the exile within

I cannot sleep. Our window at the hotel is facing the enclosed reception patio, so no fresh air. Dad doesn’t seem to mind, snoring peacefully. Echoes from faint beepers and unknown doors are bouncing off marble, taunting me, keeping me up, testing my breathing. It’s too warm, it’s too stuffy. I kick off the duvet. I pull it back up. I take all my clothes off, then dress again. Nothing helps. At around 3am I put my shoes on and take the lift down to reception.

“Is there nowhere where I can just … sleep for a few hours?”

“I’m sorry sir the hotel is full. If you like you can upgrade to a suite.” Yeah, I’m sure dad would be ecstatic to find in the morning I traded 400 dollars for 3 hours of sleep…

“Look, why isn’t the cooling system working? It’s like 20 degrees outside!”

“Sir, it is 14 degrees outside, and a few days ago it was 7. No one but you has complained about the heat. Maybe it is just you?”

At this, I am defeated. Maybe it is just me? Maybe, like in Bulgakov’s novel, I only think I saw the devil? And even if I really did, does that mean anyone else should fret? Maybe to them he appears as an angel?

This inkling of philosophical inquiry behind my failed attempt to change rooms exhausts my senses before I even attempt to pursue it. I step outside the hotel and sit down on the steps, breathing in what I tell myself is clean air. In my little fantasy world, the hotel manager becomes so shocked at seeing a guest rejected from every comfort he had paid for, that he immediately fires the impudent receptionist and issues me an electronic key to their best and largest suite. “Thank you, that is really very kind. What a relief.” I see myself getting up from the steps, tears of gratitude in my eyes. The manager turns out to be a tall and handsome Turkish charmer, complete with a lovely eagle-like nose and olive-colourd smooth skin, shiny black hair waving over one side of his benevolent face… he smiles at me and says “if you feel like some company I will be finishing my shift soon… why don’t I send up to your suite a little something from room service, we really feel bad about all this… and I’ll come to check up on you in a little while?”. He tilts his head ever so slightly to the left, still smiling, and I almost collapse to the floor. “Yes, that would be -”

The heavy hotel door opens loudly, bursting my bubble. Out comes a bellboy dressed in black trousers and a yellow vest, with small, squinting eyes and gel in his hair. “You OK?”.

His name is Shakir. He is Kurdish. “No one knows here. If they know, they kick my ass.” He is my age. At 16, he deserted his strict Muslim upbringing and stopped believing in God. “It’s hard now, when you don’t believe.” I feel a peculiar affinity between us.

As we chat away, a woman comes out the door, dressed in a tight black jacket, knee-high black leather boots with high heels and long black stockings. Shakir seems to know the drill, and motions to the woman that her taxi will be right there. When it arrives, he opens the passenger door for her and she disappears into the night.

“This one, she takes 100 dollars. Some take 200. It’s very good. If I was woman, I would do that. It’s good job! Sex, selling sex. Very good money.” We both laugh. “How much money people get in Israel?”

“Um, I think the minimum wage, the minimum money you can get is about 5.5 an hour. How much are you getting?”

“I get 4 dollars.”

“Really? That’s not much. So everything must be pretty cheap here?”

“No, no. Not cheap. You can make a month 650 dollars, you pay 600 for house. It’s very hard.”

“God.”

“Me I don’t like this country. The people here are bad. It is pretty, but the people are very bad. In Israel, when you get married, do people care if virgin?”

“You mean if the woman is a virgin? Well, it depends where you go. But I think most people don’t care; if you are not very religious you don’t care so much.”

“Here, 95% of the people they care if virgin. It’s stupid!”

“So Shakir, where would you like to live instead?”

“Me?”, he giggles embarrassingly as if I asked him intimate details about his love life, “I want to live Scandinavian countries, maybe Norway. It’s hard because you need visa. But it’s OK. Maybe Sweden.”

“I know there are a lot of Turkish people in Germany”, I say, trying to be helpful.

“Yes. Here in Turkey is no good. Ah, excuse me.”

Shakir is summoned back to reception and I am left to ponder world economies. In the old days, the number of children you had equated your workforce: your family would be working in the fields and farms. The monotheistic religious communities picked up on that, even though it’s not always scripture-based: for example Jewish tradition only requires every family to produce a minimum of two children: one male and one female. But after the industrial revolution, workers’ unions, welfare and free education, which meant that children under 16 are less likely to do manual labour and require more care, you’d think that a big family became a burden rather than a blessing. Not so, it seems, for conservative Jewish families who live in West Bank settlements, nor for the Palestinian families whom they terrorise. Perhaps procreation has become not so much a form of worship, but of warfare.

At around 6:30 I finally manage to lose consciousness. 2 hours later, dad is shaking my shoulder gently. “How did you sleep?”, he asks while shaving. “Yeah, it’s a long story.”