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THE DATE
It’s a Steven. Again. Yasira is sitting at the Hard Rock Cafe on Ku’damm on a rainy autumn evening and sitting across from her is a Steven. Her date. Tinder, obviously. A date on Wednesday. And why shouldn’t it be? Why should she cram her entire private life into the weekend? Only to hear again that she has to work on Saturday after all.
When Steven suggested the Hard Rock Cafe on the phone, Yasira had to restrain herself from bursting into laughter. So she teased him a bit.
“Wait! I’ve got another call on the line. I think it’s the ’80s.”
“The burgers are really awesome!” Steven defended himself.
So here they are at the Hard Rock Cafe and the burgers are indeed awesome. There’s even live music, and of course it’s too loud even for Steven. The preferred volume seems to make a U-curve over the course of life and in your early forties you’re very close to the vertex. Yasira probably owes such strange trains of thought to her father. A math professor who had to toil on construction sites in this country. Steven works for the online edition of some Berlin newspaper. Yasira is briefly inattentive and misses which one. She sizes him up as he talks. Brown curls, stylish glasses and a Berlin-typical seven-day beard that’s starting to turn gray. But it suits him quite well. All in all, he’s a bit better looking than the last Steven.
Yasira has not yet told him that she works for the BKA.?1That’s always a risk. Some men immediately get horny at the thought of hooking up with a policewoman. Others suffer from erectile dysfunction due to overwhelming feelings of being powerless. Both of which are unpleasant.
“I think we haven’t really made much progress with gender equality,” says Steven. “Did you know, for instance, that in the UK, there are fewer hedge funds managed by women than by guys named David?”
“Is that so?” Yasira asks, taking a bite of her veggie burger.
Steven’s share of the conversation that evening, she estimates, is a strong eighty percent. Perhaps, she thinks, there are also more departments in her agency managed by Stevens than by women. Her boss, at least, is also a Steven. Among the criminal investigators at the BKA, she recently read, the ratio is two to one. In other words, for every two Stevens, there is one Katja.
“So don’t worry, I’m not anti-Semitic or anything,” says Steven. Yasira is somewhat puzzled, not immediately understanding the connection.
“I mean, David is a Jewish name,” explains Steven, “but it’s not just Jews who are called David. I have nothing against Jews or Israel, although I don’t approve of everything happening in the Middle East. You people probably have a completely different view on it. I mean...” Steven stops. “I shouldn’t say ‘you people,’ should I?”
Yasira shakes her head in amusement.
“I’m really talking myself into a corner here,” Steven realizes. “I always do that when I’m excited. May I ask where you come from?”
“From Wilmersdorf?2,” replies Yasira. Steven makes a pretty silly face. The old joke is always funny. “With the subway,” she adds.
Steven blushes. Kind of cute.
“Sorry about that! I didn’t mean to...”
“You wanted to know where my parents originally came from? From Lebanon. Beirut. Or, if you want to know it exactly, I can tell you that my father was born in Houla, a small place in the very south. They both fled the civil war in the early ’80s. By that time, my mother was already pregnant.”
Steven just stares. He seems a little overwhelmed by the information he asked for. Yasira smiles. “Where did your parents originally come from?”
“My parents? Well, from Bavaria...”
Poor Steven is completely insecure.
“Cheer up,” Yasira says. “I know you didn’t mean anything bad.”
Steven’s face relaxes a little.
“My great-grandparents came from East Prussia,” he says, before correcting himself immediately. “I mean from Poland.”
“I see.”
“And I come from Friedrichshain,” Steven says, exhaling slightly. “By city train.”
Yasira laughs. Maybe this will work out after all, once he overcomes his insecurity.
Steven points at her wine. “But you’re not religious?”
Oh, how cleverly and seemingly casually he placed the question that has probably been burning under his nails since the beginning of the date, perhaps even since he swiped her picture to the right.
“No,” says Yasira.
