Battling Brexit Read online

  I walk a few kilometers from the vineyard feeling the heavy liberty of endless possibilities. The sun starts to rise. I see a minivan with the word ‘Skopje’ printed on a plastic card in the windshield. I wave my hand. It pulls over. I try to climb in. The driver puts out his palm.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, that will be sixty dinars and another thirty for your dog.”

  I fumble with the wad of cash. Eventually I’m able to locate a one hundred. I give it to him and get another piece of paper back that has the number ten and a peacock on it. I shuffle to a seat in the van’s rear. The other passengers give Rada a bunch of weird stares. We head north. The sun gets high overhead. My journey to the capital of Europe has begun.

  ***

  I’m about to walk into the airport terminal when I notice the problem: a sign forbidding animals from crossing borders without some kind of paperwork. I don’t know what exactly that is, but I know that Rada doesn’t have it; it’s not like I can hide my thirty-five kilo Šar Mountain Dog in my purse.

  To the side of the airport, there is a bunch of pink and white planes with the word ‘Wizz’ written on them in Latin letters. Inside the building I see a counter with the same name written above it. No one else inside has dogs, so I tie Rada up and walk in, over to the counter. “Excuse me, one ticket to Brussels, please.”

  “For what date, ma’am?”

  “I don’t know. When is the next plane?”

  The woman pauses for a moment, like she’s confused, for some reason. “Well, I can have you on a flight four hours from now but it will cost you 13,000 dinars.”

  I pay, having to count the bills out. It uses up almost all of my money. I walk back out to the covered patio, where Rada is. I look at the ticket she gave me. Among other stuff it has the info I need:

  Destination: Brussels (CRL). Gate: 07.

  Departure time: 12:05. Boards at: 11:35.

  I have every intention of being on that flight, but no intention of using the ticket. I somehow have to get Rada on that plane. That’s okay. I’ve been trained for this. I look through the fence next to the airport building at where the planes are loaded. They land and taxi up. Stairs are wheeled up to the fuselage and the people in the plane get off, while workers take out the bags in the cargo section. They leave the door to it open while they go away and then drive back towing covered wagons filled with the bags for the new people getting on the plane.

  I wait until about forty-five minutes before my departure. I crouch over to the far end of the tarmac, where a bunch of earth is piled, obscuring the fence. On the other side of the dirt pile I observe that the trolleys with the bags pass by. I take the bichaq that my dad gave me out of my waistband and use it to saw through the links in the chain fence. I let Rada go first, holding the links open for her. Then I crawl through. We leap from the top of the earth into one of the trolleys as it passes. The rubber flap that covers the side flops back in place. The trolley stops to the side of a plane. I pull on Rada’s collar. We duck under one of the wings and hide behind the wheels.

  I notice from the signs on metal poles in front of the planes that I’m only one gate slot away from number seven, where my plane is supposed to show up. After a few moments it taxies into the slot. An electric sign on the pole winks to life. It has the words Brussels (CRL) and a few random numbers.

  The workers unload the bags from the hold using a conveyer-belt-car thing. They leave, I guess to get the new bags. I check to see that no one is looking before I run up the conveyer-belt-car thing into the hold. It’s mostly empty except for this big metal bin that, from the post office emblem on it, is used to hold mail. Rada and I dash behind it. One worker crawls into the compartment and helps load the new bags. I keep ahold of Rada’s collar. He doesn’t see us behind the bin.

  They shut the hatch. The plane gets backed up. There’s this big sensation of getting pushed back, then nothing. I assume we’re in the air.

  Rada lies down. I’m tired after a night of no sleep. I lay my head on her stomach’s thick fur and shut my eyes to dreams of how perfect and exciting my new life in the center of it all is going to be.

  Two:

  The Capital of Europe

  Elena

  I open my eyes at the screeching sound. The light coming from the opening hatch almost blinds me. Rada is on her feet in a second, snarling at the guy trying to climb into the hold. He leaps back screaming as she charges him. Suddenly wide awake, I dive for the ground. I land in a roll and come up running, pulling on Rada’s collar so she’ll leave the guy who tried to climb in the hatch alone.

