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In the aftermath of Ellie’s exposé on the circus, Yusuf’s sense of vulnerability increased. He ricocheted from one person to another, hoping to galvanise the community to push back against the slurs and untruths. But his friends retreated into their safe places, as a tortoise might do, and Yusuf resented the festering sense that the foundations of their new home crumbled before their very eyes. To his frustration, even Ellie’s article and the repeated transgressions against the circus brought no tangible reaction. The circus community did nothing, other than blame themselves.
“Maybe we should try and fit in better,” said Esme. “Our clothes make us stand out.”
“We should improve our grasp of their language as quick as we can,” said Osman.
“It’s our food. It’s delicious but perhaps too pungent for delicate German noses,” said Leyla.
The injustice burned Yusuf. He grew irritated at their willingness to bend themselves out of shape, just to please passing strangers. He’d travelled to Germany out of necessity. He had no previous experience of a white man’s land. But his otherness had come to him like a revelation, even in metropolitan Berlin. Even in districts such as Neukölln, Kreuzberg and Wedding, where the scents that pervaded the air differed from the tourist beacons of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. In Neukölln and Kreuzberg, the bustling, colourful immigrant communities lived parallel lives to native Germans, as if surrounded by an invisible gate. Like the Turkish barber he visited when his beard grew too unruly, where a string of young brown-skinned men waited in line.
Yes, ethnic businesses flourished–supermarkets, internet cafés and travel agents–but this was an inferior citizenship, underpinned by a singular notion of German culture, which excluded migrants. A whiteness washed over the city, silencing other perspectives with its vastness, rendering every other colour less important. Whiteness marched like a weapon. It encroached until nothing else flowered. Whiteness offered to save them all while belittling and disabling them.
It even attacked them.
There came the night when an angry man pushed Zul up against a wall, with little Mirjam nearby, and asked him about his faith and whether he believed in Allah. Zul denied his beliefs, and was ashamed of his own cowardice. The man punched the wall beside his head, and Zul soaked his trousers through with his own piss. When he reached the residences, he wept bitterly while little Mirjam wrapped her arms around him.
You have powerful enemies, my friend.
The neo-Nazi’s words haunted Yusuf, and so did his friend’s tale. He looked around for firm footing, for a recalibration of his mental state, for a way to control the future, but he found only platitudes. The stone of anxiety in his chest hardened with each passing day, until nothing brought solace: neither his circus family, practising his acrobatics nor Doris's mothering.
When he could no longer bear the weight of his worry alone, and his usual avenues for comfort had been exhausted, he trudged under grey skies across the wet park to the S-Bahn, hoping Imam Saeed might have some ideas to ward off his sense of foreboding.
“Your friend Isaiah is right,” said Imam Saeed. “We may have enemies, but we also have friends. Don’t forget that. Sometimes you just have to trust that Allah is on your side. Pray, and trust your fate to him.”
Yusuf hid his scepticism in case he caused offence. How could Allah allow this much suffering for the innocent? How could He allow Death to wrap itself around the throats of young lovers, children and the infirm? The Imam’s words made him doubt his intelligence. The older man had been in Germany for so long, it had made him soft. His instincts had faded, but Yusuf’s hadn’t.
Here, in the de facto capital of Europe, change was afoot. There was only so long the West could offer itself up as a saviour in the face of public opinion. The mood of the people had changed, and with it, the government’s priorities. Now it would be the weak who paid, as they always did. Yusuf knew how quickly things could change. He’d lived it. He’d seen war break out between families when only a few pieces of bread remained and the acrid smoke of a chemical attack lingered in the air. He’d seen innocence and faith trampled before.
Yusuf returned to the circus to shake the cobwebs from his mind. He climbed the rigging until his head almost touched the starry velvet sky at the top of the tent. He reached up and touched a star, and it pulsed beneath his fingers, hot and tingling.
He’d walked the beams at the circus tent so often, he could do it with his eyes shut. In fact, sometimes he did just that during his act. A canary yellow silk blindfold, powdered feet stretched out in front of him, testing the beam before he transferred his weight, making the audience gasp with his daring.
For hundreds of years, spectators had been fascinated by those who risked their lives for entertainment. The possibility of death made his act exciting. Daily practice helped his confidence, and allowed him to hone his tricks or try new ones. It used to be his favourite way to start the day: the clean, quiet tent; the rise and fall of his breath; the time to take things slowly. Why then had his heartbeat begun to accelerate the moment he stepped out?
