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Ellie reminded Yusuf of the man he wanted to be. In the midst of the tear gas, he’d grasped Isaiah by the collar and thrust him forward, out of the billowing cloud of smoke, away from the madness where men scrambled for the upper hand. They pitched forward onto a street where the air cleared and their lungs fought to eject the poison, but the sky above them hung heavy and leaden.
He glanced up, checking if they were safe, and there Ellie stood, her red hair and bright scarf conspicuous against the grey Berlin street, as if the earth would bend itself in half so they could encounter each other. As if chance were a fool, and Allah had written down his plans for each human in the most exquisite detail.
Kissing Ellie gave him a taste of a life just out of reach. Now, in Ellie’s parental home with the hallmarks of civilisation all around them, from the fine wallpaper to Ella Fitzgerald’s voice soaring from the age-worn vinyl on the record player, his conscience clawed at him.
He and Isaiah had been lucky to escape without injury or arrest. The symptoms of the tear gas had now entirely dissipated, leaving them both bleary-eyed and eager for rest. Isaiah wolfed down his cheesecake. Yusuf toyed with his, pushing it around on his plate with a fork. Animated voices travelled from the kitchen where an exuberant, alcohol-fuelled Martin Richter questioned his wife about the demonstration while she replenished the coffee.
Four days until his circus family would be torn apart.
“This is some record collection,” said Isaiah, marvelling at the gems he discovered amongst Ellie’s father’s most prized belongings.
“You really shouldn’t have been there today, Yusuf,” said Ellie. “I know you’re angry but the circus closing doesn’t mean that you won’t find a home in Berlin. Any trouble could put a nail in your chance to stay in Germany permanently. You know better than anyone what Silberling is like.”
“It’s my fault. I persuaded him to come,” said Isaiah, looking up from scraping the crumbs off his plate. “And after everything Silberling’s done, the government deserved what it got today.”
“Yeah, well, there are other ways to hit back other than going full out cuckoo,” said Ellie, rolling her eyes. She prised the fork from Yusuf’s fingers, placed his plate on the coffee table and tugged him to his feet before motioning to Isaiah. “Want to come?”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” said Isaiah, his eyes drifting to Katharina Richter fussing around her stumbling, ruddy-cheeked husband. “I’m going to help your parents clear up first. A nap would be really good right now too.” He eyed up the sofa with its deep cushions and the throw folded neatly over one arm.
Ellie sighed, and the green of her eyes deepened as she took in the scene in the kitchen. “Suit yourself.”
Yusuf trailed after her to the back of the apartment, aware of her every movement.
She caught his eye. “Papa’s not always like this, you know. He’s a good man.”
“It’s not for me to judge,” said Yusuf. “But for what it’s worth, I like him. He’s worth ten of my own father.”
“The drink has always been his vice.”
There were enough vices for men to fall prey to, without alcohol being one of them, but some flaws were more forgivable than others. Martin Richter didn’t beat his family, nor seek to mould them in his own image. He wondered what drove her father to drink, but didn’t think it his place to ask. Perhaps one day, but not yet.
Ellie dragged an extra chair towards her father’s desk so they could sit side by side, their thighs inches apart. He longed to touch her and drive the worry from her face, but he held himself in check.
Her voice twisted into something more hopeful with a shy undertone. “I’ve been working on something to make up for the BAZ article.”
She powered up her computer, biting her lip as she pulled up a screen, drumming her fingers on the mouse pad. He’d not seen her nervous before, and found it ignited a reciprocal anxiety in him.
The website she revealed puzzled him at first. He wasn’t one for computers, but he understood their possibilities and that she could reach a big audience with the click of a button. When he read her blog posts, he could hear her voice, the one from her journal that had captivated him and revealed her true self. Here on her blog, she’d written about each of them: about him, Emir, Zul, and Osman; about Aischa, Aya and Amena, who had been strong enough to flee Yemen, and to catch him when he fell; about Simeon, stitched together in a hospital, his lung punctured, without a mother to piece him back together again.
Her pen pictures didn’t skim the surface; they dove into history, personality and dreams, weaving together facts and emotional insights. Refugee narratives had become so common against a darkening patchwork of news that included terrorism and threats of nuclear war, displacement of people elicited less empathy. But Ellie had uncovered the beating heart of all of them, building a story not of strangers, but of a community that deserved recognition. As if she had a microscopic understanding that allowed her to zoom in on their value as people.
She watched him as he read, anxiously, repeatedly brushing her fringe out of her eyes. Every now and then, he asked for the meaning of phrases he didn’t understand.
“What is reconciliation?”
“And degradation?”
He understood the compassion behind her words without needing to unravel their precise meaning. He asked to reassure her. To give him a chance to drill down to the minutia of the words that helped him rediscover his sense of worth. To buy time while he found the words to express how he felt.
In the end, after he’d absorbed the comments that strangers had left on the articles, ones that made him feel perhaps Germany could be his home after all, he said simply, “You have all the words, and I have none. Just thank you.”
