Stephanie de Velasco - Tiger Milk

A letter?

Yes, he says, from the immigration department.

Mama, Jameelah yells, a letter came from the immigration department!

Noura comes back into the hall.

There, says Amir pointing at the little table. Noura grabs it and goes back into the kitchen and we follow her. When she sits down at the kitchen table to open the envelope I can see that her hand is trembling.

Well, asks Jameelah.

I look at Noura’s shoulders and back which are always straight, even when she’s sitting down. She puts the letter down on the table in front of her, braces her head in her hands, and begins to read. Suddenly her shoulders seem to shrink, smaller and smaller, and her normally straight back starts to droop, bending more and more until at some point it looks like Noura doesn’t have any bones at all anymore, like somebody removed them one after another. She puts her head on the table and collapses into herself like a hot-air balloon that’s spent, a balloon that says I just can’t do it anymore, I don’t want to inflate and rise up in the air anymore, I don’t want to carry you anymore, I don’t want to carry anyone or anything, carry yourself.

What is it, I ask.

Yeah, says Amir, what’s going on?

Jameelah yanks the letter out from under Noura’s head, reads it and then drops it on the floor and runs out to the hall. I hear the door to the apartment slam shut.

Wait, I shout.

I run as fast as I can down the stairs but when I get outside I see Jameelah disappear beyond the far side of the playground. I run across the playground toward the train station. The platform is empty. I gasp for air, for a second I think I’m going to suffocate, that’s how bad my lungs hurt. I definitely need to quit smoking, I think, and then I think what a fucked up thought that is and that I’m far too young to be thinking about shit like that. It’s not the time for me to quit smoking, it’s not the time to quit drinking, it’s not the time to quit doing anything, Jameelah and I just started again now that things are better, now that Amir’s back and Anna-Lena will soon be off to the nunnery.

I take the train to Wilmersdorfer and run over to the planet. The sky has gone dark, the clouds hang grey and heavy almost down to the roofs of the buildings. There’s nobody at the planet except Apollo and Aslagon. They are loading a shopping trolley with all sorts of stuff, old blankets, bottles, plastic bags. On top of it all is a blaring radio. The first raindrops start to hit the street.

Have you guys seen Jameelah, I yell.

Apollo shakes his head.

Haven’t seen her, he says and then he looks up at the sky and pulls his hood down over his face.

Come on, says Aslagon pushing the trolley.

What are you doing, I ask, and where are you going?

It’s going to get cold, says Apollo looking at the sky again, we’re going where it’s warm, where we can put on some fresh clothes and have a roof over our heads. Summer is over.

Aslagon nods.

What about the ship, I say, what about Naglfar and the end of the world?

Apollo looks at me and smiles and then takes off his hat like he’s making a formal greeting.

We’ll see you next year, he says.

Like a caravan in the desert, Apollo, Aslagon and the shopping trolley set slowly in motion. Soon I’m all alone at the planet and I don’t know where I should go, the rain is getting harder and spatters down on me. I’m not sure how long I stand there but I’m soaking wet when someone taps me on the shoulder from behind. It’s Nico.

Are you crazy, he says pulling me into the phone booth, you can’t just stand around in weather like this, he says, do you want to kill yourself?

No, I say, I’m looking for Jameelah.

She was just on Kurfürsten, says Nico.

Kurfürstenstrasse?

Yeah, down where the hookers stand. No idea what she’s doing there but she looked really stressed out. Did something happen?

Did you talk to her, I ask.

No, says Nico, I don’t think she saw me. But even if she did she hasn’t talked to me since all the shit with Amir. She’s obviously angry at me.

Probably.

Probably, says Nico looking at me. You were right by the way about just going to the police. I should have asked you again beforehand. It wasn’t right and I’m really sorry.

We can talk about it another time, I say, how long ago did you see Jameelah?

Not sure exactly but it wasn’t long ago.

Do you have any minutes, I ask.

Nico hands me his phone. I dial Jameelah’s number but nobody picks up.

Shit.

I’m sure it’s nothing, says Nico.

I have to go, I say.

I run to the U-bahn and take it to Kurfürsten. When I get out it’s thundering and there are flashes of lightning. I run half blind along Kurfürsten, the women have gathered under the awnings of the convenience stores to avoid getting wet, but not Jameelah, she’s sitting on our electrical box and letting the rain pour down on her. She’s holding a Müller milk in her hand, raindrops plop into it, thick drops that are dripping off Jameelah’s nose. I climb up next to her. For a while nobody says anything, we just sit there and let life float by, twenty-one minutes past, meaning just thirty-nine minutes of life left, I count slowly backwards from there until I reach zero, until I don’t have a minute left to let float by.

What was in the letter?

For a while Jameelah doesn’t say anything and I wonder to myself whether she’s counting backward from thirty-nine too, because that’s about how long it takes her to put the Müller milk container to her lips and gulp it down in one go.

The letter, says Jameelah, the letter said Ladies and Gentlemen, as you have known for a good long time, god’s earth is rotten and as a result you can no longer remain here in Germany. Please pack up your things and fuck off back to wherever it is you came from. With rotten regards, your rotten world. That’s about what it said.

It can’t be true, I say, how can it be so sudden.

My mother went back once after we moved here, says Jameelah, she just wanted to go to her mother’s funeral but they found out somehow.

So what, I say, who cares about that.

They care, says Jameelah pulling Mariacron, maracuja juice and milk out of her rucksack and mixing another round, you’re not allowed to ever go back once you’re here, otherwise you have to go back permanently.

That’s crazy, I say.

We have to turn in our passports tomorrow, says Jameelah.

Why?

So we don’t drop out of sight beforehand. What do they think, that I’m Anne Frank or something?

Dropping out of sight is a good idea, who is it you said managed to do that?

Anne Frank.

Anne Frank, wait, does she go to our school? The name sounds familiar.

Man the diary! The diary of Anne Frank!

Oh right, I say, we read that in Struck’s class. That was boring. And the type was so small.

It was only boring because we read the boring version, there’s another one, in the other one Anne Frank writes about her pussy and the guy she’s in love with, Peter. It’s really good.

I want to read that one. Do you own a copy?

No Lukas loaned it to me, but you can have it. I’m never going to see Lukas again.

Better wait and see, I say.

Do you not get it, Jameelah screams and jumps down from the electrical box, they’re deporting us! I have to leave, I’m not going to become German, I’m never ever going to become German!

Today I found an eyelash and for the first time in ages wished for something. When I was a kid I would pull out an eyelash whenever I wanted to wish for something. Why wait for one to fall out when there were so many just lining my eyes and all I had to do was pull the wishes out, I thought, but none of the wishes ever came true, probably because I didn’t wait for them to fall out. I have no idea how many lashes I must have pulled out for that alone, just so I could wish for Papa to come home, over and over. That’s all I ever used any lashes for whether they fell out or I pulled them out. I know that having Papa come home was a big wish, but none of the smaller wishes ever came true either, not that I expected them to, but still.