The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine

Nice to Sulfia

We went to several towns. The cobblestones in one of them ruined my high heels, though in which town exactly I couldn’t say. I had blisters on my feet. At some point I’d seen enough castles. I wanted to go shopping and told Dieter. I could tell immediately that he didn’t like the idea. I said perhaps we could get a few things for Aminat. I could see the battle raging in his head. No doubt, we wouldn’t get anything for free here.

Later we sat on the couch in his living room and said nothing. Dieter looked at his fingernails. Sulfia shuffled through the postcards he had so generously bought for her. Aminat blinked at the light and yawned. Then I felt her head on my shoulder and the warmth of her breath on my neck. She slept.

I leaned Aminat onto the sofa back. Then I stood up and left the room. When I returned, Dieter was sitting in my place. Aminat’s head rested on his shoulder. I said nothing and settled into a low-slung chair across the room from him. Sulfia looked up from her postcards and smiled.

“Sulfia,” I said, “bring me a glass of water.”

When she was out of earshot, I stood up, leaned over the peacefully breathing Aminat, and whispered in Dieter’s ear, “It would be nice if she could stay here.”

He flinched.

“If her mother married a German, Aminat could stay in Germany,” I said.

Then I sat down again. Sulfia returned with a glass of water. I put it on the low table in front of me. I wasn’t thirsty, and I was suddenly very tired. I got up and went to bed, leaving the three of them there.

The next morning I had a migraine. It was a new plague. I couldn’t even get up. When I finally opened my aching eyes, Aminat was already awake. She was lying on the mattress, staring into space. She was like her mother in this regard. I had to tell her it didn’t work that way. In Germany you couldn’t just lazily sit around. Here you got nothing for free and nothing done for you.

But today I couldn’t say a thing, because not only every spoken word but even every thought resulted in pain in my inflamed brain. I begged God to have someone draw the curtains for me.

Aminat looked at me. I tried not to think about the fact that I had missed the moment when Aminat stopped loving me.

It was as if I were disabled. The only one who paid any attention to my situation was Sulfia. She sat down next to me and put her cool hand on my forehead. Then she brought me a tablet and pulled the curtains closed.

God had taken up the matter for me. I had already prepared everything. In any case, things played out the way I had planned. A little later in the day, Sulfia sat down on the edge of my bed and removed the washcloth she had earlier wet, placed in the freezer, and put on my forehead. By now it had been warmed by my skin. She held it in her hand and wiped my face with it. That annoyed me.

“I have to tell you something,” she said gravely and softly. I could barely hear her.

“Speak louder,” I said. “I can’t understand you.”

She raised her voice, but only for a second. She said that Dieter had offered to keep Aminat here. She could go to school here and he would look after her. And for some reason she thought this was a very generous offer.

Indignantly I pulled myself upright, threw the blanket to the side, and stood up. The pain throbbed in my temples, but I ignored it. I got dressed and knocked on Dieter’s bedroom door.

It was the first time I’d been into his room. He locked it whenever he left us alone in the apartment.

I looked around curiously.

A huge bed stood in the room. In the corner was an ironing board with a shirt on it. On the walls hung photos of slant-eyed children playing in front of the huts of some village. I quickly spotted what I was looking for: Aminat’s angelic photo was sitting on the nightstand. When Dieter laid with his head on his pillow, he could look into Aminat’s eyes.

Dieter protested, but I had already learned to understand only what I wanted to.

“Aminat stays if Sulfia and I stay,” I said in my German. “Otherwise not. Otherwise Aminat immediately home with me. And then with another man to Germany.”

I sat down on his bed and crossed one leg over the other. I had nice legs, but Dieter wasn’t interested in my legs.

“Nice to Sulfia,” I said. “You nice to Sulfia. Only way.”

I leaned back. Dieter looked away disgustedly.

“Aminat, Sulfia, Rosalinda,” I said. “Only together.”

Dieter had decided and as a result became a slightly more pleasant companion. Most likely he was so impressed with his own audacity that nothing mattered to him. For a few days he even forgot his stinginess. He went shopping with Aminat and Sulfia and came home with a stack of white Mickey Mouse t-shirts, jeans, and snow-white tennis shoes that you could only wear here in Germany, where the streets were always freshly cleaned.

Sulfia beamed with joy. She was experiencing happy days. I cannot even imagine how moronic someone would have to be to take Dieter’s meager attention for genuine affection. Anything strange Sulfia wrote off to cultural differences or Dieter’s reserved nature. And she did earn a few ounces of his sympathy because of the fact that she never wanted anything for herself when they went on shopping tours. Absolutely nothing. Even when it was just the two of us.

I let Dieter give me 150 Deutschmarks (I thought any amount he paid for our little girl was too little) and led Sulfia through shoe stores and the perfume sections of department stores. But she had no interest. She didn’t even share my excitement at the striking variety and beauty of all the wares. She smiled when I took pictures of the shelves stacked with yoghurt containers in the supermarket with Dieter’s camera. I wanted to show Klavdia. But Sulfia wouldn’t try anything on. The only thing we bought for her were five pairs of white underpants.

I avoided asking myself what Sulfia thought of it all. Dieter had asked her to marry him. He had kissed her on the cheek. Sulfia thought he was romantic. She liked him and was happy. She never asked herself what a man like Dieter could see in a woman like her.

It was Sulfia who flew home to settle a few affairs. It was clear to me that you couldn’t leave Aminat alone at Dieter’s. Of course he was a coward, but I never trusted anyone.

We returned two of the airplane tickets. I could hardly believe my good fortune. This was exactly what I had wished for — that I wouldn’t use the return tickets. Sulfia flew back alone. I gave her specific instructions: what she should say to whom, what she needed to take care of, what documents she would need to produce. Dieter and Sulfia had already been to City Hall and gotten a list of the papers that were necessary for marriage. Apparently marriage was a civil ceremony in Germany. Fine, that didn’t scare me. Later, when Sulfia returned, I could go home and take care of the remaining concerns.

We didn’t tell Aminat that she wasn’t ever going back to Russia. We just told her she would be staying a bit longer. To go to school, to buy a few more nice things, to learn a bit of German. I didn’t ask her what she thought.

I was very proud of myself. Aminat was in Germany. I was by her side.

And Sulfia was about the marry for the third time.