It was 2015, the height of the civil war in Syria, around the time our then chancellor, one Angela Merkel, with the words
“Wir schaffen das!” (“We'll manage!”) announced her historic decision to offer hundreds of thousands of refugees a haven and a new home in Germany. We were eighteen at the time and had just graduated from vocational school. To celebrate, we decided to have a barbecue after the last class on Friday morning in the parkland down by the river.
There was a picnic area there equipped with two large bricked-in grills, taps with drinking water, refuse bins and a large basin to wash your pans and dishes in afterwards. There was also an exercise book with a ballpoint pen on a string, so you could reserve the facilities in advance, to avoid problems if two groups wanted to use the place at the same time, but seeing it was a weekday, no one had bothered.
When we got there, we were dismayed to discover another group had beaten us to it and were using both the grills. They were from another vocational school and had had the same idea as us. At first, we tried to settle the matter amicably. Unfortunately, as is so often the case in life, there were a few hotheads in each group to whom the idea of compromise was anathema.
One of them, I regret to say, was my girlfriend, Barbelies, who had a very short fuse and soon found herself in a heated argument with a girl from the other group.
It so happened that this girl was Turkish, and although this fact had nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of the dispute, Barbelies decided to make it an issue, and even I had to admit some of the things she said to her were way out of line, “Why do you even need a barbecue? There are vans everywhere selling your filthy kebabs!” being among the least offensive.
I tried to calm her down, and when that didn't work, to pull her away gently by the elbows, but she shook herself free, got right in the other girl's face and resumed her racist diatribe. The Turkish girl was rather beautiful, actually, and I had to admire the way she stood her ground, something very few people did when Barbelies was in one of her moods. I put up with them, frankly, because she was so sexy with her pretty blue eyes, her cute nose, her mane of thick blonde hair, her butt (of which more later) and her boobs, which were the size of grapefruit and almost as firm. Those boobs were almost touching those of the Turkish girl, who was saying nothing now but looking her defiantly in the eye. Her own eyes, surprisingly, were green, her complexion a pale olive, her hair, long, thick, wavy, and jet black, her nose, larger than Barbelies’s and slightly curved but decidedly beautiful, and her forehead flat, whereas Barbelies’s bulged in a way that suggested great intelligence – which, alas, she lacked.
Although they must both have been the same age, the Turkish girl already had the sensual beauty of a mature woman and, despite her anger, a certain dignity, whereas Barbelies – fresh-faced, her body newly ripened and bursting with vitality – looked and sounded the spoilt, petulant teenager she was.
When the Turkish girl, who'd been voluble enough at the start, fell silent and just let my girlfriend run her mouth off, I thought at first that she was backing down and that Barbelies, as usual, was going to get her own way – which was fine with me because I was starving – but then I heard murmurings from the other group and looking again at the Turkish girl, I saw the silent rage in her eyes and realized the situation was about to get out of hand. I tried again to pull Barbelies away, but someone said: “No, let them fight!” – I think it was one of the boys in our class but the idea quickly found support too in the other group, whence, for all I knew, it had originated. Perhaps that was what the murmuring had been about. I still had a hold of Barbelies’s elbows and made a further attempt to pull her away but a girl in our group touched me on the forearm and said: “Leave her!” and then someone in the other group, looking at me, as though this were somehow my decision now, said: “If your girl wins, you lot can go first and we'll wait until you've finished. If Ecem wins, you wait your turn. Deal?” “Yeah, let them settle it,” chimed in another voice before I could say anything, and although one or two people on both sides voiced their disapproval, they were soon drowned out by those clamouring to see the fight.
“You and me then, kanak!” said Barbelies butting into the Turkish girl with her breasts and shoving her backwards, at which point any hopes I may have had of bringing peace evaporated, ('kanak' is the equivalent of the N-word over here) so I tried to fix some rules: “no pulling of hair, no punching, no kicking …” but Barbelies cut me off, saying: “You butt out of it. I'm going to fuck this cxnt up.”
“Just let 'em fight till one submits,” said one of the boys in their group, a suggestion that met with general agreement.
