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Later that afternoon, Doris convened a meeting for the circus folk in the common room, in an effort to smooth over the tensions and offer solace following Dawud’s detention and Silberling’s letter. She fluttered like a bird, anxious about their well-being but completely at the mercy of the department she worked for but didn’t agree with. Her careful words of comfort stopped short of concrete assurances for her charges, and Yusuf discerned her helplessness in her whitened knuckles when she gripped the table, the eyes that darted from face to face, wishing she could do more.
The performers splintered into groups based on nationalities, frightened, talking in their respective languages rather than the broken German they had come to use as a group. Even Emir and Zul, who had believed the project would work and who’d thrown their whole energy into it, grew silent, as if their fight had been drained.
“We’ll close the circus with dignity,” said Emir, placing his top hat on his head. “We’ll give Berlin a week of shows it will never forget.”
“Maybe they will change their minds,” said Zul, lacklustre, already defeated.
“The decision has been made,” said Doris, crestfallen. She hung her head in her hands as if the closure were her failure, as if she hadn’t toiled to make her home theirs.
Five days and it would all be over.
The passivity riled Yusuf. “Come on! There must be something we can do.” How could they sit here so calmly when he itched to retaliate against someone, anyone, for the lies they had believed? They had been promised safety and opportunity, and instead, their lives crumbled once more. What an illusion security was for people like him. He’d been separated from his mother for nothing. All that time apart, and he had nothing to show for it. He wouldn’t pretend he could accept this outcome. He wouldn’t pretend the Germans harboured only good will.
Someone had to pay, but instead, his friends sat around talking.
Yusuf stood, knocking back his chair. “I’ve got work to do.”
“You’re not staying for Isaiah’s art class?” said Esme.
“No. Not today.”
He headed outside to do chores, hoping to dampen the unease in his mind. He’d been hard at work for an hour, mucking out the stables, when Isaiah startled him.
“Esme said you were in here,” said Isaiah, wrinkling his nose as he caught a whiff of manure. “I know that look. Girl trouble?”
Ellie flashed into Yusuf’s mind. The warmth of her hand on his knee, her eyes wide with concern, their foreheads touching. He shook his head to wash away the thought of her.
“Nah. There’s no girl.”
Isaiah clapped him on the shoulder. “I was joking, man. Emir filled me in on Dawud and the circus closure. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
Yusuf set down his shovel. “It’s not your fault.”
“It sucks, bro. When the chips are down, I like to let off steam.”
Yusuf sighed. Isaiah could be so young sometimes. “I don’t want to come spraying.”
“Not to kick a brother when he’s down–your body might be a work of art but your spraying skills are awful.”
“Thanks.”
“I was going to ask if you wanted to come to Witches’ Night tonight? There’s a sick warehouse party my friends are going to. Or how about Kreuzberg for the May Day protest tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” said Yusuf. His hair flopped across his forehead. He pushed it back with impatient fingers.
The stallion whinnied and nudged him with his muzzle.
Isaiah stuffed his hands deep into his jeans pockets. “Looks like the horse thinks you should come.”
“I remember seeing the May Day images last year. It was chaos,” said Yusuf. There’d been burnt out cars and even Molotov cocktails.
After his fall from the trapeze, when he’d looked back on what happened, he’d been sure the fire in Esme’s act had triggered the flashbacks. It couldn’t be sensible to expose himself to heightened stress right now, but when had being sensible ever helped him?
“There’s the May trees celebrating Spring, there’s concerts and girls and beer, and the workers’ protests. It’s the one day the bulls go easy on us if we cause a bit of mayhem. How about it? Fancy tagging along before the straitjackets go back on?”
Mayhem. No rules. A loss of control.
Yusuf’s internal voice that told him to beware.
A heaviness settled in his stomach.
“Aren’t you tempted to show the white boys and the bulls how you feel? You need to live these protests. Just once. You don’t know Berlin until you’ve experienced it. It’s a day for the oppressed. It’s for anarchists, feminists and anti-capitalists. It’s for all shades of the left. It’s for punks. For the people who feel wronged or want more. Come on, bro.” Isaiah’s gaze swept around the stables and out to the circus tent standing erect against the sky. “They’re shutting this place down. Aren’t you angry? Don’t you want to show it? What do you have to lose?” He punched Yusuf’s shoulder, not in jest, but as a challenge.
Yusuf winced. His body still ached from his fall. Under his shirt, bruises in bright green and deepest mauve danced over his olive skin.
“Seriously man, we have anxiety as people of colour to justify our space. To be good. To not be a burden. Even when our luck is down. When our home is in peril, and our brothers are dying. Even when those who have it all don’t want to help us.”
He was riffing now, a young man in the throes of his beliefs. Not someone who should be trapped in an empty record store, but someone who inspired and could drive change.
He slowed down, rubbing his neck. “We don’t even vote, bro. We sing. We rhyme. We march. But we don’t vote. But there’s one day, one day we can take up space and the police make way. One day when we can protest and let our anger soar. Are you in?”
“Of course you can vote,” said Yusuf. “You’re a German citizen, aren’t you? Voting is a privilege.”
“No, it’s rubber-stamping. Who on the podium speaks for me?” Isaiah dug into his pocket and pulled out a thumb-sized iPod with tangled headphones. “Listen to the first playlist. Focus on the lyrics, bro. Tell me they don’t speak to you. And if they do, meet me at Plänterwald S-Bahn at 10 a.m., and we’ll go into the fray.”
Yusuf took the iPod. “And do what?”
“Be what they fear.”
Isaiah’s playlist consisted of an eclectic mix of rap, blues and soul music from America and Germany, songs that Yusuf had heard on the radio in the common room, in addition to gems Isaiah had most likely discovered at the record store where he worked. Yusuf listened blind: the iPod lacked a display and his knowledge of Western music fell short beyond Michael Jackson and Prince, whom Selim had loved. On some tracks, he struggled to unravel meaning from the lightening fast vocals.
Even so, one song in particular moved him. He lay in his bed with the headphones vibrating in his ears, staring at the beige walls with Talkin’ Bout a Revolution on repeat. He spooled it back until the lyrics became an anthem and fanned out in front of him, a banner, a flag of his own.
A spark flared inside him, dangerous and wild. Following the rules had brought only disappointment and despair, so why bother at all?
For all the West’s talk of opportunities, it failed to deliver. Germany would never accept people like him, not really. The West knew only carrot and sticks, reward and punishment, never understanding or acknowledging how innocents had been wronged. Even so called progress showed the rot to the core. People of colour had witnessed and internalised the backlash in the USA after Barack and Michelle Obama strode into the White House amidst fanfare. What should have been a high-point for race relations unravelled quicker than a moth-ridden jumper.
Yes, he’d meet Isaiah. After all, when had the state ever protected him, here or in Syria? Hadn’t his father taught him that violent people get their own way? Hadn’t Silberling shown once again that even in the hallowed West, under the mask of democracy, the corrupt pulse of power throbbed?
He didn’t recognise the rage in himself, the dormant power inside that had woken.
His whole body pulsed with the need to discard his demeanour of calm and burn up the rulebook.
The thought electrified him, a contagion.
