Olga Grjasnowa - All Russians Love Birch Trees

When I fell in love with Sami, Neda had been married for a month and Sami had just returned to Germany to get his master’s degree. I had worked up the courage to talk to him at a bar. He had sat with a friend two tables down and hadn’t even looked at me. I was insanely bored that night. I was there with a woman who crushed my hand and had got her Ph.D. in gender studies. I had known about Neda from the very beginning and I also knew that Sami would return to California in two years to get his Ph.D. We stayed together for those two years and I loved Sami in a way that I had never loved anybody before, and he loved the memory of Neda.

I had asked him if he compared me to Neda. It was a lazy Sunday morning, the bedroom draped in a wan gray light. We were lying on the bed. He was reading the Sunday paper, I was reading a dictionary. Now and then I read a word out loud and he corrected my Arabic pronunciation. Sami said that he didn’t think much of comparisons, and anyway, Neda and I were too different. I wanted to know what he meant. He explained that I was strong and independent. That I didn’t really need him. That Neda was fragile. He had fallen in love with her the very first day, and when he saw how she suffered it broke his heart. Crocodile tears, I said. She left you. I didn’t have the energy to stop her, Sami said. Did he compare our bodies, did he think of Neda when he was lying in bed next to me? Or when he was making love to me, did he think of her then? Sami got up and left the room. He didn’t even slam a door. He left, quiet and determined. But if somebody tells you that he loves another woman and if she happens to love him as well, there’s no use in going on talking, especially if you love him.

I had searched the Internet for photos of Neda and finally found one on a social network. Neda wasn’t particularly pretty and what she had written on her page wasn’t particularly smart. For a while I had her picture up next to my mirror and compared our faces in the morning, afternoon, and at night. I wanted to understand why he loved her and not me.

Sami had fallen asleep during the movie. When the credits rolled I placed a blanket over him and turned the TV off. He woke up.

“I’m going to go home now.”

“You can stay.”

With great effort he propped himself up: “No, I’m going to drive now.”

“You can’t drive. You’ve had too much to drink. Sleep here.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. I’ll wake you up tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

Sami turned toward the back of the sofa and went back to sleep.

At my oral exam for my diploma, Windmill put on a presidential demeanor. I focused completely on the buzzing of the fly in the room, its shiny green body that looked more like a tank than something air-bound. I had passed with top marks and didn’t know how that had happened. They asked me where I’d like to work and I said the United Nations.

Didn’t I know how hard that was?

Had I not just graduated with top marks?

Windmill laughed.

I had prepared thoroughly, learned the most important UN languages and done the right internships. I was good, I said.

Nothing wrong with my grades, he replied.

“But truly, how good is your Arabic?” Windmill asked.

“Quite good,” I lied.

“And you just learned it on the side?”

“No.”

“What? No?”

“Not on the side. As a double major.”

“Your strongest dialect?”

“Lebanese.”

A week later Windmill called to say that I’d graduated at the top of the class. Then he went on to praise my interpreting notes and invite me to dinner. I agreed, without quite knowing why.

We sat in an Italian restaurant across from the Alte Oper. Windmill looked at me as if he was afraid I was going to start crying. It was easy to read in his face that he hoped it wouldn’t happen in the restaurant.

On the menu there were no prices and few dishes. The plates were served and cleared in next to no time. To be precise they were cleared before we had a chance to finish. Windmill kept saying, “You’ve got to try this!” And kept on ordering more, always in Italian, always winking and joking with the waiter. I tried to discern in which region he had learned Italian, but couldn’t — his Italian was clear and sterile. Without so much as a trace of an accent. Soulless, as if bred in a lab.

“Where’d you learn Italian?” I asked.

“In Mayence, at the university. And you?”

He focused on me as if we were back in the exam.

“In Rimini.”

“What did you do there?”

“Waitressed for three summers.”

Windmill nodded and signaled to the waiter that he could now serve the espresso. The cups were made of porcelain that was so white it was almost transparent. I leaned across the table and kissed him. He was surprised but returned my kiss.

“I don’t like their espresso here. Don’t you agree? I’ll make you a better one at home.”

He paid the check discreetly with his credit card, which I found a pity as I would have loved to know what I was worth to him.

In the dimly lit hallway I discovered that Windmill was the kind of man who first pulled a woman’s hair and then kissed her. His touches were mechanical and predictable. I looked at his body, how it lay on mine. I saw him kiss my forehead, nose, and lips. Tenderly, and just a little greedily. I saw him unbutton my dress and me helping him. I saw him touch my inner thighs, push aside my panties, lay his hands on my vagina, him putting on a condom. And then I saw him lift up my pelvis, felt the penetration and winced. He interpreted this as a sign of lust and moved faster inside me. I pushed him away.

I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror for the first time in a while. I was naked and thinner than I had ever been. I had no hips. The ribs were clearly discernible and my stomach was caved in. I was disgusted by myself and the man I’d just fucked. He had used me and I had let it happen. I felt empty, sure that this was the low point of my life. But then I looked around the blue-tiled bathroom, and not only did I find a shower with a natural stone floor, but also makeup remover and a brush with long blond hair in it, and felt even worse.

On my way home I sat by myself in an empty S-Bahn car and watched raindrops burst on the windows.

Most days Cem came by around ten in the morning. When I heard him turn the key in the door I was already in the kitchen, waiting for him. My mother must have made a copy of my keys for him.

“You won’t believe this,” Cem said and threw his coat over the back of a chair. His coat gave off a little of the cold outside.

I didn’t inquire, only waited as he put the coffee-maker on the stove and heated some milk.

“My dad went to a CDU meeting yesterday.”

Outside, thick snowflakes fell. I watched them through the window, unwilling to believe what he’d just said.

“He went where?”

“To the CDU. The Christian Democratic Union. The conservatives.” When Cem thought he saw the appropriate reaction in my face, he continued: “It was about integration. When Baba read Der Spiegel and Das Bild he got scared. Of the Islamists, mind you. My teyze tried to explain to him that, statistically, he’d probably be considered an Islamist as well. But he didn’t listen to her. Said he wasn’t even a Muslim. Then he read an article by a CDU secretary general and wanted to hear my mother’s take on the whole affair. She said that he should take out the trash.”

“Did he do it?”

“What?”

“Did he take out the trash?”