“You missed, kuffar,” he gloats, brandishing his newly loaded gun.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” I reply. My next shot hits his shoulder. Escalation step two. Jihad drops his gun at once and starts screaming like a man possessed. His friends rush to his aid, firearms in the ready. Enough time for me to once again take refuge behind my wooden barrier. A plane tree can withstand a lot of bullets. The attackers don’t dare come closer. Armed to the teeth and still quaking in their boots. Respect is something you have to work hard to get.
The persistent honking of a car horn distracts everyone. The shooting stops. I peer out from behind my cover. A low-slung Beemer has arrived. I watch the irate teens begin a heated debate with the driver. The car’s windows are darkened, but I can make out the license plate: “Babo 2”. It’s Cem, the right hand of Selim, the Turkish Godfather. After a while the kids reluctantly turn away from the car, even though they don’t stop cursing me. Jihad, who’s meanwhile convulsing on the ground with pain, is hauled from the street into the kebab store. Two of the guys remain standing in the doorway. They give me the stink eye and aim globs of saliva at the pavement. Cem rolls down his side window and motions me over to the car. “What do you think you’re doing, Pusher?” he asks me, shaking his head.
“Just a little early-morning exercise,” I inform him.
“This block Imam’s block, yalla!” I hear Jihad’s shrill voice from inside the kebab store. He seems to be in a lot of pain. “Babo’s not big boss here, yalla.”
“Get in, brother,” Cem orders. He won’t take no for an answer.
I slide onto the Beemer’s passenger seat. Cem steps on the gas. The teens storm out into the street, threatening me with their guns—but they don’t open fire.
Cem shakes his head. “Aren’t you a little too old to play these games, brother?”
“Why?” I deposit ten units of coke on the dashboard. “There’s nothing but a good tussle to make a guy feel young again.” I grin.
“You’re one weird bastard.”
I study Cem from the passenger seat. “Why am I sitting here?”
“Selim wants to talk to you.”
“So? Really? How come the Babo’s suddenly interested in me?”
“He’ll tell you himself.”
Cem switches gears and makes a turn into Revaler Strasse. He’s about my age and I like him. He looks at things with the eyes of a businessman, just as I do. Without emotions, purely rational. A rare quality among the hot-blooded Lemons. They say he even went to university for a few years as a young man. Physics. But eventually he must have found out that there are easier and faster ways to make money. Cem was already working for Halim, the current Babo’s father. He was recruited for his brains and also because he’s extremely loyal. “Are you still fooling around with your three steps of escalation?” he wants to know.
I smile instead of an answer.
“This is fucking baby stuff,” he chides me. “There are more important things in life.”
“What could be more important than having fun?”
Cem pulls down the corners of his mouth. “There will be a war,” he sagely predicts.
“So?” I ask, pretending to be bored. “That’s the way things are in the Ghetto, right?”
“Just wait and see,” he warns me. “I’m starting to get very worried here. If the Templar keeps on killing people, we’ll have a real problem.”
“The Templar?” I repeat, feigning ignorance. “You’re buying this bullshit, too?” I emit a groan. “Jesus. A stupid ace of clubs and everyone’s going crazy.”
“Allah have mercy on us.” After kissing his hand, Cem reverently touches a bobblehead figurine shaped like a whirling dervish.
“Why do you Lemons always think that everyone’s out to conspire against you?” I rib Cem. “Templars have died out a long time ago.”
“I know the system behind it, brother. I know what the Templar’s up to. The murders... he’s trying to sic us Muslims on each other.” Cem turns to face me and gives me a reproachful look as if the whole thing was my fault.
“Do you think that I...?”
Cem waves me off. “No sweat, Pusher. No sweat. I don’t bear a grudge against you, brother.” When he smiles at me, I breathe a sigh of relief. There won’t be a little detour to a back alley, where a firing squad’s lying in wait.
Cem drives me to Club Berghain, where Selim resides. The hall has been totally refurbished and they still play electronic music here, like they did over twenty years ago. Retro rules supreme, take my word for it. Cem leads me to the office behind the dance floor. Selim is at a desk in a room, filled with cigarette smoke. He angrily rubs his forehead. The ashtray is overflowing with butts and there is an open file folder in front of him. He must be doing his book keeping, if this is the right word to use in his line of business. Selim is only in his late twenties. Already at an early age he had to take over from his father, who’s been confined to a wheelchair since suffering a stroke. One alcoholic binge too many, rumor goes. Selim’s men are in awe him in spite of his baby face. Or maybe just because of it. A seemingly harmless non-threatening person who brutally knifes his opponents is bound to leave a much deeper impression than your typical stony-faced thug. Selim
