The sassy but vulnerable Bosnian FATIMA BEGOVIC wants to be the legitimate child of mother Germany, but not even her favourite customer JUDGE MAX can help her to citizenship and out of prostitution. Fearing deportation, and haunted by the memory of her turbulent past with the freak-marked AZIZ during the Balkan war, Fatima seeks luck between the legs of a famous journalist, FRIEDRICH. His dangerous game of blackmailing her rich customers, brings her instead closer to the street hooking, and even death. SAMPLE CHAPTERS I-III » UK English version » US English version

PLACES IN ILLEGITIMATE

Munich Fountains

I get out of the taxi close to the fountain with the peeing boy. I like the way he holds his penis. It's so small he looks like he's struggling because there's nothing to hold between his fingers. A runnel springs from the grinning mouth of an old man's giant head, washing the naked boy. The stony eyes of the smiling figure watch him with desire. I lap up some cold water I wash my feet and my arms, my mouth and my face, splashing cold water over my neck. A feeling works itself out of my body, starting from my bones, cutting through my flesh and coating my skin with a musky smell. I silently rage at God for giving me such freakish eyes that only see black and white flowing into each other, yet I don't see pure evil, I don't see pure good, just everything in the grey zone. Believing in God or not, there has to be some sense of the grey zones. I remember old Imam Atif reciting us a religious poem from Rumi, 'What is love? Pure thirst. So tell me about the water of life.' I love that line. It can mean anything. (Chapter 21 – Death in Munich) (Note: In this scene, contrary to reality, Fatima's imagination merges two different fountains into one)

I take a tram downtown, and buy myself a box of heart-shaped pralines and bottled water, which tastes like regular tap water. I don't understand what's so special about mineral water, especially the non-bubbly version. I pretend I like it, since I spent money on it. I love walking by the Isar River and the stone bridge where all the swans hide. My chocolates are too bitter, so I feed them to the swans and say aloud, 'Get fat.' I watch the river. Last autumn's flood is already old news. The water is calm yet mighty. I dip a finger into it and feel the enormous power of that simple thing, the river. Even though I can only see a short stretch, I imagine the whole of it, from the spring to the delta. (Chapter 5 – Opportunist)

River Isar

Munich's Beer Hall Hofbräuhaus

We meet at Hofbräuhaus, the famous beer hall. It's not a cover up for a brothel or anything illegal, as far as I know. Madam Cabaret is just beside it, full of lovely strippers from Eastern Europe. There a bottle of champagne costs more than a whole month of kids' day care. From the outside, HB looks as cosy as ever. Rows of oblong windows with hazy light bordered up above a couple of big-arched windows downstairs. The white façade shines even in the dark. I've always loved the form of the building, angular yet round. It's not one of those rectangular hotels, but more like nether parts of a woman's body, curved and open. No wonder people like it; it can't be all about the beer. When I am inside I change my mind, it might be all about beer. My nose wags at the billowing fumes. There are all kinds of smells, both the tickling faint smell of popping beer foam and the musty smell of beer dried in the woodwork. It is rather cold, as if all the bulky uncovered stomachs don't radiate any heat this chilly, late April evening. No one is sitting outside in the garden and I don't hear any sounds from the fancy restaurant upstairs. The beer hall is crowded. I stroke a name carved in a table and look closely at the cross vaults with many more initials and scribbling. People say some of those markings are over a hundred years old. I wonder if Aziz's and my initials are still in that big linden tree. A burping, bulky man, mumbles cheerfully, 'Fräulein' into my ear as he fetches his stein from the steel rack. Best customers have their personal steins kept at HB. The man's sweat smells salty and smoky. He goes out. I discern Max in the Stadelheim room, named after the Munich prison, because before WWII, prison workers had the room booked for themselves. (Chapter 19 – Hofbräuhaus)

I once went to one of those gas chambers up in Dachau. A camp manager, Armin, took ten of us to see his deluge of guilt over the dark national past. It was quite cold and I got one of my stomachaches and spent half the time in the museum toilet. When I came out, the rest of the excursion group had disappeared. I went into a chamber, cringed in a corner leaned on the cold wall and stared at the wet concrete. I didn't spend the night in there though. A guard came, flashed me with this Gestapo light, and kicked me out of there. (Chapter 25 – Welcome to Germany /Winter 1994 – Spring 1998/)

Dachau (town outside Munich)

Virgin Mary statue in Munich

I look outside at the Virgin Mary statue. 'Isn't she beautiful? I love coming here, especially in winter, watching her frozen face. You know, two thousand years ago people accused her of having a bastard son. Now she's becoming illegitimate again. It's only a matter of time before someone decides to topple her.' Friedrich pulls his face awry and says, 'Stop that sentimental religious bullshit. It doesn't go well with your...complexion.' 'God, you really know how to court women.' (Chapter 13 – Publication)

