Free Amsterdam 2020 (Amsterdam Series Book 2) by Ruth Francisco Page B

marriage because linking the two families gives the religious police legitimacy.  I have already discussed it with his wife at the mosque.  She approves of the match.”
    Rafik chuckles.  “I always wondered what you women are up to in your secret chamber.” 
    In the new world order, mothers make the wedding arrangements, including the matchmaking.  All which occur in the women's prayer room at the mosque, where most of their daily socializing and gossiping takes place.  The men don't think wives are important enough to give it much thought—they let their mothers handle it.
    “You are Turkish,” mother points out.  “The Basturks are Turkish.  Ahmed will like that.”
    “A slight difference.  My family came here as Ottoman traders in the 16 th century.”
    “Which gives the Basturks the legitimacy they seek.”
    I don't want to hear any more.  I tiptoe upstairs, slip inside my bedroom, and collapse on my bed.  My head spins from exhaustion.  And dread. 
    The word marriage floats across my eyeballs, written on white linen, folding over me.  Binding me like a mummy.  I can't breathe.  Just of thought of it makes me ill.  Marriage is for other people.  How in the world am I going to do my work if I'm married?  To the son of an Islamist?  I can't begin to imagine. What about sex?  Do we have to do it through a sheet or something?  I am horrified.
    No.  The whole idea is outrageous, unthinkable, infuriating.
    I bolt up in bed and use the last of my energy to wad up my shalwar kameez and throw it in a heap in the corner.  I can't deal with this right now.  I'm too worried about Pim and the van.  Wondering what we could have done differently.  I'm frightened for my refugee family.  For the rest of us in the group .  
    I wonder who betrayed us to the Landweer .  
    Overwhelmed with fatigue, I collapse back into my pillow and doze off for a few minutes.  Then I hear Jana knock, asking to come in.  She creaks open the door, walks across the room, and turns on the light beside my bed.  I turn on my back, grim faced, arms across my chest, like a sarcophagus.  
    My mother's grandparents immigrated from the Pulia region of Italy to Amsterdam in the 1930s to run a coffee import business.  Her maiden name was Catanzaro.  She is dark-haired, with large chatoyant eyes, that seem to take in everything all at once.  Even at fifty, she is beautiful.  Before American movies were banned, people would stop her in the street and say she looked like Sophia Loren.  She has a great figure, too, but it is those limpid almond-shaped eyes that mesmerize.  It is hard to stop looking at them.  And almost impossible to lie to them.  Formidable adversaries when it comes to motherly interrogations. 
    “ Liefje , did you get something to eat?” my mother asks warmly, sitting on the edge of my bed.  When I don't react, she knows I have eavesdropped.  Her eyes flash in anger, then soften, a slight lift to the corner of her mouth.
    “Do I have to?” I say, with the crushed voice of a penitent.
    “Eat?” she asks, intentionally misunderstanding.  My body radiates a chill.  “No,” she amends, “you don't have to marry.  Not if you don't want to.”  She takes my hand, which resists her like the gnarled arthritic hand of an old woman.  “But it may be your best option.  You'll be twenty soon.  You have three choices.  That's the law.”
    “I'm too busy to get married,” I say sullenly.  I suppose because of my work with the Resistance , I had somehow imagined I'd escape it.  Marriage, military service, work camps.  A choice between three death sentences.  
    “ Do you really think I don't know what you do, Salima?” Jana asks gently.   “Sneaking around Amsterdam in your burka after curfew .  Do you really think no one can see you?”
    A blast of heat swooshes over my body.  I had suspected she knew what I did.  Those eyes miss nothing.  But we have never talked about it.  Such