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Over the years, the once proud Ferris wheel in Treptower Park had become wrapped in trails of ivy. Even Yusuf, with his experience of heights, regretted climbing it now. It had seemed such a good idea from the ground. Safer, somehow, than braving a new environment, but still with the open air and views that Ellie had seemed so keen on. He took her hand and pulled her up after him, swinging from the steel structure with ease, teasing her about her hesitation.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” said Ellie, breathless from exertion, her cheeks a rosy hue.
Yusuf grinned. “Maybe a little.”
“I should have forced you to come dancing with me, even though I have two left feet. Anything would be better than this.”
Her hand slipped. He steadied her then manoeuvred himself so he brought up the rear. “Take your time. I’m right behind you.”
When they reached the top, they clambered into the nearest pod. The night had cooled, and goosebumps sprung up on his bare arms. A crescent moon and blanket of stars studded the velvet sky. Beneath them, the city lights glowed.
Ellie absorbed the view and sighed. “Okay, maybe it was worth it.” She turned to him. “You do know the story about the old lady a few years ago? Ninety years old and she decided to have a go on the Ferris wheel. Except the wind carried her up and she had to be rescued by the emergency services.”
Yusuf’s laughter rang through the air. “I like the sound of her.”
“Me too.”
They smiled at each other, and he realised how close they sat. It had taken him a while to discern the real Ellie, and knowing her a little through her journal made him want to know all of her. He couldn’t be suspicious about the motives of people who crossed his path. If he armoured himself against hurt, he risked missing out on joy. She’d been the motor for his realisation, and he was grateful for it.
“I really shouldn’t have read your journal. It was wrong of me. I can’t believe you got fired for standing up for the circus. For us.”
“I’ve never been good at doing what I’m told. It was the last straw. And, please, don’t feel bad about reading my journal. I spend my life digging into other people’s affairs. I understand.”
“That’s letting me off the hook. Ask anything of me, and I’ll answer,” he said.
“Okay. You’re on,” said Ellie, eyes like glassy moonstones, unreadable. “Tell me who you are.”
Yusuf’s heart hammered. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“How about I ask you three questions and you decide what to share.”
He could cope with that. There was a heady intimacy to sitting in the pod of the Ferris Wheel, thigh against thigh, up amongst the stars. “I’ll try.”
She rested her chin on her hand, considering her options. The cab rocked. In this light, she had the sheen of a marble statue in profile, and he experienced a sudden impulse to touch her.
“What was your childhood like?” she said.
“I was born in the suburbs of Damascus. My mother, she’s the best. My favourite days were filled with games and simple food. Corn on the cob with a sprinkling of chilli. My big brother Selim would challenge me to see how much chilli we could eat without burning our tongues. We’d run for water to quench the fire in our mouths.”
Speaking about his brother didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would, as if by focusing on happy memories, Selim was, in some way, alive again.
“The days were hot and dusty. The climate is nothing like here. We played hide and seek often. I remember how gleeful I’d be to find a new hiding place. We’d play on the streets of our town, running past topsy turvy houses with heavy thatched roofs covered with mud and old men smoking hookah pipes who stank of tobacco. We’d play basketball until the sun went down or my mother got cross. Selim was old enough to have his own friends but he looked after me, protected me even. I worshipped him.”
“He sounds nice. The perfect brother, or at least to me. I don’t have any siblings. What did he need to protect you from? The war?” The intensity of her gaze unsettled him.
His secrets had been his alone for so long. Not even his circus family knew these little details, the memories of home he clung to. In the common room at the residences, too often they steered clear of the past, like talking about it would open a trap door of sorrow or lead to a domino effect in which they infected each other with grief. But Ellie was whole and strong. He needn’t fear sharing his burden with her. Sharing his history held meaning for him. It marked her out as special, but he couldn’t be sure what was developing between them.
He batted her away, his voice playful. “Hey, no follow up questions.”
