All Russians Love Birch Trees by Olga Grjasnowa

anytime. But now you are here, the materialized consequence of the anti-Semitic annihilation fury. Its executive, so to speak. After Auschwitz the Jews have to be able to defend themselves against those who wanted to kill them. My uncle Günther always wanted to kill Jews, but he didn’t mean it that way. He didn’t fight, he was a paramedic. Nobody from our family actually fought. We’re from a small island. There you only fight with the levee. But this …”
    Daniel took a short deep breath and motioned toward the toilets.
    “This is the practical emancipation of the Jews from the permanent threat of destruction. You defend your hard-fought, functioning state with your life. The Israeli army is not an object of discussion, it’s not an object at all, but made out of flesh and blood. It’s you, your arms and legs, your feet and toes and fingers and hair and night-vision goggles and—”
    “Daniel, I am not Israel.”
    He ran his tongue across his thin lips, looking at me, dumbfounded. “I can’t win with you! But you’re lucky that I’m well-tempered and go along with everything if I’m into someone.” He smiled to himself and sighed. “I’m going to Israel. I booked my ticket today.”
    “What do you want there?”
    He looked at me, shocked, as if he hadn’t considered this until now.
    “Sunshine.”
    “What?”
    “I spent ten years studying the country. Does that count for nothing?”
    The urge to hit him welled up in me again and I had already made a fist when Cem dragged me away. “Come on, let’s go. I’ve had enough. Shit party.”
    The Main River lay black and calm in front of us. It was almost windless. On the other riverside somebody was fishing in the dark.
    “I swear, it was the first porn film we got. In Holland. We’d been looking forward to that vacation for months and the first thing my brother and I did was go into a coffee shop and then search for a porn film. We wanted hard-core and didn’t understand a word. We took a tape from the very back, top shelf, of course.Real hard. And then, finally, we put the tape into the VCR and the only thing we saw was feet. A woman was walking alongside a creek, but we only saw up to her knees. We fast-forwarded, but nothing aside from the feet and the creek. There we were in Holland, liberal country and all; our father had warned us, as had the mullah. We were really horny. And then that. Feet. My brother lost his shit, set the tape on fire and threw it out of the hostel window. He was already doing pretty poorly. Half a year later he died. Did I ever tell you how my brother died? How it took him half a year to kick the bucket?” Cem threw his empty beer bottle into the river and for a moment covered his face with his fingers.
    He had told neither Sami nor me how his brother had died. We only knew that it had been a long time ago and that it had been cancer. Often, when Cem was drunk, he cursingly and threateningly promised to tell us how his brother had died. But he never did and we didn’t ask, because we, too, had our secrets.
    Sami rolled a joint. I reached out for Cem. Cem took my hand and pulled me closer. He said, “Masha, I don’t know how to tell you, but all evening I’ve been getting texts from my cousin telling me not to shop at Aldi over the next few days. Supposedly the profits will go straight to buying arms for the Israeli air force.”
    “Me too,” said Sami.
    “You got them too?” Cem asked.
    “Yeah. No idea who they’re from. I don’t even know the numbers.”
    “And you were afraid of Masha as well?”
    “Totally, man. I thought, now she’s going to kill me.” Sami laughed.
    “If you knew what a scene she made today. In the ladies’ room.”
    I placed my head in Sami’s lap and Cem leaned over me and said that it’s a shame we’re no longer together. His best friends.
    Sami was hungry, and Cem and I trudged after him. Most shops on the Kaiserstrasse were already closed. A few older women with bleached,