Empire of Lies

76 VIENNA

Kamal was in a state of constant wonder.

Everything—absolutely everything—was different.

He hadn’t visited Vienna back in his time, so he could only compare it to the Paris of 1438—now referred to as 2017, he quickly discovered. Of course, back in his Paris, there had also been cars, and buses, and airliners crisscrossing the skies overhead. Even if they weren’t of the same design, they were broadly similar.

This was different.

Somehow, it was all brighter. Color was everywhere: most strikingly in the clothing, which was light and startlingly colored—and rather minimal, he was shocked to notice—but also on cars, trams, and bicycles and in wild, eye-catching storefronts and on billboards that displayed all kinds of attention-grabbing imagery. Even the light of day seemed brighter, as did the eyes and faces of the people he encountered as he wandered the big city.

It was all more visceral, more vivid.

More alive.

Everywhere he looked, something he saw startled him, but not in a bad way. Most of the men were clean-shaven. Many were dressed curiously in dark jackets and trousers and had a colorful piece of material, like a very thin scarf, hanging from their collars. More than anything, though, it was the women that caught his eye. They were everywhere. Walking alone or in the company or others, men and women. Not just with faces uncovered but with swathes of skin exposed, sauntering breezily in short dresses and skirts, their bare legs teetering on fragile-looking high-heeled shoes, their hair flowing as they moved through the city with purpose and freedom.

As far as his life experience went, it was extraordinary.

He saw couples walking around holding hands; others, kissing openly. He even saw men holding hands casually for all to see, strolling past police officers in white caps, who were oblivious to their choice of lifestyle and whose presence didn’t seem to instill a feeling of foreboding in the people who crossed their path.

Sidewalk cafés offering a bewildering assortment of food and drink were bustling with people, men and women of all ages eating, laughing, smoking, many enjoying cups of coffee—clearly, Kolschitzky had left his mark on Viennese history in more ways than one—or openly drinking what he discovered were alcoholic beverages.

The sense of freedom was intoxicating.

There was also a palpable sense of calmness, which took a while for him to grasp. The people of the city didn’t seem to be ruled by fear, and yet it wasn’t a chaotic free-for-all. There was none of the anarchy he’d been taught about, none of the ruin Rasheed had spoken of. There was order—more of it than he remembered back home. It was clean and tidy, and free of litter. Traffic ebbed and flowed in an organized manner, car horns weren’t blaring incessantly, people waited for light signals to cross roads, pedestrians seemed respectful of one another, and none of it seemed due to fear of punishment. And the city was obviously thriving: clothing storefronts were packed with vivid displays, pastry-shop display cases were overflowing with all kinds of cakes, and crowds of people were strolling around—tourists much like him, he gathered, taking in the sights, chatting, laughing, using their handheld phones to take pictures. It was unquestionably a happier, more relaxed time and place than any world he’d seen. Musicians performed openly in the streets, relying on the generosity of strangers. Even the pedestrian signals at traffic lights flashed a green symbol of two people holding hands with a small blinking heart above them.

He just wandered and wandered, his eyes feasting on the new world, his mind drunk with awe while it processed the torrent of fresh imagery. And all the time, he couldn’t help but think of Nisreen, about how she would have reacted to all this, too, to the freedom and equality she’d fought for all those years.

How she would have loved it.

His starting point had been in Saint Stephen’s Cathedral. He’d correctly assumed the cathedral would still be there all those years later, and he’d been proved right.

He arrived during the night, when it was closed to visitors, and the difference had immediately struck him: the hordes of sick and dying were no longer there; the stench of death was long gone. Instead, the cathedral’s glorious interior had been restored to its full grandeur: a gleaming beacon for living, breathing worshippers, as its builders had intended.

He felt filthy and craved a wash, which he was able to do in a small cloakroom, taking huge delight in the clean, warm, running water. After drying himself with paper tissues, he was lucky to find a bundle of used clothes and shoes in a small room by the lower vestry. He couldn’t know they were donations for the needy collected by the church, and they weren’t like any clothes he was used to, but he still helped himself to what seemed like a reasonable male outfit. He also found some coins in a desk drawer, which he pocketed. Then he waited until daylight rose and the church doors opened before venturing out.