“You can’t add rules halfway through. You had my journal for three days, Yusuf. Three whole days!” She swatted him and inside he thawed a little more.
“Our father worked long hours as a hotel bellboy in Damascus, and when he returned, he would be irritable. Anything would anger him: food he didn’t like, a pair of sandals out of place, or simply disagreeing with him. Even then, I was interested in gymnastics. I was naturally flexible and strong. I’d do cartwheels in the house and my father would catch me by the ear and haul me to my feet. He didn’t think that sort of pursuit manly enough. He’d argue with my mother about how wild we were. I should have been doing my schoolwork or playing basketball. After the sun set, sometimes he’d take a belt to us, but Selim would push my mother and I out of the way and take the beating. In the morning, Selim would smile and tell us not to worry, but I saw the welts my father left, and how Selim would rile him on purpose just to prove he hadn’t been broken.”
Ellie’s eyes filled with tears. “Where’s your brother now?”
Yusuf looked out across the city. “Dead. He’s dead.”
Her voice seemed far away. “I’m so sorry.”
“He’s buried in our town, and my mother won’t leave him. Not even for me. She said she was too old to travel here, but really, it’s because it breaks her heart to think Selim will be alone.” He rubbed his arms briskly, suddenly feeling the chill. “He was so proud in those last moments. A boy from a neighbouring village offered to let him ride his motorbike. Selim promised our mother that he would be careful. The other kids were so envious. Cars were rare and motorbikes even more so. He wouldn’t even let me ride with him. He made it a few hundred metres down the throughway before an explosive device ripped him apart. He died instantly. I don’t remember much after that, just the screams: my mother’s, and my own, the highest pitch of all.” His grief scalded him, as though time and distance had no impact.
Ellie shuddered. “An explosion? I don’t understand. Who would do such a thing?”
Yusuf shrugged. “Does it even matter? He’s gone.”
She leant her head on his shoulder, and the gesture was just small enough for him to bear. “It matters.”
He was grateful for the dark that lent his grief cover, for the cab that prevented her from looking him directly in the eyes. “I don’t know if the bomb was meant for Selim. The war was starting. Selim was foolish, too open about his views. He’d sit on the steps of the masjid after prayers, his green eyes full of fire, discussing his dreams for our town. A Syria where all opinions were valid, where the government put its citizens first, regardless of creed, where our mother would have her own means and not have to stay with our father. When Syria would be a bustling hub of culture and industry, and draw in tourists and dollars from across the globe. Above all, he dreamt of a time when, with Allah’s grace, the powers that be, the United States of America and Russia, would look to Syria and view it not as a pawn, but as an equal. He believed in the impossible, and I think that’s what made my father more angry than anything else.”
“Your parents must have taken it hard. How did they cope?” said Ellie.
“Last question?”
She nodded. “No more questions about your past. Not until you’re ready.”
“My father wasn’t there that day, but he drank himself into a grave after that. A man, who’d never touched a drop of alcohol before. He blamed himself, I think. At least that’s what my mother says. He blamed himself for explaining with his belt rather than his tongue. He could have taught Selim not to be so open, to chain up his dreams. The thing is, Selim was so strong. Who knew he needed protecting too?”
“You’ve lived horrors I can’t even imagine,” said Ellie, looking up at him. “Your poor mother, losing you all.”
“After Selim, she changed. Her infectious laughter dried up overnight, as if it had been blocked by a bath plug. She wore only black and prayed Qur’an more than ever. And our house, it was like all the joy had been sucked out, as if Selim’s death created a vacuum where nothing existed but a raw ache. Now I’m gone too. And all she has is their graves.”
She grasped his hand, but their fingers sat awkwardly, as if they didn’t quite belong together, so she released it. “She has you.”
“Maybe I’m not enough to balance out all the pain,” said Yusuf. He’d voiced his deepest fear, that he was unlovable or somehow not enough, for his mother or for the people in this land. It hung in the air between them and the gulf between them widened.
