All Russians Love Birch Trees by Olga Grjasnowa Page A

stringy hair were still out and about. We passed a twenty-four-hour Laundromat. Inside sat an older couple. Both looked like junkies. He was doing a crossword puzzle, she was clutching a plastic cup, fixated on the swirling laundry with an empty gaze. Their bodies didn’t touch.
    It had become difficult to go anywhere at night. In the area around the train station everything slowly morphed into grocery stores and fish shops. Granted, it was hard to get cheaper and fresher groceries anywhere, and at noon long lines formed, populated by tired women in tight dresses or ample hijabs, guardedby pimps or other male watchdogs. Sami pulled us into a kebab place and he and Cem ordered. The floor was sticky. A rat skittered across the room. The rotating skewered meat glistened. I ate baklava while everything spun around me. The air was sweet and my body melted into the honey.

8
    My head was buzzing. I was lying naked in a dark room. Behind the bed hung posters of horses and pubescents who either sang or acted and were shot in similar poses and colors as the horses. Sami’s cellphone was on the nightstand, my dress hung neatly over the back of a chair, Sami’s shoes stood in front of the chair. He had always had the habit of tidiness. Even in our relationship everything had been orderly to a fault, but with time the memories of who had left and humiliated whom had faded. What remained were the memories of a few good moments, of a diffuse happiness and of desire. Back then it had been physical desire, now it was more the desire to be desired as one had been before.
    I quickly got dressed and went into the hallway. In the kitchen, Minna was humming an unfamiliar melody. The air was heavy with the smell of food. It was as if somebody had just deleted the last three years of my life. I saw it all in front of me again. The afternoons shared with Sami, when his little sister never left us alone and Minna constantly told her to do just that. The dinners with Sami’s parents, when we spoke a mishmash of French and Arabic, the CDs of Fairuz, that in the morning were accompanied by Minna’s song, the feeling of being drunk with love, Sami’s touches and the emptiness following the high.
    “ Salam alaikum .” Minna cframe and smiled at me. I was happy to see her, even though I would have preferred not to run into her. I wanted to get to the bathroom quickly to wash off last night and Sami.
    “ Alaikum salam ,” I greeted Minna.
    She gave me a big hug and urged me into the kitchen, where she poured me a flower-decorated mug of Turkish coffee. The breakfast table had already been set.
    Minna sat down across from me and curiously examined my face. Her gaze didn’t bear the slightest trace of accusation. In the past I had admired her the way you admire other mothers more than your own. When I met her for the first time I swore to become just like her: cheerful and full of warmth. A small Palestinianflag was affixed to the fridge with a black magnet. Minna had been born in a refugee camp in Lebanon.
    Sami came out of the bathroom wearing shorts and a worn-out white T-shirt. He didn’t look me in the eyes and I glanced away, too. He wore Adilette slippers that were at least two sizes too big for him.
    “Habibi, what a sight you are!” Minna said.
    Sami gave her a kiss and looked at me, embarrassed.
    “Where is Leyla?” I asked.
    Leyla was Sami’s little sister, and it was her bed I’d woken up in.
    “At the Vogelsberg. On a class trip.” Sami piled food on his plate that he then didn’t touch. Instead he nervously played with his fork. “Abu is at a conference in Switzerland.”
    “It’s a pity he doesn’t get to see you. I know he would have loved to. We miss you around here.”
    “Mom.”
    I still avoided looking at Sami directly.
    “ Kullo min Allah .” All comes from God. Minna smiled at Sami and me encouragingly, as if to say, It doesn’t matter. Nevertheless we both felt uncomfortable. Minna understood, straightened