Jakob Arjouni - Brother Kemal

Rashid tried to return the compliments as far as he could. ‘… Very glad to meet you myself … thanks for your time … Bamberger Allgemeine , a great little paper …’

Then the journalist took an old-fashioned tape recorder out of the shoulder bag — ‘Afraid we don’t run to modern technology at the Bamberger Allgemeine yet’ — spent five long minutes getting the recorder to work, and finally began asking questions that he had noted down on a small piece of paper covered with food stains.

It was the first interview of Rashid’s that I had heard, and there were to be another eight that afternoon: with the Rüdesheimer Boten , the Storlitzer Anzeiger , the student journal Randale , with Radio Norderstedt and someone or other — and little as I liked Rashid myself, by at least the third or fourth interview I was feeling sorry for him all the same.

‘My dear Malik Rashid,’ went on the man from Bamberg, after a few trivial questions about Rashid’s place of birth and biography, ‘now let me take the bull by the horns: is your masterly, compelling novel Journey to the End of Days not, above all, the subtle coming-out of a man from North Africa who has lived in Europe long enough to throw off the religious and traditional chains of his native land publicly and, so to speak, on behalf of many … how shall I put it? Like-minded men?’

‘What?’ Rashid’s mouth stayed open. He really did seem taken entirely by surprise. He had certainly expected journalists to broach the subject, but he was obviously not prepared for it to be the kernel, not only of this but of all the following interviews on his first day at the Fair. However much he explained that his central character’s homosexual love for a young hustler was a mixture of sexual frustration, longing for freedom, the desire for forbidden fruit, with at most a very slight amount of natural inclination, and that he as a writer was simply devising a conflict that would help him to describe the present state of Moroccan society — the one thing that interested the mostly unprepared and cheaply dressed men and women of Bamberg and Storlitz was: DOES THE MUSLIM AUTHOR PUBLICLY ADMIT TO HIS HOMOSEXUALITY?

Just after four o’clock, Sheikh Hakim called me on my mobile. I was standing at the wash basins in the gents’ toilet for the third time that afternoon, waiting for Rashid. Maybe it was the scalding coffee that he tipped cup after cup down his throat during the interviews, maybe it was the interviews themselves, but he was suffering from diarrhoea. As I stood next to the room full mainly of men urinating and watched how they carelessly soiled the floor, I gathered from their talk that there were three main topics of conversation at the Book Fair that day. First, Gretchen Love’s future best seller Spermaboarding, or How a Hundred Men Came On Me All at Once , just published by a large and famous firm, a kind of account of a Berlin porn star’s self-exploration. Second, the Wochenecho journalist Lukas Lewandowski, well known to everyone but me, judging by the general interest and all the laughter, who claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary in the high-speed train between Hannover and Göttingen on his way to the Book Fair, and thereupon dropped everything worldly, including his work, to devote himself entirely to that experience. Third, a presumably powerful literary critic whose name wasn’t mentioned but who was referred to as Blondi a couple of times — whether after the pop band, Hitler’s German Shepherd or simply his hair colour was not clear to me — who had published a novel entitled Oh, My Heart, My Heart, So Heavy Yet So Light under a pseudonym. That morning his supposedly top-secret pseudonym had been aired in several newspapers, and Blondi had marched up to one of the journalists responsible at the Fair and slapped his face. ‘Or more likely spat and scratched the little queen!’ said someone in the corner. ‘Oh, my heart, my heart, so heavy!’ Everyone laughed.

At that moment my mobile rang.

‘Good afternoon, my brother.’

‘Good afternoon. As far as I know I don’t have a brother. Who’s speaking?’

‘Sheikh Hakim.’

More laughter about something near the urinals.

‘Wait a minute, it’s rather noisy here.’

I went out into the corridor near the entrance to the toilet.

‘Herr Hakim?’

‘Kemal Kayankaya,’ he stated, pleased. He emphasised the Turkish pronunciation of my name.

‘Yes, you have the right number.’

‘Not a very Christian name.’

His speech rhythm had the monotony of an electric kitchen machine, and he had a strong accent, but grammatically his German was perfect. His sentences sounded as if he had learnt them with heart — as if speaking German was for him a job to be carried out perfectly, like a dutiful official or a high-class whore, but that hardly interested him at all.

‘To me it’s just my name.’

He laughed, coughing.

‘Why do you fight the fact that you came into the world a Muslim?’

‘I don’t fight it, but I don’t make a big thing of it either. I didn’t choose it. Is that why you’re calling — for a discussion about the religious traditions of my parents’ native land?’

That coughing laugh again.

‘My secretary tried to arrange a meeting with you.’

‘He told me that you want to see me, and I advised him to fix a time. I’m not often in my office.’

‘So I see.’

‘You see what?’

‘Well, I am sitting in your office at this moment and it really doesn’t look as if you spend much time here.’

I took a great deal of trouble to go on in a calm voice. ‘Really? Did I forget to lock up?’

That laugh again. It was as mechanical and empty of feeling as his German, and had nothing to do with any kind of amusement.

‘Do you know what’s interesting?’ he asked, without answering my question.

‘A great many things in the world, Herr Hakim. But I assume you mean something that I won’t think of at once.’

‘As far as I can see there’s nowhere for you to sleep in your office. Forgive me, but I’ve never had a chance to see a real private detective’s workplace before, and it could have been like the films: that you earn just enough for schnapps and a folding bed behind the desk. And so, at least, I take it that you have a private apartment somewhere. The curious thing is that Methat has searched your office, has looked through all the drawers and files with meticulous care, and he found no address anywhere to confirm my supposition. Do you understand? As if you had calculated on a situation like this and were intent on leaving no traces in your office leading to your private life. Maybe because there is a woman you love in your private life, maybe even children?’

‘Herr Hakim, I know that you are active in the field of heavy hints and impenetrable remarks, but I am probably not wrong in assuming that you’re not concerned with religion at the moment. If you want to talk about your deplorable nephew, go ahead. If you just want to beat about the bush I’m hanging up. Oh, and kindly get out of my office at once.’

That coughing laugh. Rashid emerged from the toilets beside me, pale-faced. I signalled to him to wait.

‘I’d like to put it more plainly but we’d better not do that on the phone.’

‘Why not? I have nothing to hide — or, as you would say, I have a clear conscience. How’s your conscience, Herr Hakim?’

‘Where are you now? I can come to you at once.’

‘Sorry, but I’m working. I have no free time until Monday afternoon.’

‘I can’t wait as long as that.’

I thought of his threat to find out where Deborah and I lived. ‘Okay, if Methat tidies up after him and replaces the lock on the door, if it suffered when you broke in, then we can meet late tomorrow evening for a little while in some public place.’