“To a submission, then,” said one of the boys in ours, looking at me. If I'd wanted to stop it, that was my last chance. Instead, I just shrugged. We all moved back and formed a ring, leaving the two girls in the centre, face to face.
Barbelies was around 5'7" and would have weighed around 140 lb. The Turkish girl, Ecem, was a little taller and perhaps a little lighter but there wouldn't have been much in it. Barbelies was wearing tight cotton shorts that were struggling to contain her bulging buttocks, and a tight, white, short-sleeved T-shirt. Ecem was wearing black training shorts and a dark green shirt, the two buttons open at the top offering a glimpse, though nothing more, of her ample cleavage. Even sullen and unsmiling, she looked hellishly sexy. From an aesthetic point of view, Barbelies, albeit the prettiest girl in our group, was outclassed.
She hadn't been very well-liked, I have to admit, in school. Her feistiness, which for some reason I found oddly attractive, had made her a lot of enemies. The racist crap, which I'd never heard from her before, made her seem cheap and ugly and I could tell from the expressions on the faces of some of my friends that they didn't think much of it either. “She probably doesn't mean it,” I told myself. “She's just livid because the other girl won't back down.”
“Get her, Ecem!” said one of the girls, a redhead, in their group.
“Yeah,” said another, “I'm hungry. And anyway, we were here first.”
“Don't worry. I've got this. I'll soon put this baby to bed,” Ecem told her, and everyone in their group laughed.
“She won't think it's funny in a minute,” Barbelies assured us.
Noticing some of our group beginning to unpack the food we'd brought, Ecem told them: “You won't be needing that for at least an hour.”
“She's right,” agreed Barbelies. “No need to get out the meat. One juicy kebab coming up!”
They began circling, Barbelies lashed out with her fists. The Turkish girl pulled her in and drove a knee into her ribs. It was only a glancing blow, but I saw Barbelies wince. She managed to trip Ecem though as she pushed her away. The Turkish girl went down and rolled but Barbelies was able to land one good kick to the belly as she was coming back to her feet.
This brought a large cheer from our group. Barbelies looked round and grinned. She always liked to be the centre of attention and now she was – and oozing confidence.
I wouldn't say Ecem looked rattled but I could see the kick had hurt her. As they closed, Barbelies unleashed a flurry of punches and bloodied the Turkish girl's nose. I'd never seen my girlfriend fight before – it had never occurred to me she could fight – and I was a little taken aback. I knew she was good at sports but to see this level of aggression and the fact that they were punching and kicking rather than rolling around pulling hair as I'd expected left me in a quandary.
She feinted a kick but threw a punch instead that caught the Turkish girl on the cheek, landing with an audible smack. For a moment, I thought the fight was over because the Turkish stumbled, and as she held her cheek with one hand, she half turned away and reached out towards Barbelies in what I took at first as a gesture of surrender, but she was merely steadying herself and quickly straightened up again, backing away.
Now Barbelies looked at me, to make sure I was getting all this. Her face was slightly flushed and her lips had that swollen, somehow rubbery, look they used to get sometimes when we were making love. She was enjoying this!
“What if she actually injures this girl and the police get involved?” I found myself asking. She was with me, which made me, in a sense, responsible. None of the other boys in my class would intervene while her boyfriend was present, and the girls wouldn't dare. That left me. I decided to wait until the Turkish girl submitted and then pull Barbelies off her at once, even if it meant the end of our relationship.
She moved in again, going for the body this time, and though the Turkish girl fought back bravely and seemed for a moment to be getting the better of the exchange, a vicious punch to the tit followed by a less powerful but still painful punch in the mouth soon had her backing away.
Again, Barbelies looked round at her supporters as they cheered but, right at that moment, Ecem lunged and wrapped her right arm round Barbelies’s neck. Grabbing her right wrist with her left hand, she tightened the headlock and jerked, bending Barbelies’s upper body over so that her neck was wedged between her opponent's right arm and hip. This took me, and everyone else, by surprise and suddenly everyone in their group was shouting encouragement and ours fell silent.
