Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Author:Ayaan Hirsi Ali [Ali, Ayaan Hirsi]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography, Social Science, Political, Refugees, Islamic Studies, Muslims, Politicians
ISBN: 9781416586043
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2008-04-01T21:54:32+00:00

Running Away

When we landed at the Frankfurt airport, early in the morning, I was dazed by the scale of it. Everything around me was glass and steel, and all so finished, down to the last little fixture. That impressed me: where I came from, airports were chaos, constantly expanding, always half-built. And everyone around me seemed so sure of where they were headed. There 'were women as old as my mother, even my grandmother, with fashionable handbags, pushing trolleys full of matching suitcases with energy and purpose.

I was lost. I was looking for the ticket off ice. I knew I was supposed to be going to Diisseldorf, but my ticket said Munich, so I knew I must somehow get it changed. I went wandering about, navigating by asking people for help; I didn't even notice the signage. The airport was as big as a neighborhood, and all of it looked the same: I felt hapless, like a country yokel from the wiye.

My distant uncle, Mursal, had agreed to look after me in Germany while I was waiting for my visa. I had never met him. "When I finally got to Dusseldorf, I changed some dollars to Deutschmarks, figured out which was the right coin, and phoned the number Mursal had given my father. Another man answered the phone. He was Omar, Mursal's associate. He said, "So you're Hirsi Magan's daughter. Can you write down an address and give it to the driver of a taxi?"

I said yes, took the address down, and stepped outside. Everything was so clean, it was like a movie. The roads, the pavement, the people— nothing in my life had ever looked like this, except perhaps Nairobi Hospital. It was so modern it seemed sterile. The landscape looked like geometry class, or physics, where everything was in straight lines and had to be perfect and precise. These buildings were cubes and triangles, and they gave me that same neutral, almost frightening feeling. The letters on the signs resembled English, but I couldn't understand them; it felt like trying to make sense of algebra.

My grandmother must have felt this way when she went to a city for the first time and saw a lightbulb, a radio, a whole road full of cars. I felt that foreign.

There was a line for taxis; the word was in English. But all the taxis were cream Mercedes. In Nairobi, such taxis would line up only at fancy hotels: they were the most luxurious option conceivable, really only for foreigners and government ministers. Before I got into such a car, I felt I must ask the driver how much money the ride would cost.

He said, "About twenty marks," which I could pay. I asked, "But will you drive me in this car?" and the driver laughed. He was nice, and spoke English. I sat in the front beside him and he told me all about Dusseldorf, and how good and kind the German people were.

The old city ofDiisseldorfwas indeed wonderful, its church spires and angled towers a bit like minarets.

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