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Yusuf dashed after Karl, although every fibre of his being wanted to stay with Doris. Karl might have been strong, he might have had a head start, but Yusuf’s legs were longer, and he gained ground with every metre. He regulated his breathing as he flew forward helter-skelter through the park, squinting to locate Karl. The memorial to the Soviet soldier dominated the skyline. A person-sized Berlin bear shaped out of foliage loomed into vision and startled him. He hesitated, then picked up his pace once more, deciding that Karl must be running to the S-Bahn. Sure enough, he made him out in a narrow underpass a few hundred yards from the station.
Karl had hunched over, hands on his knees, and panted heavily. He glanced over his shoulder. If he’d continued like a horse with blinkers on, galloping on irrespective of the foes behind, he might have slipped Yusuf’s grasp.
He didn’t.
The years of training and the practice ring had made Yusuf tough. He’d grown accustomed to pushing his muscles further than he should. His affection for Doris and fury at Karl drove him on as adrenalin coursed through his veins.
He leapt and landed on Karl, unsure of whether he wanted to drag him back to Doris or beat him to a pulp. The two men barrelled into a recycling bin, sending bottles and aluminium cans clattering all over the ground.
Yusuf clutched Karl’s collar, glaring at him.
Karl’s eyes flicked from Yusuf to the empty expanse behind him, checking to see how alone they were, whether he could call on help. He turned startled eyes back to Yusuf. “I didn’t mean the old woman any harm, really.”
Heat surged through Yusuf’s body. “Why should I believe a thing that comes out of your mouth? You came after my friends, you came after me, you deliberately intimidated Doris–” His voice caught in his throat.
Karl spluttered. “I wouldn’t hurt an old lady. I swear. I was putting it on. I wasn’t going to do anything.”
The light had grown dim and in the distance, an ambulance siren wailed. Yusuf’s mind flashed back to Doris, lying motionless against the grass, the stink of the horses just beyond. His anger spiralled upwards, and he tightened his grip on Karl’s collar. “You won’t get a chance to hurt anyone else.”
A green bottle clanked against his foot. He bent to pick it up, hauling Karl with him. At the last second, he changed his mind, picking up an eroded brick instead that had become dislodged from the underpass.
“What are you doing?” said Karl, ashen-faced in the flickering light.
The night had cooled and goosebumps ran along Yusuf’s neck. Selim had dreamed of a better world. His mother had dreamed of a fresh start. Even Doris wouldn’t want him to protect her this way; there wasn’t a violent bone in her body.
Who was he doing this for? To what end?
He tossed the brick aside, and relinquished his hold on Karl. The brick bounced, disintegrating further. Both men slumped, exhausted.
“I’m sorry,” said Karl.
Yusuf glanced at him in surprise. “Are you?”
Karl eased himself to a sitting position, his back curving against the round edge of the underpass. It reeked of piss.
Yusuf followed suit, tentatively at first, then with a reckless disregard for letting his guard down. He should be at Doris's side. He should maintain his anger against this man, but he’d grown tired of divisions. “Why do you hate me?” he said without any hint of recrimination. He simply wanted to understand.
“Hate?” said Karl, his brow furrowed. “That’s such an ugly word. Don’t be soft. I’m passionate about what I believe in, that’s all. I like a man who knows his mind. None of this dancing around...men need to tell it straight.”
Vibrations shook the underpass from a train passing overhead. Yusuf’s anger subsided like the ocean at low tide. “Something must have happened to make you this way,” he said.
Karl huffed. “Look, if you want me to tell you I’ve changed my mind, that I want your kind here, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“What have we ever done to you?”
“You think I’m racist?” said Karl, puffing out his chest.
Yusuf’s breathing had returned to normal and he exuded calm. “Well, aren’t you?”
“This country used to be something. And now we’re so keen to make up for our past, to be a world leader, that we are opening the floodgates to anyone that knocks. How long before Germany is unrecognisable? It's not racist to think your country can’t sustain mass immigration. It's not racist to vote for slowing population growth. It's not racist to reject open borders.”
“And yet when you look at me, your lip curls, your fists clench, my skin colour sets off a reaction in you that I have no control over. I wonder, when you look at me, what do you see? Do you see me as an alien? Do you see me as scum? A rapist, a job-stealer, a benefits-tourist?”
“No, a terrorist maybe, you being Muslim and all.”
“Maybe the problem is you and your friends, not me and mine,” said Yusuf, flashing a cold smile. He wouldn’t be intimidated by this man anymore, despite the tattoos in old German on his skin. “Tell me, do you seek out the sun to tan?”
Karl rubbed his arms absently. The underpass had grown cold. “What kind of question is that? Everyone likes a tan.”
Yusuf emitted a scathing laugh. Couldn’t Karl see his hypocrisy? “You tan yourself darker, but my skin bothers you. In some countries, women bleach their skin lighter. My own mother worries about her skin tanning, instinctively thinking that white is better. What a world this is.”
Karl clambered to his feet. “Get of your high horse. It’s not just your skin. It’s your background, your accent, the smells, your culture, your difference. I don’t want us to be lost in a multi-racial soup. I see how your kind are systematically erasing the white gene. The Germany I love won’t exist when you are finished with it. It makes me sick, all of you coming here. We aren’t one Volk. We’re a joke.”