Barbelies tried desperately to relieve the pressure on her neck by tugging with her free hand at the Turkish girl's elbow but the latter only tightened her grip.
“Looks like there'll be no fresh kebab for you lot after all,” Ecem called out to us. Then, to her own supporters: “Anyone fancy a nice juicy rump of pork?” Even some of the girls in our group laughed at that. Barbelies was a little sensitive about the size of her butt, though I loved it and I can assure you, none of it was fat. “Do you want it rare or well done?” Ecem added, seeing she had a receptive audience.
More out of respect for me, I suspect, than affection for Barbelies, the boys in our class said nothing. I noticed a few of the girls smirking. After a decidedly shaky start, the Turkish girl was now completely in control, and bent over like that, with her butt sticking out and her neck trapped between Ecem's right arm and her ribcage, Barbelies could neither kick nor even punch with any real power, and her face was changing colour. The other group, now, had really found their voices and began shouting things like: “Finish her!”, “Teach the cxnt some manners!” and there were even some more imaginative suggestions like: “Sit her on the barbecue and roast her fat arse!” “Yeah, make the pig squeal.” Some of the girls, only a few of whom, in fact, were Turkish began calling Barbelies a “a slapper”, “a dumb-arse bimbo”, “an evil slut” and worse. I doubt they'd have been quite so brave under other circumstances, but as far as they were concerned, their girl had this and was about to bring home the bacon.
Ecem began turning in circles and Barbelies was having difficulty staying on her feet. She was red in the face and fighting back the tears, and the cheering and abuse coming from the other girl's supporters, coupled with the hopelessness of her own position, were steadily draining the fight out of her. Both girls were panting with exertion, which I found oddly arousing, and the quiet determination on the face of the Turkish girl, who was no longer playing to the gallery, even more so. Knowing how fiercely stubborn my girlfriend was – when there was something she wanted, woe to anyone who stood in her way – the sight of her now being relentlessly ground down by this Turkish girl affected me in ways I took care now to hide.
A sob escaped her as she stumbled and sank to one knee, which only spurred Ecem to greater efforts. Walking forwards and at the same time leaning back, all the while maintaining her savage headlock, she applied her own weight as well as the power of her arm muscles to force Barbelies to the ground, face down in the grass.
All that could be heard from Barbelies now was a pained gasp.
The Turkish girl still had her in the headlock, though Barbelies’s throat was resting now in the crook of her elbow, and she was lying sideways across Barbelies’s back, making it even more difficult for her to breathe.
It was obvious to everyone that there was no escape for Barbelies from this position.
Her t-shirt had ridden right up to her bra, baring her midriff, and you could see her diaphragm heaving as she fought for breath.
“She's finished!” Barbelies’s best friend – one of the few girls in our group, I suspect, who wasn't secretly rejoicing – told me. “Yes, her goose is well and truly cooked,” said one of the boys who had never made any secret of his dislike for her. “Stick a fork in her,” shouted one of the men in the other group, riffing further on the barbecue theme, “she's done!” This drew giggles from some of the girls on the other side. (Honestly! Hadn't they heard that one before?). Satisfied now that she'd as good as won, the Turkish girl looked over at her group, at one boy in particular, who made the gesture of wringing the neck of a chicken, accompanied with a click of his tongue. In response, the Turkish girl, presumably his girlfriend, released Barbelies from the headlock and rolled on top of her, belly to back, her forehead resting on that juicy rump that had been the subject of so much culinary interest.
Freed from the headlock, Barbelies tried to push herself up onto all fours. Unfortunately, she was too weak to make it. Wrapping her arms tightly round Barbelies’s belly, the Turkish girl brought up her knees and trapped Barbelies’s head between her thighs. Now, arching her back and flexing her buttocks, crossing her feet to lock in the scissor hold, she forced the blonde back down onto her belly – a cry of pain escaped her as she felt her neck being stretched, followed by a sob of despair as she found herself unable to move.
Although the front of her thighs, her belly and her breasts were pressed to the ground by the weight of her opponent lying on top of her, facing her feet, Barbelies’s head – her red face contorted with pain, trapped in the vice-like grip of the smooth, olive-thighs of her opponent – was bent backwards so she was facing those of our supporters sitting to my left.