A week later, I get a postcard from Friedrich with the picture of the pride of Munich, von Klenze's giant black obelisk, almost two centuries old and still erect. It says, 'Proud of you Liebchen. You have big marble balls. Well written too. I like the story about your first lover too. I'll see what I can do.' My breasts heave as I read the part, 'Well written too' a hundred times to make sure that's what it says. I wrote with my gut, really. Then for a moment I picture myself with bizarre and surreal male genitals and feel like vomiting. I rush out of the flat. The evening outside is cosy. The tide of flat darkness rises with the moon, which has almost waxed to a half. Happy is the one who can hold the moon hostage. I prance straight to von Klenze's monument. That bastard Klenze, a real lion he was. He dared to build that dick so close to the church and the JungFrau pillar. Hope the church didn't buy it in the first place. At the pyramid-shaped peak of the obelisk, the moon looks young and very old at the same time. Sometimes it makes me forget things, but now it sets my memory burning. It's dangerous to look too long at the moon, especially when you are in the middle of love or war. War for love. War for citizenship. War for decent future and a job of my liking. War for permanent legitimacy. (Chapter 11 – Frau H)

von Klenze's Black Obelisk

Rainbow Bridge

On an unusually warm October day, I bribed a local boy with a chocolate bar to give Aziz a message to meet me on the only wooden bridge in town, the Rainbow Bridge. Its small arch is supposedly built in the exact place where many years before little rainbows appeared above the waterfalls. We sat alone, peering down into the frothing hole where the mountain river disappeared like a water snake, to re-emerge a few miles away. I was thinking about everything I normally couldn't care less about, that the stones and pebbles were freezing down there and that the planks were not comfortable. Aziz's warm breath was all over my face. It smelled of mint, even though he had no chewing gum or sweets in his mouth. He heaved a deep breath through his nostrils and leaned over a bit too much, his forehead almost touching my thin thighs. A strong bramble smell tickled my nose, although it was no longer spring. There was the smell of compote with pears, plums, and quince; roasted nuts in dry prunes; lilac; simmering milk poured over white honey; hot bread releasing woolly plumes when dipped in thick apple syrup. All the things I loved. I raised my brows and opened my lids wide, as if to wake up. I knew there were no such smells around and I must've been imagining them. Those were the smells of home, the smells of different seasons. I thought he must have triggered it in me somehow. I wondered how he was feeling but didn't dare ask. Slipping my hand under his was less awkward. He pressed my hand hard against his thigh. I didn't think he wanted to hurt me. It was an immediate reaction, like an instinct. It was painful but I didn't pull my hand back or yell or grimace. We sat like that, peering into the water for hours, needing no words. (Chapter 8 – Humming Peasant /Bosnia: Autumn 1991/)

I smiled at my first real date, and then looked down over the stone fence at the calm river surface. Above the left bank, there were remains of a hundreds-of-years-old Turkish building called Kastel. It rose almost directly from the river Vrbas. It was kidney shaped, with high walls overgrown with ivy and no roof. Aziz and I walked along the narrow bank between the water and the wall, underneath a row of willows with branches dipped in the steady stream, like the hair of that young widow from an old crooner song. (Chapter 8 – Humming Peasant /Bosnia: Autumn 1991/)

Kastel (old Turkish bastion in Banja Luka)

The Peculiar Sweetsman in Banja Luka

The city was like a haunted mind. It was beautiful and uncanny at the same time. It was discoloured, as if someone had washed the big busy streets with the army green clothes. The car cruised by a large plaza with dozens of pigeons flying about, some eating from the hands of a big-bellied man in a whitish raincoat and a black beret. We stopped at the red light. I put my head through the window, curious about the strange, out-of-time figure. The man stroked his moustache and rapidly stuttered two names at the top of his hoarse voice, Layla and Deen. I thought he was calling out to his friends, but then two birds landed on his hands. He cooed, repeating the two names and kissing them on the beaks. In a rush of dirty faces, untied sneakers, and flapping windbreakers, a bunch of kids came running towards him screaming, 'Alija, Alija!' The pigeons flew away. The man smiled, picked up his large green bag and pulled handfuls of sweets out of it. He didn't budge when he saw another train of puffing children hurtling towards him. He threw all the sweets in their midst. They fell on their knees and picked the sweets like little hens. I whispered to Aziz, 'He has a Muslim name.' Aziz said, 'I heard about him. He's a local, good-souled freak. He'd suffered a shell shock back in WWII and now walks around the city in that coat of his like some cold-war agent with amnesia. I guess to the Serbs he's just a loony Muslim, pretty harmless.' I didn't say anything. The whole sight of kids and sweets, and the pigeons, calmed me. The brave and mad sweetsman made me feel safe. (Chapter 8 – Humming Peasant /Bosnia: Autumn 1991/) (Note: The Sweetsman's real name is Alija Mahmutovic. He is the most famous man in Banja Luka, certainly loved by many kids)

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