“I saw what’s on the menu in your canteen today,” said Father. “Believe me, you do want this baklava.”
“I’m sure it’s perfectly delicious baklava,” protested the man, “but I’m afraid I can’t accept it.”
“Maybe I should have a word with your boss?”
“No,” cried the official. “No, Mr. …”
“El-Hourani. You can call me Brahim.”
“Mr. el-Hourani, please give my regards to your wife and tell her what a pleasant surprise this was. But my wife is baking a cake this evening, and if I eat your pastries beforehand, I’ll be in trouble at home.”
“In trouble? With your wife? You’re not serious.”
“I am serious.”
“Well, we don’t want that, do we,” said my father.
“No, we don’t.”
“All right, then.” Father took the bag off the desk. “Thank you very much for your help all the same. And if you ever do fancy some baklava, just give us a ring.”
Then Mother recounted how Father came home and declared with a sigh, “In Beirut, if you need something stamped, you take baklava to the guy with the stamp beforehand. Here they won’t even accept the baklava after they’ve given you the stamp.”
The official didn’t forget my father in a hurry. How could he? He saw him on three further occasions, when Father accompanied men he knew from the sports hall. Each time, he asked the official for a stamp. Each time, he got it.
The preliminary decision was soon followed by the final one. My parents were granted asylum and received permanent residence permits as well. Father got a job in a youth centre where many foreign kids spent the afternoons. He helped them with German after school, and they were happy to learn from him as he was such a good role model. He earned a lot of respect among the youngsters. One time he managed to invite a well-known graffiti artist to the centre. Between them they sprayed and decorated the grey exterior, transforming it into a colourful landscape full of Coca-Cola rivers, lollipop trees, and chocolate mountains with ice-cream peaks. A bit like the wonderful planet Amal.
Mother loved sewing. She would buy fabric at knock-down prices at the local flea market and make up dresses on a sewing machine that also came from the flea market. Father set up a corner for her in the living room, and she’d work in the pool of light cast by a desk lamp that wasn’t quite tall enough, threading the needle and guiding the fabric with steady hands as the machine stitched and whirred. She sold the dresses through thrift shops, often earning ten times what the fabric had cost her. When she’d saved up enough money, she had business cards printed and designed a label to sew on to the dresses. “It doesn’t matter which you choose: Rana or el-Hourani,” Father said, “They both sound like designer labels.” She went for Rana, and that became her brand name. One afternoon—I was six maybe—Mother got a phone call. It was Mrs. Demerici, whose surname, according to Mother, was actually Beck, except she’d married a Turk, the man who owned the thrift shop not far from the pedestrian shopping area. When Mother hung up, her face was glowing with pleasure. “A woman who bought one of my dresses wants to meet me,” she exclaimed, grabbing my hands and dancing round the tiny living room. This was in our old flat, where I had been born in 1984. The woman’s name was Agnes Jung, it transpired, and she really liked mother’s sewing. Agnes Jung intended to change her name to Agnes Kramer in the near future, wanted Mother to make her four bridesmaids dresses, and was willing to pay so handsomely that Mother almost fainted before she managed to collapse into the living-room armchair. She spent the next few weeks sewing day and night. The bridesmaids eventually came for a fitting, and Mother kept making apologies for the neighbourhood and the size of our flat, and saying how much she hoped the ladies liked the dresses. They disappeared into my parents’ bedroom for the fittings, and Mother put the key in the door from the inside so that the keyhole was no good to me.
When Yasmin and I were little, she spent a lot of time in our house. Hakim was in the workshop during the day. My mother sewed from home, and Yasmin was like a daughter to her. We got on well. What I liked about Yasmin was that she never made me feel like a little boy, even though she was two years older. Her eyes were dark brown and incredibly deep, and her long black curls always had a glossy shine. Her hair was usually falling into her face as if she’d just come through a storm. There was something untamed and boyish about her, but only when we were rambling around the flats on our own. She’d break branches off trees and drag them behind her, as if she was marking a boundary. She was better at climbing than me and never tore her clothes. There was an aura of effortlessness about her, yet you were sure to fail if you tried to compete. The results were obvious: I was always coming home with new holes in my trousers and pullovers, which would have to be patched and darned by Mother. Yasmin was quite the chameleon—in adult company, she was always perfectly behaved. She was polite, said thank-you for her dinner, and, unlike me, never put her elbows on the table during meals. She could also be patient and sit still for ages while Mother ran the brush through her hair over and over. I don’t think any of the grown-ups would have believed me if I’d told them the other things Yasmin got up to.
That flat, in which I spent the first seven years of my life, was too small for three people, and describing it as dingy would be an understatement. Nearly all the walls were stained, and they were paper-thin too. Pots clattered constantly through the walls, TVs were too loud, heavy shoes clomped on bare floorboards. You didn’t even need to strain your ears to hear what the neighbours were fighting about—if you could understand the language, that is. There were many different nationalities in this housing scheme: Russians, Italians, Poles, Romanians, Chinese, Turks, Lebanese, Syrians, and even a few Africans—Nigerians, I think. The satellite dishes on our balconies pointed in many different directions. Between the buildings, in the middle of a walled courtyard, there was a tiny playground. A bunch of older teenagers usually hung out there, smoking. It was full of broken glass, and if there was a lot of rain, the playground flooded and turned into a mucky lake. Yasmin and I never went there to play. In front of the buildings, the bicycles at the bike stands nearly always had their saddles or wheels stolen. And if you only locked your bike to the stand by the front wheel, you could be sure the frame would be gone the next day. Even buggies got stolen from halls and landings.
Sometimes Yasmin and I would try to sniff out where the different families hailed from—a “guess which country” game to keep ourselves amused. We’d walk along the dark passageways, their walls smeared in permanent marker, the neon lighting usually flickering, and the smell of disinfectant everywhere. When we were sure no one could see us, we’d go down on our knees or lie on our stomachs for a few seconds and put our noses to the crack of a door. Because there’d always be someone cooking somewhere, and we’d try to guess from the spices and other ingredients where the occupants came from. Mostly the smell was of cooking oil though, and very occasionally the door of the flat would open the minute we lay down in front of it. Then we’d jump up and scarper down the stuffy stairwells until we were completely out of breath. Once we’d reached safety, we’d laugh triumphantly, our lungs screaming for air, our hearts thumping wildly.
The many passageways, nooks, and crannies in our blocks of flats were a paradise for children who loved secrets and needed space away from the world of grown-ups. The grown-ups’ world—in our flats, that meant the faces with downturned mouths. The parents with tired eyes who dragged themselves and their shopping bags up the stairs we hid under. Or the raised voices that filtered through the doors like the songs of sad ghosts.
One day when Yasmin and I were wandering aimlessly through the stairwells, not registering which turns we were taking, we ended up in the basement, in front of a door with peeling paintwork that we’d never seen before. Yasmin pushed the handle down gingerly. The door wasn’t locked. Behind it was a small room and a pallet bed with a crumpled purple sleeping bag on it. The floor was littered with empty beer and schnapps bottles, and we found lots of syringes near the bed. There was no window, just an air vent with a thick layer of dust on the grating. The air was musty and a nasty smell assaulted your nose every time you inhaled. But