AIDS if I hear about you hooking up with random boys at the swimming pool again.
What?
Anna-Lena told me at the pool the other day. I find out about everything, understand?
Oh that, says Jessi, that was just Pepi, she says giggling, I’ve been kissing him since kindergarten.
She points at the box.
Is that from Amir?
It’s none of your business.
Tell me what’s in it, Jessi screams throwing one of her puffy slippers at me as I walk away.
Quiet, shouts Mama from the living room, or I’ll boil you both in a cauldron.
I slam the door to my room shut.
Where were you, says Jameelah.
Amir, I say shoving the box under the bed, I’m supposed to look after that in case something happens to him.
Jameelah picks up the box and shakes it. Something knocks around inside.
Do you get it?
Nope.
Something’s not right, I say, but I can’t get a word out of him.
You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, says Jameelah.
That’s stupid.
No it’s an ancient Irani saying.
More like an ancient irony saying.
Jameelah smiles.
You are the true queen of O-language do you know that?
Yeah but that won’t help Amir.
Come on you know him, says Jameelah, he loves to be asked. He’s just waiting for us to squeeze it out of him. We’ll grab him tomorrow and you’ll see how much he talks once we plead with him a little.
Yeah, I say shoving the box under my bed again and hoping Jameelah’s right.
We watch Gilmore Girls and later, once Mama has fallen asleep, we watch one of Rainer’s pornos and almost die laughing. Rainer thinks he has them well hidden under a loose floorboard in the kitchen closet. But come on, people stick things under loose floorboards in every single bad movie and it wouldn’t even surprise me if Jessi had also discovered them.
When we finally leave the apartment just before eleven-thirty we wear nothing but long tank-tops and flip-flops with no underwear but that’s not really because of the spell, it’s because it was so hot all day and barely cooled off after dark. Out of the bushes next to the playground we pull the plastic grocery bag stuffed with the rose petals we nicked from Tiergarten earlier that afternoon and the Müller milk container, the Mariacron, maracuja juice, and milk and climb up the slide to the play fort.
Now we just have to wait for midnight, says Jameelah, pouring the chocolate milk out of the Müller container and mixing the juice, milk, and brandy and stirring it with her long fingers. We take turns drinking Tiger Milk, we look into the sky and say nothing, we just let life float by because we have so much time, because the clock has only just struck fourteen minutes past birth, meaning that we have almost fifty minutes of life to go, and that’s a long time. A bird sings off in the distance somewhere, very loud, almost as if it realizes how nicely it sings.
That’s a nightingale, says Jameelah, there’s a lot of them around here, even more than in Bavaria, and there’s supposed to be so much more nature there, pfff, as if.
Is that another question from the citizenship test?
No I read it in the free paper on the U-bahn, says Jameelah blowing cigarette smoke into the sky. I hope it all goes well.
Of course it will, what could go wrong with a love spell, I say.
I mean at the immigration office you idiot, says Jameelah looking at the clock, it’s exactly midnight. She lifts her tank-top over her head, grabs the grocery bag and smiles at me.
Here we go.
I have to admit I feel like an idiot running around the playground naked like that, tossing rose petals as I go. Actually the whole rose petal thing isn’t so bad, but having to whisper the name is annoying. When you say Nico over and over it doesn’t even sound like his name after a while, and it makes me lightheaded, so at some point I just scatter the petals. The grass is sunburned and rustles beneath my feet, and as I watch the rose petals fall past my legs to the ground I suddenly feel tiny. I
What?
Anna-Lena told me at the pool the other day. I find out about everything, understand?
Oh that, says Jessi, that was just Pepi, she says giggling, I’ve been kissing him since kindergarten.
She points at the box.
Is that from Amir?
It’s none of your business.
Tell me what’s in it, Jessi screams throwing one of her puffy slippers at me as I walk away.
Quiet, shouts Mama from the living room, or I’ll boil you both in a cauldron.
I slam the door to my room shut.
Where were you, says Jameelah.
Amir, I say shoving the box under the bed, I’m supposed to look after that in case something happens to him.
Jameelah picks up the box and shakes it. Something knocks around inside.
Do you get it?
Nope.
Something’s not right, I say, but I can’t get a word out of him.
You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, says Jameelah.
That’s stupid.
No it’s an ancient Irani saying.
More like an ancient irony saying.
Jameelah smiles.
You are the true queen of O-language do you know that?
Yeah but that won’t help Amir.
Come on you know him, says Jameelah, he loves to be asked. He’s just waiting for us to squeeze it out of him. We’ll grab him tomorrow and you’ll see how much he talks once we plead with him a little.
Yeah, I say shoving the box under my bed again and hoping Jameelah’s right.
We watch Gilmore Girls and later, once Mama has fallen asleep, we watch one of Rainer’s pornos and almost die laughing. Rainer thinks he has them well hidden under a loose floorboard in the kitchen closet. But come on, people stick things under loose floorboards in every single bad movie and it wouldn’t even surprise me if Jessi had also discovered them.
When we finally leave the apartment just before eleven-thirty we wear nothing but long tank-tops and flip-flops with no underwear but that’s not really because of the spell, it’s because it was so hot all day and barely cooled off after dark. Out of the bushes next to the playground we pull the plastic grocery bag stuffed with the rose petals we nicked from Tiergarten earlier that afternoon and the Müller milk container, the Mariacron, maracuja juice, and milk and climb up the slide to the play fort.
Now we just have to wait for midnight, says Jameelah, pouring the chocolate milk out of the Müller container and mixing the juice, milk, and brandy and stirring it with her long fingers. We take turns drinking Tiger Milk, we look into the sky and say nothing, we just let life float by because we have so much time, because the clock has only just struck fourteen minutes past birth, meaning that we have almost fifty minutes of life to go, and that’s a long time. A bird sings off in the distance somewhere, very loud, almost as if it realizes how nicely it sings.
That’s a nightingale, says Jameelah, there’s a lot of them around here, even more than in Bavaria, and there’s supposed to be so much more nature there, pfff, as if.
Is that another question from the citizenship test?
No I read it in the free paper on the U-bahn, says Jameelah blowing cigarette smoke into the sky. I hope it all goes well.
Of course it will, what could go wrong with a love spell, I say.
I mean at the immigration office you idiot, says Jameelah looking at the clock, it’s exactly midnight. She lifts her tank-top over her head, grabs the grocery bag and smiles at me.
Here we go.
I have to admit I feel like an idiot running around the playground naked like that, tossing rose petals as I go. Actually the whole rose petal thing isn’t so bad, but having to whisper the name is annoying. When you say Nico over and over it doesn’t even sound like his name after a while, and it makes me lightheaded, so at some point I just scatter the petals. The grass is sunburned and rustles beneath my feet, and as I watch the rose petals fall past my legs to the ground I suddenly feel tiny. I
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