“You come with me and my friends, we pray together.” His hands gripped an invisible steering wheel for emphasis. “The mosque is not in this city but in the next city.” He pointed over his head as if the building was visible from where we stood, a dimple in a thin alley. They burn their fish here.
My sleepy eyes followed the finger anyway. As my brother struggled to decide on his offer, I kept staring at the red-bricked. In the mornings it would snore.
I imagine its throat congested with old trains. The more awake I become the more it breathed better.
It’s the solitary noises that disturb you. In a chaos of sound, in the city it is silent again.
My brother looked at me so I looked back. I must have carried a blank expression. He kept silent.
Filthy pigeons cut past the window, into the sky behind the train station. The building stood like the old people here.
Aged, but alive. They speak like the young, they aspire and swear. They remain relevant to their own lives.
Where I come from the sixties flirt with the idea of recline, awaiting a rest of some sort. Death maybe.
The men here speak of the future in similar volumes to the young.
“I’ll come by later, if I decide to join you?” My brother replied. The Lebanese man was indifferent, commencing his mopping as if we never spoke.
My brother looked back at me, the same identical and asking expression.
“I don’t like the idea of you going into a car with a bunch of strangers in Amsterdam.” I said flatly.
He nodded. “Do you even know your way back to our hotel?”
“I have a rough idea.” I lied.
Outside, the city of identical streets and canals continued to slither awake.
The noon was ripening. Heat was gathering as well.
“Let’s ask the next Muslim guy we see.” I said.
We walked for a few miles without resolve. We made jokes about the strange English they wore, and the proper English alternative to the word ‘sex shop’. We wondered if it was a place we would like to live, and compared her to New York, London and Istanbul.
Then we heard a familiar word.
“Malaysia?”
The question belonged to a small, wiry Malay man standing erect before us, smiling. He knew the answer, of course. After a syllable we knew he was Indonesian.
“Yes, yes I knew you were Malaysians when you passed by, of course you had to be.” Though he did not explain how this was a necessary deduction.
He spoke animatedly, with the excessive showmanship signature to all those effeminate but not female. His Malay was impeccable and spoke in a half-monologue. He missed using the language.
“I said to myself, should I say hello, should I say something? Because you both look so Chinese, luckily I’m a good listener.” His upward inflections were flirtatious.
“Because, you know we can choose to be friendly, or unfriendly, depending on the place, yes?” I couldn’t determine if he meant the city or the sex shop before us, but we let it go quickly.
“Mosques? Mosques here? There are several, severaaal.” He motioned us to enter, which we did, politeness stiff on our faces. Clicking his pen, his tongue thoughtfully peeking through, he began to circle several streets in the city centre.
We remained fixed on him, there was little in the shop we could not avert or leave imaginations to. I had the crazy smile on to stop the laughing. It was a perverse expression but I blended in. The other workers all had their half-smiles fixed on.
A wanderer stopped to ask about DVDs. Our new friend gave extensive directions and I slowly realised it was the shop was for men alone.
“You have to know this carefully because it’s a very small, small place, and one wrong turn and you’ll fall into some other street.” He knew mosques by religious sect, name and the regulars.
It was hard to digest the information. We seemed to focus on the chewing of a carrot in a slaughterhouse.
His friend sauntered into the counter and stretched his grin to my brother. He was a pudgy creature, with coconut-cut hair and small breasts. At the Indonesian’s pause for breath his friend asked my brother coyly, “Are you gaaay?”
My brother was diplomatic when he said no.
He was quickly disciplined - smacked hard on the hand. “No he isn’t gay! And he’s looking for his way to the mooosque. Now get away, asshole.”
His friend pouted. “Why are you so meaan to me whenever you meet your Asian frieeends?”
I had to laugh. The boys smiled back at me, both suddenly a little shy.
His directions were specific, we had to retrace our steps with every four we took. There was a little monument to find, a stall that may or may not be open. A restaurant with a strange name. We skirted tram lines and walked over puddles.
“This is one landmark.” My brother said, peeking from the map.
I looked ahead and bit my lower lip. “The gay pride information booth, or the Anne Frank Museum?”
My brother narrowed his gaze at me. “Both, actually. We’re supposed to make a left turn…here and find a bakery.” We confirmed our suspicions with a taxi-driver.
With every yard less English could be caught in the air. We had a good fifteen minutes left until it was time for Friday prayers.
I caught sight of a little sign-board that hung over a negligible door. It said Mosque in Arabic.
“Wow.” My brother said. “Hard place to find.”
“It must’ve taken him an effort to find it, huh.”
“And all the other mosques.” My brother agreed. We savoured the surprise for a moment until my brother passed his camera, map and umbrella for me to wait with outside. “I suppose this is Amsterdam.” He said, and walked inside to join the other men who collected.
I walked into a neighbouring cafe and ordered a Mocha. As I sipped and waited, I sat by the sill of the window, feeling twenty-two and appreciating the uncertainty. A large grey-hound walked silently next to me and slept below my feet.
If I listened carefully I could hear AllahuAkhbar crying out in intervals.