Ellie shrugged, as if her courage didn’t deserve praise, as if her compassion was a thread running through everybody rather than something special. “I was looking for a way to correct the damage done by Marina’s article. I couldn’t bear for my name to be attached to those views. They aren’t me. This is me.”
His eyes kept drifting to her mouth. He forced them away, stubbing the floor with his socked feet, trying to focus. “What I don’t understand is why you’ve only written about us as people, and not about Silberling and Marina, and the part they have played in this story. Why can’t you publish the recording of them you found on her computer? The emails she exchanged with his assistant?”
She met his eyes and hers beamed with a quiet pride. “Because that part of the story is being picked up by Die Welt.”
He whooped and punched the air; it felt like justice. All he’d ever dreamed of was a fair chance to make something of himself. “I can’t believe it. That’s incredible, Ellie.”
“There are still some pieces missing, and the editor at Die Welt thinks so too. Marina and Silberling are dangerous people to take on. I need the full story,” said Ellie, “and secret recordings are illegal, unless they are made in the overarching public interest. What I really need is for us to establish, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Silberling fell below the standards of his office. We need more.”
Yusuf set his shoulders back, sucked air into his cheeks, then released it slowly. “Then let’s get it.”
Yusuf’s exhaustion settled into his bones, and fatigue played out in shadows across his friends’ faces. He, Ellie and Isaiah had been mulling over options for hours, working out a plan about how to catch Silberling out and force him to make a mistake.
So far, Silberling had made all the running. He’d enlisted Marina’s help, he’d got out ahead with television coverage and the circus closure. BAZ had even bagged an exclusive on the closure letter. Its online edition carried a barrage of support for Silberling in the online comments, and Yusuf understood that this had become a war of perceptions between the haves and the have-nots, between those who despised mass immigration and those who tolerated it.
Soon, he’d have to leave for the circus, and every breath took him closer to his circus family losing it all. He and the circus folk were just collateral, unless they managed to steal a march on Silberling. Unless Ellie’s blog and Die Welt article could change the narrative.
They all agreed the surest way to keep the circus safe was to discredit Silberling so they weren’t at the whims of his plotting. Surely his successor at the Interior Ministry would have more of a conscience?
It was down to the three of them. And Ellie’s mother, who wouldn’t be kept out of the melee.
“This is so exciting! A whole operation out of our apartment,” said Ellie’s mother. She eased herself onto the rug of the library where Yusuf, Ellie and Isaiah had sprawled. She’d showered after the demonstration and now wore a flowing zebra-print dress. The jewellery around her neck clanked. “And it’s May Day, too. The perfect day to stand up to the state.”
“We should rifle through Silberling’s bins and get one of those DNA tests done. I bet his heritage is as mixed as mine,” said Isaiah, only half in jest.
“I can’t get Karl out of my mind,” said Yusuf, cupping his hands behind his head and staring at the swirling plaster on the ceiling.
“Oh?” said Ellie, chewing on a pen.
“He told me I have powerful enemies. More than once, I think.”
Ellie’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s what he said? You haven’t mentioned that before.”
“It was in my statement to the police after the break-in at the circus. They didn’t seem to find it significant.”
She called up the latest incarnation of Karl Klein’s race-baiting website. Her research had listed at least five different websites that had existed over the past three years with links to him. “God, look at this,” she said in disgust. “The internet could have been something special. We could have had a classless, genderless, raceless utopia, where it didn't matter if you are gay or trans or have a disability. Everyone could be equal there in the ether, but instead, the internet amps up polarisation. It’s just a way for arseholes to find out about other arseholes.”
“Maybe Karl was just trying to get under my skin. People like that don’t need an excuse to cause trouble.”
“I think there’s more to it. His baiting of you has to mean he’s linked to Silberling. My goodness, what if Silberling put him up to it? What if Karl was part of his plan?” Ellie kneaded the back of her neck. She paused. “How about we turn this on its head? Get Karl to come to us. If we can somehow prove he and Silberling are connected, that would blow this thing wide open.”
“Would it? Be careful what you wish for,” said her mother, frowning. “Just make sure you’re ready for what you set in motion.”
Ellie paid no heed. She flicked her fingers on the space bar of her computer.
“What are you doing?” said Isaiah.
“I’m dropping a big hint to my followers that this story will appear in traditional print under my byline. I’m also posting an update about the circus closure. Who knows, it might trigger fans into fighting for it. And most importantly, I’m letting it be known that I’m interviewing Yusuf just before showtime tonight.”
Yusuf’s throat tightened. Emir still hadn’t given him the green light to perform. He ached to be up in the rafters with a bird’s eye view of the circus tent. Up there, nothing was complicated. “How is that going to help?”
“Here’s the spiel. If my instincts are right, Karl will be watching, and he won’t want any good publicity for you. Not if ‘powerful friends’ have tasked him to cause trouble. We just need to lure him out and trick him into making the link.”
What had he let himself in for? What good could come of inviting trouble? Selim surfaced from his memories: curly hair, sloping shoulders Yusuf had ridden on as a boy, his smile when he talked about the world he believed in. And Yusuf knew, then, that he had to find his courage.
