Blessed Allah, how can it be so cold!
It being the latter half of January, Isha still comes pretty early. It makes no difference in this infernal place. True, it had snowed in Berlin. I remember making a snowman with mother and having snowball fights with father when I was five. It was fun. It was also only about negative five degrees with calm winds...and I had the latest in heat reflective garments which kept me toasty while being no more bulky than a light jacket and slacks. Any colder and we had stayed indoors; being whisked from garage to garage in warm vehicles when we ventured out. Other than Berlin, I'd generally lived in subtropical or tropical climes.
I truly never realized how good I had it.
My breath turns to mist as a let out a long sigh. I know I shouldn't be complaining. Allah be praised, I have a lot to be grateful for. I'm alive. No small feat when the Seattle Yakuza want my head, whether or not it comes attached to my body. I'd managed to deceive my way over half way across this accursed continent to a place where people who dress like me, practice their faith like me, are commonplace. Detroit, Michigan seems like a little Constantinople somehow buried in the neck of a peninsula deep inside North America. Instead of the Golden Horn, one has Lake St Claire...currently frozen over from the bitter cold winter now routine after the death of the now historical Gulf Stream. Barely ice free because of water movement is the St Claire River, something of a mini Bosphorus linking Lake Huron to Lake Erie. I can...almost...imagine what it might look like in four months once spring thaws the ice and normal movement is possible again.
Maybe I might even live long enough to see it.
For now, my mind has to stay on survival. I've made it to Michigan...a place not quite beyond the reach of the Yak but certainly a great deal more a stretch for them than Seattle. There are also people I can blend with...my people. People who hold true to the Pillars. People who gather for prayers five times each day. A sea of hijabis...who would notice one more?
How do you best hide a needle? Not in a haystack but in a mountain of needles.
One of the pillars of Islam is charity. Once I had demonstrated that I was a true believer, knowledgeable about my faith in a way only one brought up to it could be, I had been given cautious support by the faithful of a modest Turkish-tradition Sunni mosque. A place and people which brought back fond memories of my time with my grandparents on the shores of the Sea of Marmara. An accountant for a import-export business that preferred to keep several books, one each for the appropriate auditor, had been fascinated by my advanced comfort with numbers. I hadn't let on my expertise on the 'trix much less my magic abilities, but I saw no risk in seeming educated and that opened doors to a subsistence employment - enough to pay for a closet-sized apartment and enough food to keep me from starving.
It seems best to lay low. To not use the remains of the largess I accumulated working for Arc back in Seattle. To just be a quiet, devout young girl of faith who spends long days working for a pittance, practicing my faith, and returning to my closet to repeat the process each day.
Only on Friday, my single day off from work, do I venture out to a little coffee shop owned by a fellow member of my mosque to enjoy my one indulgence. A cup of sweetened Turkish coffee to savor for a good long time and...real, unfiltered or obstructed 'trix access. Using my MiAz hidden carefully in the folds of my abaya so as not to attract attention, I carefully wander the matrix to look for signs that I am still being sought out, to keep abreast of my secret identities, and...most importantly...to look for signs that Yelena-sensei and Arc-sensei are okay.
I wonder how many Fridays will go by before I learn anything...