Lying there belly down on Barbelies’s back, Ecem reminded me of a surfer paddling out towards the breakers – even more so now as she straightened her legs, further tightening the scissors, and arched her back stretching Barbelies’s neck. As though the position wasn't uncomfortable enough, she wrapped her arms round my girlfriend's bare midriff, hugging her tightly. A gasp was followed by a squeal of pain – I think it was as much the awkward angle of her head as the pressure on her neck muscles or perhaps her neck being stretched – and Barbelies began kicking her legs in a kind of spasm like a baby in her cot. This did nothing whatever to improve her situation. It looked like frustration, a kind of tantrum.
“Looks like the baby's not quite ready for bed,” said one of the boys in their group, and everyone laughed.
“She needs a good spanking, if you ask me,” said one of the girls. In the course of the fight, Barbelies’s shorts had ridden up on one side exposing her left buttock, which is doubtless where that idea came from.
“Yeah, tan her hide, Ecem. Make her cry!”
“Yeah. Give the Nazi cow the thrashing she deserves.”
“Whack that rump!”
“Don't you dare!” shouted Barbelies and was surprised and no doubt relieved in the same measure as some of the rest of us were disappointed when Ecem pulled the hem of the trousers back down to preserve her opponent's modesty.
“She's crying, look!” said one of the girls in our group. The Turkish girl heard this and looked straight at me. She'd twigged, clearly, that it was my girlfriend she was working over because the next thing she said was: “Don't worry. I'll be done with her in a mo.”
She said it with a smile, a rather nice smile, under the circumstances. Whatever anger she'd felt listening to Barbelies’s racist tirade earlier was directed at Barbelies and Barbelies alone. She didn't assume we all felt the same way and she was perfectly correct in her assumption.
She seemed uncertain, though, how to proceed.
“Go on, spank her!” said the first girl again. “What are you waiting for?”
“Yeah, do it!” said another, the start of a chorus of approbation.
Ecem wasn't convinced she'd get the submission just by spanking Barbelies but there was no harm in giving it a try.
“No, don't you dare!” shouted Barbelies, again, though there was desperation now in her voice as she felt Ecem reaching under her to unbutton her shorts, but she was in no position to make threats and Ecem just ignored her. There were giggles and an “Oh my God,” from one of the boys as Ecem, with her thumbs under the waistband on each side, pushed the shorts away from her as she lay on Barbelies’s back, peeling them off her bum (there were no panties underneath) and exposing the blonde's creamy butt cheeks in all their glory. Again, Barbelies kicked her legs – another little tantrum that brought more laughter interrupted by a loud smack and a squeal of pain and indignation as Ecem brought her right hand down hard on the left buttock.
“Again!” shouted the girl whose idea this had been.
If there had been no one there but the two of them, I had no doubt, Barbelies would already have submitted, but the embarrassment, the excruciating embarrassment, having appointed herself our champion, of being forced to submit in front of the whole class, was something she couldn't face.
I wondered whether I should intervene, but it wouldn't have helped, and I had the assurance of the Turkish girl, which I took to be sincere, that it would soon be over, so I just let the drama play out.
After trying in vain to prise the Turkish girl's thighs from her neck, Barbelies gave that up and tried instead to rise to all fours.
Placing her palms flat on the ground, she tried to push up, but the Turkish girl grabbed her wrists from below and pulled them towards her.
Placing them in the small of Barbelies’s naked back, she pushed herself up until she was kneeling upright, with Barbelies’s head still between her thighs. With the weight of Ecem’s upper body no longer on her back, Barbelies drew her own knees up – her posture, shins pressed flat to the ground, her breast and belly pressed tightly to her own thighs, her wrists held by her captor in the small of her back, her head bowed and trapped between the thighs of the woman kneeling above her – may have been one of abject surrender but she still refused to submit.
Deciding a little added persuasion was called for, Ecem pulled the trapped wrists towards her until they were between her opponent's shoulder blades.
Checkmate.
“That's it. Break her fucking arms!” shouted one of the girls in the other group.
