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I picked up my invitation to the Official Opening at the school and a tray of croissants from the local bakery on the way to Karim’s. No one answered when I pressed the bell. I popped down the tray on a handy table, opened the meter box, found the key and let myself in. I hoped Karim would show up soon. I planned to squander a fortune on an outfit. It wasn’t every day I rubbed shoulders with royalty.
A scribbled note on the breakfast bar invited me to help myself to coffee. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. I picked up on the second ring, “Karim’s phone.”
No answer.
“Hello, hello.” All I heard was a click followed by a beep; the familiar precursor to a scam call. At home I’d have hung up, but this was Karim’s phone and so I waited. There was a second click. A male voice said, “The diversionary demonstration at Yongah Detention Centre has commenced.”
“What?”
I was answered by the hollow silence of a disconnected call.
I stared at the phone feeling uneasy. Surely, Karim wasn’t involved in a demonstration at the Detention Centre? The very idea was unthinkable. There had to be a rational explanation. This is what comes from spending so much time researching secret government agencies. I’m seeing conspiracies everywhere, I told myself as I hunted for a pen. I was scribbling the message on the back of the note Karim had left for me when I heard a key in the lock.
“Sorry I wasn’t here to greet you, Beth ... you won’t believe how frenetic it is back there.”
“I can imagine.” I took my passport out of the pocket of my anorak. “Make sure I get this back once Security is through with it. Fancy me meeting Kate and William.” I smiled with delight. “I still can’t believe it.”
Karim’s smile slipped. “I don’t know how to tell you...”
“Tell me what?”
“I can’t get you into the reception, after all. There isn’t sufficient time to run a check on you.”
I was shattered but I understood that attendees had to be vetted. In any event, I’d be at the opening ceremony. Being there for Annie was what mattered. I paused while I considered what to say, and decided on the truth. “I must admit I’m disappointed, but it can’t be helped.”
The tightness left Karim’s face. “Thank you for being so understanding, he said, nodding his head approvingly. “Most women would hit the roof.”
“I’ll take your word for that. Would you like something to eat?”
“I’d kill for a coffee.”
No sooner had we sat down at the table than the home phone rang. Karim leapt up to answer it. His side of the conversation consisted of a series of hmms, yeses, and okays. Finally, he said, “I’m on my way,” and slammed the phone down. “What’s this,” he asked, staring down at the note I’d scribbled.
“Oh I’m sorry ... you missed a call from the Detention Centre. Apparently, the refugees are demonstrating.”
“Did the caller leave a number?”
“No, and I didn’t get his name either. He rang off before I could ask him. Do you think we should phone the police?”
“There’s no need. The Warden will have contacted them. Calling me is nothing more than a courtesy ... no doubt on account of my association with the centre.”
Even though I hadn’t voiced my suspicions concerning his involvement, I felt a red flush creeping up my neck. “I suppose this is what happens when you lock men away for years,” I said, focusing instead on the injustice of a system that treated asylum seekers as criminals. “I hope no one is injured ... anything could happen in a riot.”
“Don’t worry you’re head over it ... it’s just a PR exercise.”
“I was right ... you are in it on it,” I said, my voice shrill with outrage.
His skin flushed the tell-tale murky maroon you get when you mix red with brown. “It’s not a riot in the real meaning of the word, Beth. Actually, it’s merely a protest staged to draw attention to the West’s greed for oil and their determination to do what it takes to get their hands on it without regard for the people they slaughter in this endless bloody war.”
“Oh Karim ... you’re too much of an idealist for your own good.”
“It seemed a good idea at the time,” he said with a sheepish grin.
I shook my head at him. “There’ll be repercussions. Can’t you call it off?”
“It’s too late.” He grabbed my hand. “I thought you’d be sympathetic. You’ve seen what it’s like at Yongah.”
“I do understand.” I squeezed his hand. “But why choose such a catastrophic way to express your feelings? Couldn’t you have written a letter to the editor of the paper or tweeted your disapproval.”
“Much good that would do. The G20 is an opportunity to put our case on the world stage.”
My heart twisted. “I sympathise with your intentions, I really do. But Karim, have you thought this through? Do you understand that if you’re convicted of inciting a riot at a place like Yongah, you could be stripped of your citizenship, imprisoned for years and then deported? We need to sit down and think calmly about this.”