  I call over my shoulder in French, “Sorry, about that. My Šarplaninec gets a bit overprotective sometimes.” I run for the driver’s seat of the cart that pulls the baggage containers. Rada leaps for the guy in it. He jumps out. I climb in with Rada next to my legs.

  “Good girl,” I whisper in Macedonian as I slam the pedal to the floor, headed for where I see the other trolleys being unloaded into a long, low-slung, blackish building. This isn’t much different from Skopje’s airport. Somehow I thought that Brussels’ airport would be bigger, or nicer or something. What I think must be a police car speeds across the tarmac toward me, just as I reach where the other trolleys are. There is a moving belt that goes through the wall with these rubber strips hanging down from the opening. More workers throw bags onto them.

  I stop the trolley and dive through the rubber flaps. There are people on the other side, I guess waiting for the bags on the belt. They gasp, jumping back.

  “Excuse me, coming through.” We push our way over the black floor to the far side of the crowd. I see a police officer standing under an awning with a sign stating that this is a customs checkpoint.

  The officer’s jaw drops open. She reaches for her gun, but I’m already close enough that I reach for my dad’s bichaq and use the crooked hook of the hilt to fling the gun from her hand. I pick it up. Rada tackles her and then runs after me.

  I run through these doors that slide open by themselves out onto the asphalt, calling over my shoulder at the customs inspector, “Sorry about my dog. Um, nothing to declare?”

  The doors shut. The road in front of the airport is narrow and really crowded with more cars than I’ve ever seen in one place. A police car is trying to make its way down the road toward me, through the traffic. I need a way to get into the city and find Hristijan. I know I’m causing some damage—I’m not that clueless—but I assume he can sort this all out; maybe this will get his attention, once he sees what I can do.

  There is a motor scooter right across from the sidewalk. I run over and point the customs officer’s gun at its driver. He puts his hands up and gets off. I hop on, with Rada sitting down on the floorboard between my legs.

  “Sorry, I’ll give it back. I promise,” I call behind me as I flick my wrist back and I hear the engine’s high-pitched whine. I get going, away from the cops. I look for signs into Brussels, but they all seem to be leading away from what looks like a city; all the signs into the city center are for some town called Charleroi. Wherever I landed it can’t be the real Brussels airport. The signs to Brussels lead to the highway. I keep going as fast as I can. Rada puts her head out past my knee and lets the breeze blow her hair back. Her tongue hangs out the side of her blunt muzzle.

  However I pictured my arrival in the capital of Europe, this wasn’t it. Now I have no idea where I am and I have to find the Croatian Permanent Representation to the EU—somehow. Oh, and the cops are probably still on my tail.

  ***

  I’m in Brussels now—I think. The streets are dirty and crowded. Half of the signs in the shops of the neighborhood I’m in are for North African stuff; the ones that aren’t are advertising phone cards that make cheap calls to Africa. Some of the shops have dusty wine bottles in the windows. Forget about Europe, it looks like there are people here from the four corners of the world. The thought that I’m now one of them makes a chill of excitement run down my back.

  The engine starts
to sputter. I look down at the gauges. I’m running out of gas. There is this place with pumps that seems to be advertising the stuff. I pull into it. It takes me a few minutes to figure out how to work the pump, until I realize that it works a lot like the one we use for wine back home. I walk into the kiosk shop to pay. Rada grabs a package of some type of cured meat from the basket next to the cashier. She rips open the packaging and starts to wolf it down. I shrug; she hasn’t been fed yet today.

  “That will be twenty euros and twenty-two cents,” says the person behind the counter, who has darker olive-tan skin than Hristijan does. He glowers at my dog and looks afraid of Rada for some reason.

  I don’t really understand what he is asking for. I dig around in my bag and locate two ten-dinar bills and a two-dinar coin.

