rose to their feet to thump the speaker on the back, raucous and unwieldy. Ellie looked around, assessing her safety in this room full of strangers. Tempers had flared, but there was no real danger.
Imam Saeed stepped forward. “I understand your anger, Rifaat. I feel it. And yet, how can we let our sorrow colour our futures? Blame is never a tool for progress.”
The group muttered amongst themselves.
Imam Saeed tried again. “Look at Özil or Gündoğan. Who would have thought that Muslim Turks could play for the German national team and be some of our best players? Özil even won a BAMBI award. What a sign of acceptance.”
In the back row, a boy with a ski-jump nose and soft, almond-shaped eyes spoke up. “Always Özil as an example. He is an exception to the rule, but even him, when he posed for a mere picture with Erdoğan, found his fans turned on him. Enough about footballers. The rest of us have to find our own place in history.”
“Interesting points, Ahmet. That’s enough debate for today,” said Imam Saeed. “I’ll see you on the pitch tomorrow or at Friday prayers. No excuses.”
Ellie waited, soaking up the curious mixture of familiarity and discord while the group said their goodbyes. She waved to Yusuf, hoping he might come and speak to her, but he slipped out of the exit without a word. The Imam shook hands with some men and slapped others on the back. Rifaat, who had been the angriest, received a brief embrace. Some of the boys stacked the chairs.
When they had gone, Imam Saeed dragged a chair over to where Ellie sat. He sighed.
Ellie placed her phone on the ground between them. “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”
“Not at all.” The spirit he had shown moments earlier had fled, and he suddenly appeared older.
“That was impressive,” said Ellie.
The Imam glanced up in surprise. “Really? It was a fraught session. Some of the Turkish boys feel the refugees are making it worse for them here.”
“You didn’t shut down the debate.”
“Well, no. Their anger needs space to breathe.”
His German was accent-free, and Ellie wondered whether his birthplace had been Germany. “How long have you been running this group?”
“Five years perhaps. The mosque has a football team. When I first started getting involved, I used to coach the team, and the boys would confide in me. ‘Things are tough at home,’ they would say. ‘There are no jobs,’ or, ‘I was insulted today.’ I thought to myself, their experiences are getting worse, not better. It was going the wrong way. In some cases, the boys felt more like outsiders than their parents did when they first arrived in Germany as guest workers. They needed to talk to me about it. Maybe to shield their parents, or their parents didn’t understand. My group makes them feel less alone.”
“It is open to all?”
“All Muslim boys. In the summer, I host barbecues for the wider community. It’s important to mix. But the boys also need a chance to blow off steam. I know they say things they don’t mean sometimes, and that’s okay.”
“Are girls allowed too?”
“Not in this session, but if there was interest, I’d arrange another.”
“I see.” Ellie didn’t really see at all. Was it a religious requirement to keep the genders separate? She filed the thought away to ask Doris.
“I noticed the boys laughed at you when you spoke of Özil,” said Ellie.
A wry smile twisted his lips. “To them, Özil is a unicorn. He has a life they can never imagine achieving. He earns millions doing what he loves. He is invited to all the best parties. All it takes is a good performance for the newspapers to fawn over him. Or at least that was true until the recent debacle at the World Cup. To me, Özil is more than a pair of golden boots. His achievements are worth more than what community leaders and politicians can bring about in a lifetime. He shows them what is possible, what to aim for.”
Ellie nodded. “There were more Turks here today than circus performers, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Are the performers regular attendees here? How do they fit into your work?”
“My work is one and the same, Frau Richter.”
Ellie threw him a quizzical glance. “And yet the Turks are naturalised Germans. They are better integrated, wouldn’t you say?” Heat rose in her cheeks at what might be perceived to be a stupid question.
“The refugees have additional trauma that arises from war: loss of family members, flashbacks to the fighting, a sense of injustice that accompanies forced transition.” His hands moved as he talked, as if to keep pace with his busy thoughts. “The children of the guest workers are by and large born here and are holders of German passports. But many live what you might consider to be an immigrant life: isolation, lack of integration, poor German language skills, low employment prospects. Their colour, too, marks them out as different.”
“You don’t think the Government did a good job integrating the Turks?” Ellie scribbled in her journal. “May I quote you?”
Imam Saeed laughed. “Do you think it did? The failure of government policy with the guest workers is no secret. It’s only in the past two decades that it’s improved somewhat. The government always thought the guest workers would go back home. Their labour contributed to the boom in West Germany and yet there was no investment in their lives: no language lessons, no engagement, no integration with wider society.” He sighed. “Military coups in Turkey made it unsafe to go home so the workers brought their families to start new lives here. They moved out of dormitories and finally unpacked their suitcases. What did the government do? It offered money to entice the guest workers to leave. Schools provided Turkish lessons to prepare the children for life in Turkey. The children ended up feeling like they belonged neither here nor there.”
“And you think this safe space you have created here at this centre can make a difference to the lives of the refugees at the circus?”
“When you leave your home, there is nothing more important than a safety net to catch you. In some ways, that’s what the circus is. That’s what Rex Silberling understood. A place to call your own, a purpose, it is everything. This place too–these four walls–may not be much, but when you are at sea and everything is changing, these places are important. So yes, I think I can help this community–the Turks and the people at the circus.”
“Although, forgive me, Imam Saeed, but your dream of helping the circus performers seems premature when they scarcely attend.”
He reddened. “Yes, that is true.” He paused. “Would I like more circus boys to attend my sessions? Yes. Would I like them to play football with us? Yes. But I cannot force them to attend. They haven’t always been made to feel welcome here, but there is only one of me.”
“Has there been friction in the past?”
“There’s not always acceptance of newer members of the group. It’s a luxury to help others if you yourself are in need. The first wave of group members has their own problems. They don’t want to think about someone else’s. I don’t agree with their behaviour but I do understand it. I felt the same way. Sometimes I still do.”
“Then why are you here?” said Ellie.
Tired brown eyes met her clear green ones.
“To be their anchor when no one else is. We might not be there yet, but I sense the potential of this community to heal at Friday prayers when we are all under one roof, making the same movements with our hands, prostrating to Mecca. Then, I am hopeful. It is only in the cold light of day that sometimes things seem impossible.”