Barbelies screamed as she felt her hands being pulled towards the nape of her neck – the sudden searing pain as the arms reached the point of dislocation was unbearable. As she realized what was about to happen, she begged for mercy.
“No! Please! I submit! I submit!”
“You all hear that?” asked Ecem, looking round at our group. With her head trapped between the Turkish girl's thighs and her face inches from the grass, Barbelies’s voice was partly muffled but I'd heard perfectly well what she said.
“Nope!” said one of the girls behind me, mischievously, wanting to hear more.
“Then let's try it again,” said Ecem, standing up and hauling Barbelies towards us by the hair. As soon as she released her, Barbelies, on her knees facing us, sat down on her heels and hid her face in her hands. Dropping to her knees behind her, Ecem wrapped her right arm under my girlfriend's chin before pulling Barbelies' left hand back and towards her, away from her face, wrapping her left arm round the elbow before reaching up to place her palm on my girlfriend's shoulder blade, trapping the arm in a kind of sling behind her back. Reaching under it with her left hand and round Barbelies’s throat with her right, she linked her hands, trapping her opponent's left arm in a kind of sling, only the arm was behind her, not over her chest: a “chicken wing” I believe the hold's called.
“Now what was that about the second grill?” the Turkish girl asked her. “You and your friends don't mind waiting a bit, do you?” And she accompanied the question by tightening the grip on the trapped arm, forcing my girlfriend's hand towards the nape of her neck.
“No, we don't mind, we'll wait,” screamed Barbelies. “Please, you're breaking my arm!”
“And who's going to clear up for us? You're just dying to do a spot of washing up, aren't you?”
“Yes, yes, we'll do it. Now please, I submit!” She was crying loudly now. “I submit,” she said again. The Turkish girl looked at me again. “She's all yours!” she said with a smile, and released her. She stood up and walked over to her group where she was received like a heroine.
Barbelies knelt there, bent double, sobbing her heart out, her head in her hands. to hide her face and her shame from her friends and classmates. I went over to her and helped her to her feet. “The bitch!” she kept muttering. “The fucking bitch!” I surprised a guilty smile on the faces of one or two of the girls, even those I'd thought were her friends. Others were angry. “I'm not washing up their things,” one of them told her. “This was your doing. You can clean up their mess yourself!”
That seemed to be the general feeling. “Victory has a thousand fathers,” said JFK, “but defeat is an orphan.”
It was my own feeling too, but hell, she was my girlfriend. We sat there for half an hour while the other group cooked their food, and their second helpings, and their third. I began to suspect they were spinning the whole thing out on purpose to rub our noses in it.
“You're on!” said the Turkish girl to my girlfriend, when they'd finally finished cooking, walked over to where we were standing and pressed the scourer into her palm. Barbelies couldn't look her in the eye, but I did and she gave me a cheeky wink. Barbelies and I spent the next ten minutes scrubbing their pans and utensils, while the other group enjoyed their meal. The rest of our group, by now starving, sat there getting drunk. Not one of them raised a finger to help.
*
That fight, though I didn't know it then, spelt the end of our relationship. Barbelies changed after that. She grew twisted, bitter. The self-confidence, the fire that had first attracted me to her, gave way to self-doubt, an almost reflexive jealousy of other women and a smouldering resentment of foreigners the acrid trail of which came to poison every corner of her soul. Until that flare-up with the Turkish girl that got her into that fight, and in which I hardly recognized her, I had never known her racist or even uncharitable to those less privileged than herself. If she'd had any such feelings, she'd kept them well hidden, but after that fiasco, it became overt, became an obsession almost. No day went by without her making some disparaging remark about immigrants, about how we had enough problems already with the Turkish filth without taking Syrians as well. When she began talking about joining the neo-Nazi AfD, I'd had enough.
“You're so transparent!” I told her, overcome with exasperation and contempt. “We both know what this is about. You hate immigrants because that one Turkish girl whipped you in front of all our friends when you were trying to play the hero. But you know what? I think she was too kind to you. After what you'd said, I think she was merciful. She should have sat your fat arse on the grill like her friends suggested. We could all have had a good laugh when you pissed yourself and vanished in a cloud of steam.”
