All Russians Love Birch Trees by Olga Grjasnowa Read Free Book Online Page B

that there was no going back.
    In the line in front of the bathroom I spotted Daniel, who looked like a famished, offended rabbit. Daniel called himself anti-German, by which he meant Judeophile, pro-American, and somehow radical left. He was of the type who constantly wanted to save the world through one project or another. First it was nuclear energy, then the rain forest, organic food, and finally the Jews. He especially had a thing for them.
    Every time I saw Daniel he laid out his plans—unprompted—for his magnificent future as a gentlemen’s tailor in London. Herzl said that if only we wanted to want, it wasn’t just a dream, and Daniel wanted and wanted and in the meantime sewed tighter and tighter briefs. I already had three Aperol Spritzes down and tried to avoid him. I looked for Cem, but he was talking on his cellphone in a corner. He was probably talkingwith his boyfriend, a cook who’d been working in France for three weeks. I didn’t understand why Cem was so insistent on attending parties. He hated loud music and people who went to parties. For him, every bash was a battle he fought against himself for every minute he made himself stay.
    Daniel had stupidly waved at me. I ignored him, but he started to shout my name across the room, which over time got embarrassing. He made his way toward me hastily, taking large, awkward steps, his hand reaching out for mine, without me extending it. He fidgeted with my sleeve, his breath smelled of beer and bad digestion.
    “I’m backing you guys all the way,” he said.
    “Backing whom?”
    “Well, you guys.”
    Daniel licked his chops and I got angry that he had a clear point of view and all I had was doubts.
    “Which you guys?” I was practically yelling, and a few people turned their heads.
    “Israel, of course.”
    “Good save.”
    “You’re mean. So, what do you make of the situation? I mean you, as a Jew.”
    “Daniel, leave me alone with this crap. What do you want from me? I live in Germany. I have a German passport. I’m not Israel. I don’t even live there. I don’tvote there and I don’t feel any particular connection to the Israeli government.”
    Daniel always reminded me of my great-aunt, who sat in her Israeli living room—which was an exact replica of her former Soviet living room—drinking tea with a splash of lemon and intently studying Westi , the newspaper of the Russian-speaking immigrant population in Israel. Westi reported in detail on attacks carried out by Arabs in Israel, desecration of graves carried out by Arabs in France, and everybody’s publicly broadcast opinion on Jews.
    Daniel thought of Sami as an anti-Semite, Sami thought of Daniel as a Judeophile, and both were right. I would have preferred if they’d not bother me. But during a group project at school Daniel had said that my Arab lover was oppressing me and sucking me dry. An Egyptian plague—those were his words. Thereupon I had hit Daniel and knocked out a tooth and would’ve been expelled if Daniel hadn’t taken all the blame. Of course the blame was his. And not just in a third-generation-since-the-Holocaust kind of way. Ever since his missing tooth he treated me like his personal pet Jew. My only flaw was that I didn’t come straight from a German concentration camp.
    “I know, I know.” Daniel sighed deeply and pulled my sleeve. “The Jews are protected only by governmental force. You know, back in his day, my grandfatherwas part of a governmental force too, and if your governmental force had existed back then, the whole thing with our governmental force would never have happened. Just because of your collective trauma—” He took a little break. I’d nearly reached the stall, where I could finally lock the door behind me. “I don’t want to start a totalitarian discourse with broad abstract terms, don’t get me wrong. But it does make sense that many Jews see Israel primarily as a safe haven from genocide. And Auschwitz can happen again