Olga Grjasnowa - All Russians Love Birch Trees

“Hurry up,” my father said.

Above us, screams, a cacophony of yelling and a drawn-out female voice. The sound of the body hitting the asphalt. The blue of her dress. The puddle of blood. My father tried shutting my eyes. I freed myself. Ran to her. Her blood stained my shoes crimson red. My father didn’t want to leave me alone. Grandmother yelled at my father. Go. Go back to your wife. Then she tried to calm me down. She wrapped me in a blanket and had me lie down on her bed. My nose started bleeding. Somebody knocked on the door, but grandmother wouldn’t open it.

“Aunt Anna, Aunt Anna. Open the door,” somebody yelled from the other side. “It’s me, Abbas, your former student from third grade.”

Grandmother didn’t move.

“Open the door. I’m with the National Front.”

My grandmother mumbled a Yiddish curse and then backed it up with a Russian one. Then she unlocked the door. A man entered the hallway. His fur cap was pulled down low, his hands were red from the cold and a machine gun hung from his shoulder.

“Aunt Anna, you are hiding Armenians. Someone reported you.”

“Are you crazy?” she asked and stood there, hands on her hips.

I came into the hall. My dress was smeared with blood, which was still running from my nose. The man looked at me, startled. He asked my grandmother, “What’s wrong with her?”

“She was outside, that’s what’s wrong with her. What are you guys doing?” she yelled.

He looked from me to my grandmother, didn’t say a word, but couldn’t quite bring himself to leave, either. He took off his hat. Pearls of sweat gathered on his upper lip.

“I’ll have to search the apartment,” he mumbled.

“After you.” Grandmother gestured, inviting him in. He nodded and went back out to the stairway. My grandmother locked the door behind him. She sank to the floor. Everything repeats itself , she muttered. Everything repeats itself. Everything repeats itself .

I continued my way through the narrow streets. I passed by a barricade. In front of it was a fire surrounded by five men speaking Azeri and warming their hands. A tank approached us, flattening a parked car in its path. From a window above, someone threw a Molotov cocktail. It descended like a falling star, leaving a trail in its wake. At the time, I had been fascinated by the image. I was looking for Ismael’s car, but I couldn’t find it. Walked in circles until I couldn’t breathe anymore, then tried to get out. Artemis and Shushanik had been the names of the daughters of Grandmother’s friend. Her name had been Gajane. Suddenly the tank came to a halt, its prow turned, and the cannon swiveled to aim at the window where the attack had come from. A shattering blast left a hole in the neighboring house. Inside you could see a kitchen table and flowery tapestry. As I brushed a strand of hair from my face, the blood smeared across my cheek.

Sami answered on the first ring. I heard a woman laughing in the background and Sami asked the person who was laughing to please be quiet.

“Come and get me, please,” I said.

“Where are you?”

I looked around, but didn’t know anymore where I was. I had left the camp and now was standing more or less in a field. I was surrounded by olive trees, each looking exactly like the other. On the horizon I saw the bright red roofs of a settlement.

“Don’t be silly, tell me immediately where you are.”

I tried to sound normal: “I don’t know.”

“Are you in Tel Aviv?”

“Palestine. I’m standing in the middle of a field. The sun is setting.”

“I’ll take the next flight. I’ll be there tomorrow morning.”

“Sami, I’m losing blood.”

Elisha hands me a tissue. I put it to my nose and lean my head back. “You have to hold up your head. Otherwise the bleeding won’t stop.”

“Higher,” Elisha says. “Yes, exactly like that.”

I take his arm, and for a while we walk side by side. The sun has almost set, but it’s still light out.

My sincere thanks go to Lala Bashi, Alexej Grjasnow, Norbert Gstrein, Sophie Knigge, Petra Maria Kraxner, and Julia Kreuzer, without whom I would never have begun, let alone finished, this book; and to Mustafa Staiti, Farnoush Noori, and Lina Muzur, as well as my parents, Julija Winnikova and Oleg Grjasnow.

Many thanks also to the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the Simon Literary Agency.

OLGA GRJASNOWA was born in 1984 in Baku, Azerbaijan, grew up in the Caucasus, and has spent extended periods in Poland, Russia, and Israel. She moved to Germany at the age of twelve and is a graduate of the German Institute for Literature/Creative Writing in Leipzig. All Russians Love Birch Trees , for which she received a research grant from the Robert Bosch Foundation, has won the Kühne Prize, the Anna Seghers Prize, and was long-listed for the German Book Prize in 2012.

EVA BACON studied German and English Literature at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich and has worked as an international literary scout. This is her first translation of a novel. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.