When the judge asks whether one of the defendants has anything to say, Muharrem E. stands up and says that he loves his daughter very much, despite everything.Read the whole thing.
His 20-year-old daughter Fatma is sitting on a plain metal chair. She has just testified as a witness, and in doing so she has accused her father, her mother and her brother, who are all sitting in the dock. When Fatma hears what her father has to say, she breaks down, starts crying, trembles and hides her eyes behind her black curls.
In courtroom B 309 of the Munich District Court, Muharrem E. and his daughter are separated by a space of only a few feet, by a small stretch of green carpeting and a wooden table. But what really separates the two is a fallacy: That Muharrem E., who left his home in southeastern Anatolia 34 years ago to emigrate to Germany, ever believed that he had integrated into German life. Because in his head, he had never left Anatolia.
Muharrem E., who is wearing corduroy trousers, sits down and places his thin hands in his lap. When his daughter leaves the courtroom, she is accompanied by a witness assistant. Muharrem E. lowers his head. Fatma's mother, Nimet, 54, lowers her head, and so does [Mehmet] the brother. None of them looks at Fatma.
The family stands accused of having kidnapped a young German man one December morning at a Munich subway station, and of beating and threatening to kill him. . .
Mehmet decided to meet Sascha. When the two met at a streetcar station, he asked Sascha whether he was serious about Fatma. Sascha nodded, which was enough for Mehmet. Later, when Fatma's mother asked Mehmet what was wrong with her daughter, who had begun wearing makeup, Mehmet told her that she was in love with Sascha, a German boy.
The brother and the mother called Turan in Turkey and told her the story. . .
Sascha and Fatma saw each other every morning, during school breaks and in the school's workshop, where she sewed and he upholstered furniture, and on the S4 streetcar in the afternoon.
Muharrem E. was kept in the dark about the romance for two years.
But when the two began skipping class to see each other and their grades suffered, and when Fatma failed her exams, her father became concerned. Suddenly Muharrem E., who knew that his youngest daughter had had a high fever as a baby and had been a slow learner, and who wanted her to complete her training, asked her brother and mother what was wrong with Fatma.
They told him.
One morning in the spring of 2006, Mehmet confronted Sascha on the school grounds and asked him why he was in love with Fatma. Sascha responded: "I just happen to love her."
"You can't be together with her," Mehmet said.
(via reader Ken R.)
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