Well, that did it, as you can imagine. Barbelies moved out that day (good riddance!) and I never saw her again.
Except once, on television, when they did a documentary on far-right groups in Germany, and there she was with her torch and her silly uniform marching in some crass procession, with all the other hate-filled losers, chanting the same ugly slogans and spewing the same discredited nonsense that caused such unimaginable misery on this continent once before.
And I remembered the fight. And what had dismayed me at the time, I remembered then with relish. That Turkish girl – there was a woman! – riding Barbelies at the end as though she were a bodyboard, Barbelies, with her blond 'Aryan' head projecting awkwardly upwards between the Turkish girl's thighs, like a child with its head stuck in the railings, and the furious, futile thrashing of her legs as she struggled to escape, and the way that struggle that subsided as her heart broke, and the mischievous grin, and the delicious, sensual, arching of the Turkish girl's back as she looked over her shoulder at the girl that had insulted her so nastily two short minutes earlier, and the same smile moments later as she spelt out the terms of surrender, with their arch conclusion: “You're just dying to do a spot of washing up, aren't you?” and the red face and broken voice of my girlfriend, as she then was, as she capitulated and agreed that she'd love to clean up their mess – anything to make the pain stop! – and if her head hadn't been jammed between that Turkish girl's thighs, incapable of movement in any direction, inches away, but facing away, from her magnificent arse, she'd have kissed that too!
*
Two or perhaps three years later, I was at the airport meeting my cousin off a flight from Hamburg when two police officers, a man and a woman, armed with submachine guns walked by, chatting amiably. I recognized the woman at once as Ecem. As she passed, I let out an involuntary “hey” and she turned her head and stopped. In her beret, tailored pullover and trousers cut in a way that showed her bum to best advantage, she looked decidedly chic. She was about to ask me what I wanted when she recognized me too.
“Oh, you,” she said, with a smile, and to her companion, who had also stopped, “I'll catch you up.”
It was strange. We'd scarcely even spoken the day of the fight, yet here we were greeting each other like old friends.
“So, how's my dishwasher?” she asked, cheekily.
“You mean me?” I asked.
“No,” she laughed. “The blonde - Barbecue Barbie.”
I laughed.
“We broke up ages ago,” I told her. “Not long after you and she …”
“Her decision or yours?” she asked.
Christ, she was direct, but I rather liked that.
“Mine,” I told her.
If it had been Barbelies that had dumped me, I don't suppose I'd have been quite as sanguine about her inquisitiveness.
“Because she lost?” she asked. “Prefer winners, do you?”
“It wasn't that,” I protested but then wondered, as I caught the knowing, playful gleam in her eyes, whether perhaps it had been that. She said nothing, still looking me in the eye, waiting to see if there was more. If I'd told her the real reason Barbelies and I split up, it would have sounded like I was trying to ingratiate myself, and besides, it had been obvious from her manner even during the fight, that she understood I didn't share my girlfriend's racist attitudes. In the end I settled for “We just weren't suited.” as an explanation.
“And do you still see her?” she asked.
“No, well yes, I saw on her the TV,” I replied. “She's in the AfD now.”
There, I'd said it.
“Figures,” said Ecem simply.
“And what about you?” I asked. “How long have you been in the police? What's with the machine gun?”
“I'm still in training, actually.” she explained. “I've applied for the GSG 9.”
GSG 9 is the elite unit that intervenes in hostage situations and the like.
“I'm impressed,” I told her.
“Well, don't be,” she said. “They haven't accepted me yet.”
There was a silence. I wanted to ask her out. She didn't give me time.
“I'd better catch up with my partner,” she said. “It was nice seeing you,” and she turned and began walking away.
“Wait,” I said. She stopped and turned. “Can I call you? Your name's Ecem isn't it?”
“Well remembered!” she said.
(If she only knew.)
“OK,” she said. “You got a pen?” I found one. “0485 (that's the code for Frankfurt) …”
“I live here,” I reminded her, and we both laughed.
“923 6….
THE END