The shock was instantaneous. He’d left a heavily destroyed city that was drowning with death and suffering. The visual contrast was tough to process at first, especially since the first building he saw was the one he and Nisreen had been held in, next to the cathedral. It, too, was now in pristine condition. There was no trace of the damage from Kara Mustafa’s cannonballs; its arcaded ground floor now housed a collection of restaurants and cafés.

Dazed and bewildered, he roamed the city, marveling at everything he saw, heard, smelled, breathed, noticing every innocuous detail and trying not to attract attention while doing it. He tried to find his bearings by replicating the path he’d taken with Kolschitzky and Nisreen to get to the walls, but he quickly lost his way. He couldn’t find the fortifications or the bastions. Only the occasional church jarred his memory.

He tried to find the cemetery where he had buried Nisreen but failed. The city was now much bigger. It had expanded wildly in the almost three and a half centuries since the time of the siege, way beyond its old fortifications. With mixed emotions, he kept on walking, but, before long, a sense of unease started to seep into him.

He couldn’t speak the language. Being familiar with Latin script, he could read the words, but it only told him what they sounded like, not what they meant. He had no friends, no contacts, no one who knew him. He had little money and no papers.

He felt utterly, completely alone.

His meandering eventually led him past the Hofburg palace and its magnificent gardens and into the Naschmarkt, a sprawling market with stalls that sold all kinds of foods and bric-a-brac. He felt a stir of hope at the sight of a stall that had a familiar feature from his old life: a large, rotating spit of döner meat, a kebab shop, the likes of which peppered his Paris. The lettering on its awning spelled out Bosphorus.

Hesitantly, he approached one of the men who worked there, the older of the two. The man was in his sixties, had a burgeoning white moustache, and wore a white apron and a matching cap.

In Ottoman Turkish, Kamal pointed at the grill and asked, “How much for one of those?”

The man looked at him curiously, then replied, “Where are you from, brother?” He spoke Turkish, but his accent was different from what Kamal was used to, softer somehow, easier on the ear. And clearly he found Kamal’s accent unusual.

Kamal felt a stab of discomfort. He half smiled sheepishly and began to step away when the man called out after him. “Hey, wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. We’re all brothers here.” He came around from behind the counter and put out a welcoming hand to coax Kamal back. “Come, please. You look like you could use something to eat. Let me offer you a sandwich.”

Kamal hesitated; then, at the man’s insistence, he relented and accepted his offer. They sat at a small raised table in front of the stall, where Kamal greedily wolfed down the sandwich and a carton of ayran yogurt.

He was a bit guarded at first, but he soon understood what the kebab chef, who said his name was Orhan, had assumed: that he was a Turk like him, Turkey being—Kamal surmised—the surviving part of the empire. He learned that there were a lot of illegal Turkish immigrants in Vienna, and Orhan took him for one of them. Kamal found it useful to let the assumption run. Kamal told Orhan that he was from the east of the country, near Diyarbakir, despite feeling uncomfortable about dredging up information he remembered about a Turkish terror suspect who was once on his radar.

The chef was familiar with and sympathetic to the plight of his desperate countrymen. He gave Kamal some useful insights into what to do now that he was there: how to find shelter and food, how to apply for asylum. Kamal wondered if that was what he’d need to do, at least as a temporary measure, before he understood the place better and figured out how to navigate this new world.

“Amazing that the people of this city can now welcome us,” Kamal commented, “after everything we did to them.”

Orhan’s face clouded. He hadn’t understood the reference.

“Kara Mustafa’s siege,” Kamal explained, his tone quizzical. “All those years ago.”

“Ah.” The chef brushed it off. “It’s such a long time ago. I doubt anyone even thinks about it. Are you a history buff?”

“You could say that.”

“Then you’ll love the museums here. They’re outstanding.”

The chef told Kamal more about them, but one thing he mentioned sank its claws into Kamal and wouldn’t let go.

He felt an urge to get going, and, after promising Orhan he’d come back soon, got up and walked away.

Less than an hour later, he was outside the gates of the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum.

The Austrian Military History Museum.