made to sit in the back row, and his first-grade teacher told him, at age six, that he wasn’t to draw attention to himself, get into fights, or talk at all. So Karim didn’t say a word. It quickly became clear to him that he must not show he was different. His brothers smacked him on the back of the head because they didn’t understand what he said. That is, if he was lucky. His classmates—thanks to a municipal integration plan, the first grade consisted of 80 percent foreigners—made fun of him when he tried to explain things to them. And just like his brothers, they, too, usually hit him whenever he seemed too different. So Karim deliberately set out to get bad grades. It was the only thing he could do.
By the time he was ten years old, he had taught himself stochastic theory, integral calculus, and analytical geometry from a textbook. He had stolen the book from the teachers’ library. As for class work, he had figured out how many of the ridiculous exercises he had to get wrong in order to be awarded an inconspicuous C–. Sometimes he had the feeling that his brain buzzed when he came upon a mathematical problem in the book that was reputed to be insoluble. Those were the moments that defined his personal happiness.
He lived, as did all his brothers, even the eldest of them, who was twenty-six, with his mother; his father had died shortly after he was born. The family apartment in Neukölln had six rooms. Six rooms for ten people. He was the youngest, so he got the box room. The skylight was made of milky glass and there was a set of pine shelves. This space was where things found a home after no one wanted them anymore: broom heads without broomsticks, wash buckets without handles, cables for appliances now lost and forgotten. He sat there all day in front of a computer, and while his mother assumed he’d be busying himself with video games like his big strong brothers, he was reading the classics on Gutenberg.org.
When he was twelve, he made his last attempt to be like his brothers. He wrote a program that could override the electronic firewalls in the post office savings bank and unobtrusively debit a matter of hundredths of a cent from millions of accounts. His brothers didn’t understand what “the moron,” as they called him, had given them. They smacked him on the back of the head again and threw away the CD with the program on it. Walid was the only one to sense that Karim outclassed them, and he protected him against his cruder brothers.
When Karim turned eighteen, he finished school. He had made sure that he would barely pass his final exams. No one in his family had ever gotten that far. He borrowed eight thousand euros from Walid. Walid thought Karim needed the money for a drug deal and gave it to him gladly. Karim, in the meantime, had learned so much about the stock market that he was trading on the foreign-exchange market. Within a year, he had earned almost 700,000 euros. He rented a little apartment in a nice part of the city, left his family’s place every morning, and took endless roundabout routes to be sure no one was following him. He furnished his refuge, bought books on mathematics and a faster computer, and spent his time trading on the stock exchange and reading.
His family, assuming “the moron” was now dealing dope, was content. Of course he was far too slight to be a true Abu Fataris. Karim never went to the kickboxing and extreme-sports club, but he always wore gold chains like the others, and satin shirts in garish colors, and black nappa leather jackets. He talked Neukölln slang and even earned a little respect for never having been arrested. His brothers didn’t take him seriously. If they’d been asked about him, the answer would have been simply that he was part of the family. Beyond that, nobody thought about him twice.
Karim’s double life went unnoticed. No one was aware either that he owned a completely different set of clothes or that he’d used night
By the time he was ten years old, he had taught himself stochastic theory, integral calculus, and analytical geometry from a textbook. He had stolen the book from the teachers’ library. As for class work, he had figured out how many of the ridiculous exercises he had to get wrong in order to be awarded an inconspicuous C–. Sometimes he had the feeling that his brain buzzed when he came upon a mathematical problem in the book that was reputed to be insoluble. Those were the moments that defined his personal happiness.
He lived, as did all his brothers, even the eldest of them, who was twenty-six, with his mother; his father had died shortly after he was born. The family apartment in Neukölln had six rooms. Six rooms for ten people. He was the youngest, so he got the box room. The skylight was made of milky glass and there was a set of pine shelves. This space was where things found a home after no one wanted them anymore: broom heads without broomsticks, wash buckets without handles, cables for appliances now lost and forgotten. He sat there all day in front of a computer, and while his mother assumed he’d be busying himself with video games like his big strong brothers, he was reading the classics on Gutenberg.org.
When he was twelve, he made his last attempt to be like his brothers. He wrote a program that could override the electronic firewalls in the post office savings bank and unobtrusively debit a matter of hundredths of a cent from millions of accounts. His brothers didn’t understand what “the moron,” as they called him, had given them. They smacked him on the back of the head again and threw away the CD with the program on it. Walid was the only one to sense that Karim outclassed them, and he protected him against his cruder brothers.
When Karim turned eighteen, he finished school. He had made sure that he would barely pass his final exams. No one in his family had ever gotten that far. He borrowed eight thousand euros from Walid. Walid thought Karim needed the money for a drug deal and gave it to him gladly. Karim, in the meantime, had learned so much about the stock market that he was trading on the foreign-exchange market. Within a year, he had earned almost 700,000 euros. He rented a little apartment in a nice part of the city, left his family’s place every morning, and took endless roundabout routes to be sure no one was following him. He furnished his refuge, bought books on mathematics and a faster computer, and spent his time trading on the stock exchange and reading.
His family, assuming “the moron” was now dealing dope, was content. Of course he was far too slight to be a true Abu Fataris. Karim never went to the kickboxing and extreme-sports club, but he always wore gold chains like the others, and satin shirts in garish colors, and black nappa leather jackets. He talked Neukölln slang and even earned a little respect for never having been arrested. His brothers didn’t take him seriously. If they’d been asked about him, the answer would have been simply that he was part of the family. Beyond that, nobody thought about him twice.
Karim’s double life went unnoticed. No one was aware either that he owned a completely different set of clothes or that he’d used night
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