  “What’s this? Whatever this kind of money is, we don’t take it. Do you have any euros?”

  I jerk my head back, really confused. “Um, no. Where can I get those? Would you happen to know where the Croatian diplomatic residence is?”

  “You might be able to exchange that nearby at the Gare du Midi,” he replies impatiently. “As for your other question, why would I have any idea? Now get your dog out of here; it’s destroying the beef jerky section.”

  I tug on Rada’s collar, leaving for the place where I can get this other kind of money. So what? They use different money here. No one ever told me that. Did that guy have to be so rude about it?

  I make it across the street, running in front of something I think is a tram, and walk into this dingy, crowded space with a bunch of monitors. I guess this is the Midi train station. Eventually I find a shop with the words ‘currency exchange’ written on it. I walk in and push my money toward the person on the other side of the slot.

  “Sorry, we don’t exchange Macedonian dinars. You should have done that before you came here.”

  I take my money back, walk away and look down at Rada, speaking to her just to let off steam. “Great. Now we’ve got no money and we’re totally lost. What are we going to do?”

  I start to walk down the street on the other side of the train station. Right in front of me, someone gets their pocket picked. Everyone else on the street tries to look like they didn’t see it.

  “Hey you,” I yell at the thief. “You just stole that man’s wallet.” He starts to walk away like he didn’t hear me. I run after him, grab him by the shoulder, spin him around and punch him in the face. He falls to the ground. I turn around and give the other guy his money back.

  He thanks me, just as I hear the sirens in the distance, getting closer. The police have found me. That gas station employee probably ratted me out. Rada starts to howl.

  “Come on, Rada, let’s go.” We run. The police start to gain on me. Then they stop, for what at first I think is no reason. Then I notice that the signs with the street names, all of which are in French and Dutch, have changed to a different design. Where they all used to say Saint-Gilles/Sint Gillis and have EU and Belgian flags, they now have Ixelles/Elsene at the top along with a picture of a tree. I remember what Erika said two days ago about Brussels really being a bunch of communes. The police of one must not have the right to screw around in the others, or something like that.

  It only takes a few more minutes for me to hear the sirens again. I change communes, crossing this really big street with trees and tunnels down the middle of it. I manage to lose the cops again and I keep running, thankful for the calisthenics regimen the tutors my parents hired kept me on.

  Eventually, I run across this big, whitish amoeba-looking building. There are a bunch of poles that all have a blue flag with twelve golden stars on it—the flag of the EU. Under them a group of people waves a bunch of British standards. One of the people has a bullhorn.

  “Today we have come to the capital of the bureaucratic dictatorship that oppresses our great nation to tell them that we have had it with the way the European Union treats the United Kingdom,” he tells the crowd. “Come on. Tell them. The European Union takes money that we could have spent at home and what does it give us in return?”

  “Senseless regulation,” one person shouts.

  “It saps our sovereignty,” cries another.

  “It forces us to accept the uncontrolled immigration of benefits tourists and criminals.”

  “It refuses to let us enforce our own security.”

  “Yes, exactly,” cries the man with the bullhorn. “That is why we are going to follow Nigel Farage, and the UK Independence Party, through to a British exit from the European Union. It’s time we took back control of our own country.”

  The crowd cheers. All I know is that I’m supposed to bring the rest of the Balkans into the EU and that these people are part of what is keeping Hristijan from training me to do that. I pick up a rock out of a planter and throw it at them.

  The man with the bullhorn yells. “Hey! You there with the dog. Did you just throw that rock at me?”

  “Maybe, dipstick,” I tell him. My English is good but I have a slight accent.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re full of it. The EU is what lets so many different people from different countries live together in brotherhood and unity, like Yugoslavia used to be. You’re trying to destroy it. Expanding it has the power to unite the Balkans again.”

  The man with the bullhorn yells back. “Yugoslavia? Listen to her, another Eastern European migrant who thinks she can order Britain around.”

  I cross my arms and yell at them. “I am, and as a matter of fact, I do think that.”

