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“Yes,” Steven simply says.
Both remain silent for a long minute, lost in thought. Why do people do such things to each other? What happened after the crime? What happened to Lena? The mother in Yasira hopes. The chief inspector in her has hardly any doubt that the girl is dead.
“The crime is terrible,” Steven finally says. “But I’m also afraid of the reactions. I’m scared of everything that’s going to happen now. Does that make sense?”
Yasira thinks, then nods.
She, too, feels anger. Anger at these men. Anger at what is to come. Anger at this world. One minute was enough for her to hate these men to the core. For what they did to Lena. For their cruelty. For their lack of empathy. But she also hates them for being so imbecilic as to film themselves committing the crime and sharing the recording with some jerk who thought it would be a good idea to post the video online. She can already imagine the headlines: The foreigners, the Blacks, the refugees, our daughters, our women, our values. The downfall of the West is imminent.
“All the right-wing channels will gratefully pounce on this ammunition,” assumes Steven.
“Yes,” says Yasira. “And yet one could frame the crime in a completely different way. Once again, it’s men committing violence against a woman.”
“I just recently wrote an article about that,” Steven reports. “In Germany alone, more than thirty women are sexually abused every day. And most of them are of course, logically given the population structure, raped by German men.”
“Only they don’t film themselves doing it,” says Yasira.
“That’s probably not even true,” Steven replies. “I’m sure there are countless rape videos on the darknet.”
Yasira just nods.
“But this video will just be used to make sweeping generalizations again,” Steven says. The truth is: among refugees, there are some assholes. Among Nazis, there are only assholes.”
“It will make things even worse,” she says.
Steven sips his beer. Once again, an awkward silence sttles over their table.
“I... well, it’s kind of difficult now... er... to move on to another topic...” Steven seems to want to make an attempt to save the date. Brave, but almost futile. “So you’re with the BKA? How did you...” Steven stops.
“How did someone like me end up in the police force?” asks Yasira. “Well, I used to be very idealistic. I thought that for things to change, people like me had to join the police. At least that’s what I told my father and my friends. But maybe I just watched too many crime shows as a child.”
“You used to be very idealistic?” asks Steven. “Aren’t you any more?”
Yasira shrugs.
“Reality has this stupid habit of grinding down one’s idealism. Don’t you think?”
Steven just sighs.
Shortly afterwards, they split the bill and go home. Each to his own. Steven didn’t make another attempt to save the date. He deserves credit for that. The air is out. The evening is over. On her way home, the rain lashes into Yasira’s face. Tomorrow, she thinks, the video will tear the country apart.
OUTRAGE
Yasira wakes up before the alarm. She had been battling nightmares all night. Someone was chasing her and Zara through a forest. For a long time she thought it was the rapists from the video, but then it turned out to be Patrick, her ex who told her he didn’t want to pay child support any more. Strange.
Yasira sits up. Her bedroom is spartanly furnished: a bed, a closet, a bedside table. Above the headboard hangs a reproduction of René Magritte’s masterpieceThe Lovers. Yasira bought it in the MoMA museum shop on a vacation trip to New York with Patrick. And that’s why she thinks every day anew about whether she should take the picture down. But a relationship shouldn’t only be looked at from the end. They had also had good years. Besides, if she took it down, there would be a lighter-colored rectangle on the wall where the picture had been. And this empty rectangle would still remind her of Patrick. But no longer of New York.
In the painting, a man and a woman are kissing, but their heads are completely wrapped in two white cloths. Even in their kiss, they are not touching each other. It’s just cloth on cloth. Yasira was immediately fascinated by the picture. Much later, she found it almost prophetic for the last years of her marriage. She decides to leave the picture hanging for another day and goes to the bathroom.
While sitting on the toilet, she checks the news on her phone. Brave new world, Yasira thinks. Not even on the toilet does one have peace. Of course, no one forced her to take her phone to the bathroom. Just curiosity, just her addiction to the latest scraps of information. Is this already—what does Zara call it? Ah yes—doom scrolling? Whatever.
She skims through what she’s missed in the few hours of sleep. Lena’s father, Frank Palmer reported his daughter missing four days ago. The family lives in Halberstadt in the Harz region. The girl is sixteen years old. Just like Zara. Yasira imagines what it must be like to see such a video and recognize one’s own daughter in it. It is unimaginable. Horrifying. She interrupts her own thoughts so that she doesn’t start crying in the bathroom in the morning and continues reading.
The video has already triggered a wave of outrage. The reaction and backlash are predictable yet Yasira is shocked by how extreme some of the comments are and how quiet the voices of reason remain. Some politicians loudly demand: “We must finally!” Others whisper: “Well, yes. But.” The tabloid press is pouncing on the case, seeing it as their patriotic duty to report on it—while quietly counting on boosting their circulation at the same time. The well-known right-wing channels are seething with rage. True, in the heat of the moment, there may be one or two calls for a return to the methods of... well... back then. But most people generously ignore this. Who among all those who have seen the video is not furious about it? Public figures who dare to differentiate are overwhelmed by the outrage. YouTube and Facebook have started to delete the video and its countless copies. Too late, of course. It has long since infected the entire web like a virus. The head of X even felt compelled to share the video on his platform himself. #FreedomOfSpeech #ShareTheTruth
It will be another day before new election polls are out, but they will come too, and their results are guaranteed to be frightening.
Yasira’s butt is already cold when she finally gets up from the toilet. How stupid of me, she thinks. Just stupid. Tomorrow she won’t be taking her phone to the bathroom.