Yusuf sighed. “You can’t really expect immigrants to turn their back on their culture. Don’t you ever tire of the outrage?”
“What would I have without my anger? Everything’s changing. There’s not enough jobs for people like me. There’s not enough people who care about what I’m going through, and yet here’s the Chancellor, willing to take a chance on you, giving you housing, giving you benefits, a job. What about the German women who choose you over me? I see you with all those chances and I think, ‘What about me?’ This is my country.”
Was it even possible to convince Karl to think another way? Yusuf tried a different tact, and for once, his German flowed so he didn’t have to overthink which words to grasp from his limited vocabulary. “What do you know about me, Karl, apart from the usual clichés, the stereotypes blown up to make it easy to herd us into groups, to erase our individuality? Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a brown man? Have you ever thought about what lies underneath my skin? About my memories, experiences and dreams?”
Karl laughed like a drain, clutching his belly, then stopped abruptly. “Have you, acrobat? Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a white man at the bottom of the heap? For a person like me who everyone looks down on? Have you thought about what lies under my skin? What about my worries? What about my ill parents, high rents, scant work? I don’t want to bump along drawing money on Hartz IV. I want more for myself. What about the little sister I have to feed and clothe, the fact I can’t afford to take a woman on dates let alone raise a family of my own?”
Yusuf raked his fingers through his hair. His body ached. He needed sleep, but he also craved resolution. There must be a way to set to right all the wrongs of the past, the ones he had suffered and the ones this man had too. A reset button that erased the past and built a new future. Yusuf understood anger and disappointment; rage and violence were also part of him. In another lifetime, another world, could he and Karl have been friends? No one had a monopoly on virtue or on sorrow. They all just wanted to survive.
“Look, Karl, I’m not a scrounger. I’m not an illegal immigrant. I’m just here to build myself up after the war. I don’t want to take anything from you. I want to contribute. When I first came here, I was willing to change every cell in my body to please this country. I was so grateful to be here. Even today, I’d bend myself into a different shape to fit into the mould.”
Karl’s jaw was a hard line silhouetted against the brickwork. “As if you could conform to German values. Your kind will creep into our schools and hospitals, just like the Turks did. You, with your Allah and your jihad and your bloody virgins.”
Yusuf’s faith might be in flux, but he tired of the judgements of those who didn’t understand it. His Islam was his mother’s religion: one of knowledge, peace and community. Yet many in the West, including those with liberal and educated backgrounds, viewed it as a religion of rigidity and violence.
“How are German values any different to mine? Don’t you think I am scared of terrorists, too? And who are you to cast a stone? You think I’m a terrorist when you act the way you do? What would you have me do? Go back to Syria with bombs falling out of the sky while the international community grapples with how to get monsters under control? Do you ever think of the immigrant children washed up on the beach? The ones crushed by rubble?”
Cold eyes over gritted teeth. “It’s not my problem.”
“Context is everything. You pluck out my otherness without thinking of the reasons behind my journey here. I didn’t come here for money. I came to be safe. Even now, if I left for Syria, I’d carry pieces of Germany with me. I love both places. This city, its trees, its parks, its possibilities have become mine. Could you live with all the circus folk being sent back to their countries of origin, even though it might not be safe, just because fate decided to make your country of birth safer than my own?”
Karl hesitated, and this time he sounded less certain. “You don’t belong here.”
“I can be someone here,” said Yusuf.
Karl slumped down next to Yusuf. His rubbed his hand through the close-shaven sides of his hair. “I’ll always be nobody if you stay.”
“Why can’t we both shake off our shackles and just live the lives we want to lead?”
Karl buried his head in his hands. When he looked up, all anger and bravado had been stripped bare. “Because the police came for me today, and I’m living on borrowed time. I’ll be in prison before you can sneeze.”
Yusuf jerked his gaze to Karl’s, and a fraught connection fizzed between them. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly. It was only a matter of time.” He paused. “It’s a public holiday and everyone is celebrating, or demonstrating, and then there’s me, evading capture and scaring old women to death. It’s not fair. I’m not a bad man. I’ve got the courage of my convictions. That’s got to count for something.”
Did Karl really believe that he could act with abandon and evade justice? “Tell me. Did you tell the police we fought in the park?”
“Do you really think I’d go to the bulls? Draw attention to myself after what I just told you? Admit publicly that you’d bested me?”
“I guess that’s a no.” Yusuf tired of the missiles back and forth. He quelled the pangs of sympathy he’d begun to harbour for Karl. Doris’s ghostly-white face haunted him, her slack limbs against the emerald grass. He stood up.
“Wait,” said Karl. “The thing is, there’s this man. He promised he’d take care of my sister when I go to prison, but he’s as likely to keep his word as I am to land a holiday in Florida.”
Yusuf’s heart skipped a beat. Could Karl be talking about Silberling? He stilled his expression, lest too much eagerness resulted in Karl clamming up.
“The man’s a weasel. I can’t trust him.” Karl paused. “I might not like you, acrobat, but can I trust you?”
Yusuf’s voice echoed through the underpass, a rekindling of hope. “I guess neither of us have anything to lose.”
