Caliphate

Kitzingen, Federal Republic of Germany,

9 April, 2003

"No blood for oil! No blood for oil!"

It wasn't a huge crowd, gathered under the crooked-topped tower that was the town's most well-known symbol and landmark. No larger than one might expect in a small city like Kitzingen, the crowd, a mixture of Germans and Moslem guest workers and residents, legal or otherwise, chanted, "No to war . . . no war for oil . . ."

Of the Germans, some were principled pacifists, some leftists of various stripes. Some were just young boys gravitating to young girls. Of the Moslems, few if any had any connection to terrorism. They did, of course, have some connection to their fellow Moslems, wherever they might live. And some of those fellow Moslems had been and were plainly on the target list for the armed forces of the United States.

The television cameras ate it up.

The demonstrators had been more enthusiastic earlier in the year, back when it had still seemed possible to dissuade the United States from the illegal, immoral, imperialist venture its despised President seemed set on. That possibility had proved illusory.

Today was a particularly unpleasant one for them as all the newspapers were carrying photographs of the American military helping a less passive crowd in Baghdad pull down a giant statue of the dictator, Saddam Hussein. Most of the crowd found the pictures, as they found the easy American success and the Iraqis' rapturous welcome, "annoying."

Gabrielle von Minden was annoyed, certainly. She stood in the snowy cold of an early German spring holding a protest sign. It wasn't the cold that annoyed her though. Rather, like the rest of the crowd, what annoyed, or infuriated, was that their best hopes for an Anglo- American defeat in Iraq had been blighted. It was just so . . . unfair. Bastard Americans. How she hated those arrogant bastards.

No, that's not true, she corrected herself. I hate their government and the power they wield. The Americans I've known, even the soldiers, were mostly pretty nice people. I mustn't forget that; it is a government and a set of policies I loathe. I must not ever let myself begin to loathe an entire people.

That said, or thought, Gabrielle didn't feel the need for restraint in her message of protest. Lifting her sign high and waving it, she increased the volume of her chant, "Kein Blut für Oel. Kein Blut für Oel. Kein Blut . . . "

Later, chilled to the bone and shivering, Gabrielle and several friends repaired to a nearby coffee shop. It seemed like half the protestors had had the same idea. It was not a large coffee shop and still it held them all easily. That, too, was a little annoying.

Ah, well, Gabrielle thought, maybe I can't save the world but at least I can try.

She smiled up at the waiter, a handsome, olive-skinned boy about her own age, and gave her order. "And please, might I have some cognac in the coffee?"

"Will Asbach-Uralt do, miss?" the waiter asked.

"Wonderfully," Gabi answered.

Mahmoud didn't feel any of the irritation many of his co- religionists might have felt at being asked to serve alcohol. His Islam was pretty nominal. In fact he was known to take a drink himself from time to time.

And why not? He'd come to Germany to escape from Islam.

"Surely then, miss," he answered, returning her smile. "Right away."

Gabrielle looked at the waiter, saw that his name tag read, "Mahmoud," and thought, Yum.