“Maybe she’s just not ready to let go,” said Ellie. She drew her coat close around her and buried her chin in her cranberry-coloured scarf.
He wondered if he’d been right to exchange his home for this strange land. He ached to hold his mother once more. “Maybe I should have stayed. Part of me thought this is what Selim would have done. He would have left.”
“Who knows what the future holds, Yusuf? You can only make the choices in front of you. Maybe your mother would choose differently too. Maybe she’d come if you asked again.”
“Perhaps it was Allah’s way. She was too old to make the journey. It’s hard even for the young. In a few years, when I have the right to stay permanently, I’ll convince her, and we’ll do it the right way, with tick boxes and forms, not on the seas or in the back of a truck praying not to be found...”
Ellie took his face in her hands, and for a moment, there, high up above the trees, they swayed in the wind. She planted a kiss on his cheek, and it comforted him. They drew apart. The twinkling lights of the city stretched for miles, and the thud of soft house beats drifted over to them from a makeshift bar underneath colourfully lit trees a few hundred metres away.
“I envy the roots you have here, how comfortable you are,” said Yusuf.
“Cities are always changing, even if you’ve lived here all your life. I’ve seen sides to Berlin recently I didn’t expect.”
“You mean you’ve seen the dark side of people. Cities are just bricks and mortar.”
A sad smile played on her lips. “Yes, I’ve made sense of it now. Cities are made up of people. They are made from the sweat, tears and dreams of the people who live there.”
“You still love this place. I can hear it in your voice, it’s clear in the way you look down at the specks of light,” said Yusuf.
“It’s my home.”
“Can it be mine?” He knew that no place could be everything to everyone. There were always losers and winners. Places changed with the wind, and they changed with leaders, and with the weather, and with external forces. So much lay out of his control, but he wanted reassurance.
She leaned into him, and her body warmed his. The silken strands of her hair tangled in her scarf. “Only you can decide that, but you are not the first refugee to make your home here, neither will you be the last. The majority of Berliners welcome new faces. It is a young city. A city full of dreamers and artists. You can find things here that would be unimaginable elsewhere, like the Syrian man performing burlesque to great acclaim on the other side of town, or the man in Friedrichshain with an armoury of rings piercing his nose and his whole body tattooed save the whites of his eyes.”
Yusuf laughed.
“I’ll let you in on a secret. This city is real. There is no artifice.” Her fingers glided over the rusty steel of the safety bar, the dents in the cab and the peeling paintwork. “Show this city and its people the shades of you, the dark and the bright, all your hidden colours, and it won’t abandon you. Make yourself vulnerable, and the city will catch you if you fall.”
He wished he had her faith. “I’ll think about it.” He couldn’t be certain he had any more to give.
She stood, and the cab jerked. “I don’t think I’m going to make it down again.” She gripped his arm in panic.
“Come,” he said, standing and holding out a hand to her. “I’ll help.”
They climbed down with care, each lost in their own orbiting thoughts. When they reached the ground, she took off her boots and stood barefoot in the grass.
“It feels good to be on the ground again.” She tugged at him, and pulled him in the direction of the river. Fireflies zipped past them, yellow pinpricks of light in haphazard flight, like fairies just out of reach. When they reached the river bank, water swirled beneath them, dark and shallow. “I want to give you something.”
“Oh?” said Yusuf.
“Some good luck. It’s a custom here in Berlin. You need to spit in the River Spree. I’ll go first.”
To his surprise, she took a deep breath and lobbed a ball of spit into the water below.
He hooted with laughter. “You didn’t.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I did. Your turn.”
He spat, a great big gloop of saliva, and when he was done, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
She looked at him approvingly. “Now sleep. Your luck is about to change. You just need to trust.”
They hugged goodbye, and when she had shrunk to a small dot in the distance, he missed her.