For me, remaining calm was next to impossible. I collapsed on the closest chair. The reason the detainees at Yongah weren’t on Manus Island[23] with other refugees waiting for their applications to be processed, was because of crimes they’d committed in the countries from which they’d fled. According to what I’d heard on the News, most had links to ISIS. “If you were able to convince the ringleaders to call off the riot,” I said, my heart thudding like a tom-tom, “I’m sure it would count in your favour. You could blame your involvement on post traumatic stress. It’s obvious you weren’t well enough to start work and definitely not at a place where you’re in contact with children who’ve gone through similar ordeals to you. You’ll see the court will take your state of mind into consideration.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my state of mind!”
“But Karim, I’m sure you wouldn’t have got involved if you weren’t troubled.”
“Troubled!” He laughed harshly. “Of course I’m troubled. I’m troubled by the Western world’s oppression of the Middle East. I’m troubled by their determination to destroy Islam using the enormous military means at their disposal. It troubles me that my people are condemned as terrorists when they retaliate.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way ... you never mentioned any of this before.”
“Beth, I’ve changed. I’m no longer the callow optimist you knew at Hagadery.”
“I can see that. How could it be otherwise, Karim ... after what you’ve been through? I can’t bear thinking of you trapped in a bombed-out building, surrounded by the dead and dying ... not knowing if anyone would hear your cries...”
Karim interrupted me, “It wasn’t like that, Beth.”
“Oh!” I was suddenly nervous.
For a moment he looked deep into my eyes and then he hastily looked away. “I didn’t tell you the truth about what happened to me in Suruç.”
“Are you saying you lied? Are you telling me you weren’t in the hospital when it took a direct hit?”
A muscle twitched in his cheek. “I was there all right. But the truth is as far from what occurred as you can possibly get...” His voice trailed away and he sat with his head in his hands at the table groaning — whether it was with shame or horror, I couldn’t tell.
“You’ll feel better if you make a clean breast of it,” I told him matter-of-factly, though I was a bag of nerves.
At last he spoke. “The men who came to my rescue were ISIS fighters looking for medical supplies.” His lower lip began to tremble; he was obviously in a state.
“Go on,” I said firmly, although internally I was shaking.
“They dug me out from under the rubble. Then, because I was a doctor they took me with them. Some of their men had sustained terrible injuries in the conflict and none of the group had any medical training. I was with them for three months always on the run, moving from hell-hole to hell-hole.”
“So let me get this straight ... you were kidnapped by ISIS guerrillas and forced to treat them?”
He lifted his chin. “Force didn’t come into it, Beth. I did what needed to be done. I’m a doctor and I was there.”
“You must have been scared out of your wits?”
“Scared?” He raised his voice. “Everyone over there is. You’ve no idea what it’s like in Syria.”
“They took you to Syria?”
He nodded. “It’s hell for the poor wretches living there,” he said with a faraway look in his eyes. “Half a million have been killed and millions driven from their homes, life after life destroyed in this endless bloody slaughter.”
I was determined to keep the conversation on track. I said, “Thank goodness you escaped. How did you get away from them?”
“It wasn’t a case of getting away from them; I understood where they were coming from and how powerless they felt.” He stared at me fiercely; the despondency of a moment ago had been displaced by raging fury. “Why do you think the West invaded Syria?”
“To destroy their chemical weapons program.”
“That’s Western propaganda. There are only two reasons they’re bombing the shit out of us and neither of them is our non-existent chemical weapons program.”
In that horrible moment I realised Karim identified with his captors. “What reasons?” I asked, doing my best to hide my shock from him.
“First off to get their hands on our oil. You must see that, Beth.”
I nodded. He wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t heard before. My agreement seemed to calm him.
“Of course it does ... there’s no point in denying it. But Beth, the West, or rather Christendom, has an even more sinister purpose.”
“Oh ... what?”
“To destroy the Islamic faith of course ... in the same way that the Crusaders tried to during the Middle Ages.”
My mouth dropped open. But nothing came out of it. I didn’t trust myself to speak. But my lack of response went unnoticed by Karim. The floodgates were open. And like a besotted lover talking to a trusted friend about a secret affair, feelings too sickening to reveal came pouring out.
“But they’re mistaken if they think they can destroy us. They didn’t back then and they won’t now,” he said, staring at me with blazing eyes. “We may not be powerful enough to defeat the US army and their groveling allies in our land, but we can put the fear of Allah into their wives and children on their soil using the time-honoured weapon of resistance.”
I forced myself to ask. “What would that be?”
“The psychology of terrorism. We learnt it from the IRA[24].”