  “You are the one who’s full of it. Why don’t you just shut up and go back to wherever it is you came from.”

  “Fine. I think I will. Shut up, that is.” I pick up another rock and throw it at him. It knocks the bullhorn out of his hand.

  He picks it up, part of the cone now broken and yells into it. “See, she is a violent criminal, just like the rest of them, out to hurt us Britons.”

  The crowd starts to advance on us. Rada presses against me, trying to herd me away. I don’t need to be told twice, but I can’t resist the urge to yell behind me.

  “Hurt you? You’re the ones screwing yourselves over.” I run back the way I came and notice a sign for the metro, which I’ve heard about, these trains that go underground or something. It’s marked ‘Schuman.’

  I run down the moving stairs. There are these stainless steel machines with clear plastic barriers, I guess meant to force people to pay. One of them looks broken, which I’m surprised to see in Brussels. Whatever, it’s welcome. Rada and I run through it, into the first clean space I’ve seen since my arrival. There’s a bright orange subway car making a beeping sound. We dash in. The car’s doors slam shut. It gets moving.

  Rada lies down. She licks her paws and then throws up five minutes later. Not knowing where else to go, we take the car to the end of the line, some stop called Gare de l’Ouest/Weststation. I wonder what that protest back there was really about. Then I walk out into the worst- looking neighborhood I’ve seen yet.

  I look up at the street sign for the commune name: Molenbeek Saint Jean/Sint Jans Molenbeek. A lot of the women around me are in veils and a lot of the men have long beards. Some of them leer or cast suspicious looks at me from these weird tea shops as I walk down the street in a tank top that leaves my stomach exposed, with a large dog padding behind me.

  I hear the sound of another demonstration. This one seems a lot more clandestine, down a back alley. Its leader is dressed in a cleric’s robes. He’s speaking in French, expounding some kind of radical Islamic philosophy, and saying something about the Proclamation of the Caliphate, whatever that is. The people listening to the guy in the robes look like they’re way more dangerous types than the Brits. I draw the gun that I took from the customs officer, back at the airport.

  “All right, you people break it up right now or you’re going to have to answer to me.”

  Some of them laugh. “After that infidel!” the cleric calls to the congregation
. “None of the unfaithful can know about our response to the Proclamation.”

  I pull the trigger, aiming at his knees. The guy goes down but then he gets back up again. The gun is loaded with rubber bullets. What the hell, Belgium? I drop the gun and run down the street.

  The men follow. Cars try to swerve out of the way. I turn the corner and start to run along a dingy canal, or river or something. One car hits a parked one. Two more crash into each other as they try to avoid us. “Sorry,” I call behind me as their drivers get out, swearing anyway.

  The men who were listening to the cleric gain on me. I swerve onto the sidewalk. There’s a fruit store with a stand out front of it. I run past as Rada tries to jump over it. Her paws barely clear it. That’s okay because her thirty-five-kilo bulk knocks it over like it’s a hurdle. The fruit goes flying everywhere. The men chasing me have to dodge and weave around it to get to me.

  We’re nearing a major cross street. A police car drives in front of me, blaring its sirens and cutting off my escape route. The officers get out. I run up to them.

  “Officers, I just discovered a gathering of people actively planning to commit acts of violent jihad following something called the Proclamation. They’re only telling certain people about it. You’ve got to arrest them.”

  “What are you talking about? There’s no one like that here,” says one of them.

  I look behind me to see that the men who were chasing me have disappeared down the side streets like the cockroaches scurrying into the walls of the manor I grew up in.

  The other one takes out his handcuffs. “Cut the nonsense. You’re the one who’s under arrest.”

  They start toward me. Rada jumps in front of me, snarling. I pat her on the head. Maybe if I turn myself in, I can contact Hristijan somehow.

  “That will do, girl. We’re going with them.”

  ***

  I sit in front of the desk, next to Rada, in the Molenbeek police station. An officer sits on the other side, looking at some kind of a report.