Ridiculous, really, for even basic beam-walking to frighten him. He focused, blocking out the sounds of other performers practising below, so there remained only him, the beam and his breath.
A memory hijacked his equilibrium. It ambushed him, unbidden, writhing demons in a sea of calm.
Flashes of metal through the sky: the red of the motorcycle and the silver.
His brother Selim’s head, with its thick shiny brown curls, rolling, rolling.
Yusuf stumbled and toppled on the beam. His hands fumbled, and he ended up wrapped bodily around it in a koala hug.
“What’s going on?” said Emir, calling up from the ring below.
Colour rushed to Yusuf’s face. He knew better than to go on the circus apparatus with a clouded mind. It had been drilled into them time and again during their tutorial year. A distracted acrobat risked broken bones or worse. Safety nets and harnesses could only be relied on to a certain point. Without mental toughness, all the acrobatic skills in the world counted for nothing. One misjudgement could result in a fall or death.
Fall or fly, hadn’t that always been the choice?
Yusuf scrambled to his feet. “Nothing. I just slipped.”
Emir combed his fingers through his wiry hair. “That’s not like you.”
Yusuf skipped to the ledge, all bravado, though his heart hammered still. Underneath him, the safety net zoomed into focus. He closed his eyes and swayed. A memory gripped him like an assault.
The motorbike on its side. Selim’s hands still gripping the rubber-clad handlebars, his head elsewhere.
Emir’s voice reached him from far away. “Yusuf!”
Yusuf opened his eyes, half a heart-beat from disaster. His sight blurred.
“Get down here right now!” said Emir, urgent, harried.
Yusuf descended to the ground, his knuckles white where he gripped the ladder. His mother’s screams rang in his ears. But that was then, wasn’t it? Why could he no longer keep the nightmares at bay? His breath came in shallow puffs.
Twenty metres.
“Easy now, son, nearly there,” said Emir from below.
Sweat covered his palms. How had his nightmares made a slow creep into daylight hours, until they invaded his thoughts even when he balanced on the beam or practiced trapeze tricks?
Sixteen metres.
Nausea rose, mirroring the choppy ocean. He lent his head against the rigging. He didn’t want to be strong. How long had he been alone, even before the war? Everything changed when Selim died. In the space of a few moments, he was alone, without the love and protection of the brother he’d adored and who’d been a physical divide between him and their father’s worst rages. The future had withered to a closed point, as if its possibilities had been swallowed overnight by that great monster: Death.
Twelve metres.
He hadn’t known how quiet Death would be. The hush before the screams. As if the love and memories that had made a person had been sucked into a vortex, and the Earth was realigning itself on its axis. Remembering hurt.
Nine metres.
His flashbacks in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy had been debilitating. They would visit him in any situation, and he’d find himself on his knees, blinded by tears, calling out to prevent it from happening all over again. The horror felt so real in those moments, it cut him to the raw. Five years had passed and he’d grown accustomed to the flashbacks occurring only in nightmares when the world slept.
Until now.
Seven metres.
Below him, the ground spun. He dipped his chin to his chest and closed his eyes. In the hazy pink of his eyelids, a carousel of images whirred past: Simeon and Dawud; barrels and beatings; swines taunting him; furious headlines; and worst of all, his brother, again and again, broken, bleeding.
Four metres.
He bit his lip and drew blood.
Two metres.
Emir gripped his waist, steading him.
Yusuf sank to the floor and put his head between his knees.
“Thank Allah,” said Emir. “What’s going on?”
Yusuf shivered. “I’m tired.”
Emir lowered himself to Yusuf’s level. “Rubbish. I know you. I might be old but I’m not blind. You know more than anyone how dangerous it is to work at the heights you do. Talk to me.”
Yusuf raised his head. “I’m fine.”
Emir shook his head. “If you can’t focus, you can’t go up. What kind of ringmaster would I be to put you in danger?” He squeezed Yusuf’s shoulders.
Yusuf grimaced. What would he do without the circus to ground him? “Emir, I felt dizzy, that’s all. I must have a bug. I’ll get some rest this afternoon and take some medicine. I’ll be fine by tonight. Besides, it’s too late to change the line up.”
“Okay, if you’re sure?” He searched Yusuf’s face.
Yusuf nodded. He needed the circus to anchor him. Only on the trapeze did his troubles sometimes evaporate. Only there could he get caught in the moment, forget he was an adult and play like a child, unburdened and free.
“You’d tell me the truth?” said Emir, his moustache twitching as if he were a hound dog on a hunt for falsehoods.
“Of course I would. You can trust me.”
