Joury to marry at sixteen. “A woman's place is in the home.”
The two girls watch as Joury's mother scans the room, making sure they haven't been trying on lipstick or something equally disgusting. “Time to go, Joury. Get your things. Ahmed is waiting for us.” Ahmed is her driver. She won't drive any more. Won't leave the house unless escorted by a male relative. She peppers every sentence with, “ Alhamdullilah.” Like Tourettes. It makes Joury giggle. Which makes Katrien giggle. Which makes Joury's mother scowl.
She forces Joury to wear a burka even though she's too young. As her mother drags her out of the house, Joury lifts her veil and sticks her tongue out at Katrien.
The Purge
Katrien has never been to a Carnival celebration, but this is how she imagines it. Lots of noise. People in the streets. Spontaneous bonfires. Gunfire.
She climbs onto her bike, and spins madly through the streets, her teeth jarring as her wheels bounce on the bricks, hurtling up Prinsengracht, standing on her peddles up over the bridge, swerving around other bikes, cars parked on both sides of the street, shoved up on sidewalks, obstructing the shuffle of nervous pedestrians. She tears down Leliegracht, hunched over her red-ribboned handlebars, three more bridges to Singel, past the statue of the writer Multatuli, toppled on his side, past Villa Zeezicht, which used to have the best apple pie in the city, up past Westindisch Huis, where the West India Company privateers hid Spanish silver, then over to Spuistrasse, and up to Prins Hendrikkade.
She bikes through alleys of broken lamps, brick buildings covered with bullet holes, spilled blood turned into brown stains. She passes crumbled bricks of century old churches, past broken windows of Jewish businesses, shuttered coffee houses still smelling of hash. She darts around gangs of thugs, heads wrapped in black, shouting Allahu Akbar, smashing glass windows, smashing Delft pottery, blue and white, so delicate, so fun to smash, slashing paintings and antique vases.
Everywhere she passes slogans laminated on windows of closed stores, quotations from the Quran. Warnings. AS TO THE THIEF, MALE OR FEMALE, CUT OFF HIS HANDS (Quran 5:38). THE ONLY TRUE FAITH IN GOD'S SIGHT IS ISLAM (Quran 3:19). Or a poster of a woman in a burka. MY SISTER, GUARD YOUR VEIL MY BROTHER, GUARD YOUR EYES.
Horns honk in her frenzied wake, her calf muscles burning, her cold ears tingling. She bikes over the Open Havenfront. The closer she gets to Centraal Station, the more people she sees, thousands and thousands, women in burkas, like crows, men waving green crescent flags, youths pounding their fists in the air, shaking empty machine guns.
She locks her bike at the train station, then runs as fast as she can, swimming downstream, through billowing burkas, pushing yards of black cloth out of her face.
She sees ghostly shadows—Pieter and Rafik's angry faces, arguing hotly last night. “At least make sure Jana and Katrien are out of the city.” “Jana won't leave.” “Nothing will stop them. You're not going to win. You have no weapons, no army. You can't hide a million books.” “Somebody has to stand up to them. They cannot destroy all of our books. Not the library.”
The Islamic Council decided the central library will be made to a mosque under a new program of mosque construction. All of the books, other than Islamic texts, and a handful of other noncontroversial books, must go. The library is to be gutted. Imam Fawaz Jneid pledges to build new mosques wherever a church or synagogue stands, plus hundreds of others. “Our goal is to have one mosque for every thousand people by the end of the year.” That means 800 mosques for Amsterdam, up from the 44 current ones.
Katrien doesn't know what any of this will mean. To her family. To her life. Only that her father is standing up for what he
The two girls watch as Joury's mother scans the room, making sure they haven't been trying on lipstick or something equally disgusting. “Time to go, Joury. Get your things. Ahmed is waiting for us.” Ahmed is her driver. She won't drive any more. Won't leave the house unless escorted by a male relative. She peppers every sentence with, “ Alhamdullilah.” Like Tourettes. It makes Joury giggle. Which makes Katrien giggle. Which makes Joury's mother scowl.
She forces Joury to wear a burka even though she's too young. As her mother drags her out of the house, Joury lifts her veil and sticks her tongue out at Katrien.
The Purge
Katrien has never been to a Carnival celebration, but this is how she imagines it. Lots of noise. People in the streets. Spontaneous bonfires. Gunfire.
She climbs onto her bike, and spins madly through the streets, her teeth jarring as her wheels bounce on the bricks, hurtling up Prinsengracht, standing on her peddles up over the bridge, swerving around other bikes, cars parked on both sides of the street, shoved up on sidewalks, obstructing the shuffle of nervous pedestrians. She tears down Leliegracht, hunched over her red-ribboned handlebars, three more bridges to Singel, past the statue of the writer Multatuli, toppled on his side, past Villa Zeezicht, which used to have the best apple pie in the city, up past Westindisch Huis, where the West India Company privateers hid Spanish silver, then over to Spuistrasse, and up to Prins Hendrikkade.
She bikes through alleys of broken lamps, brick buildings covered with bullet holes, spilled blood turned into brown stains. She passes crumbled bricks of century old churches, past broken windows of Jewish businesses, shuttered coffee houses still smelling of hash. She darts around gangs of thugs, heads wrapped in black, shouting Allahu Akbar, smashing glass windows, smashing Delft pottery, blue and white, so delicate, so fun to smash, slashing paintings and antique vases.
Everywhere she passes slogans laminated on windows of closed stores, quotations from the Quran. Warnings. AS TO THE THIEF, MALE OR FEMALE, CUT OFF HIS HANDS (Quran 5:38). THE ONLY TRUE FAITH IN GOD'S SIGHT IS ISLAM (Quran 3:19). Or a poster of a woman in a burka. MY SISTER, GUARD YOUR VEIL MY BROTHER, GUARD YOUR EYES.
Horns honk in her frenzied wake, her calf muscles burning, her cold ears tingling. She bikes over the Open Havenfront. The closer she gets to Centraal Station, the more people she sees, thousands and thousands, women in burkas, like crows, men waving green crescent flags, youths pounding their fists in the air, shaking empty machine guns.
She locks her bike at the train station, then runs as fast as she can, swimming downstream, through billowing burkas, pushing yards of black cloth out of her face.
She sees ghostly shadows—Pieter and Rafik's angry faces, arguing hotly last night. “At least make sure Jana and Katrien are out of the city.” “Jana won't leave.” “Nothing will stop them. You're not going to win. You have no weapons, no army. You can't hide a million books.” “Somebody has to stand up to them. They cannot destroy all of our books. Not the library.”
The Islamic Council decided the central library will be made to a mosque under a new program of mosque construction. All of the books, other than Islamic texts, and a handful of other noncontroversial books, must go. The library is to be gutted. Imam Fawaz Jneid pledges to build new mosques wherever a church or synagogue stands, plus hundreds of others. “Our goal is to have one mosque for every thousand people by the end of the year.” That means 800 mosques for Amsterdam, up from the 44 current ones.
Katrien doesn't know what any of this will mean. To her family. To her life. Only that her father is standing up for what he
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