Layla

Chapter 1: Frankfurt, West Germany, 1949

Frankfurt am Main, FDR, West Germany

July 12, 1949

(Noon)

"Do you have the chapter completed yet?" Her boss asked his voice a nuisance as ever in her ear.

Layla nodded as she pulled out of her drawer the translated second chapter of the English author George Orwell's 1984 and placed it on her desk for her boss to review. He had asked for it last week and she had completed it promptly like the good employee she hoped she was. Even if she wasn't, she could make him think otherwise.

Her Polish foster-family had helped to send her back to Germany for schooling. They had been kind enough to pay for her education in Frankfurt in English and typing classes. The foster family she wondered if they had even been given a choice in the matter. The Red Army had forced five children upon them weeks after the liberation of the camp. She had been one of the lucky ones to be placed with a family so quickly. She had heard others that had been sent to orphanages with the rest of the war orphans.

With the money she earned now she was living on her own, sending back what money she could afford to back to the Polish family that had been kind enough to allow her, and four other children into their home. Frankfurt, under control for the past four years by the Americans, had just now become an independent capital of sorts for this new German Republic.

Layla kept her nose out of politics the best she could now. Her life now focusing on securing a future for herself. She didn't want to look back, just keep working towards the future. Perhaps one day she'd get married and work at home before having a child of her own. At 18, her options seemed to be ever growing as she looked out at the horizon.

"Thank you," Her boss said as he began to shift the translated work in front of him. "You can leave for lunch as soon as I have Morton's."

She nodded politely back as she looked back to her translation notes she was working on for a chapter of Agatha Cristie's newest work. The chapter she had already translated, and now was making sure everything was grammatically correct and made sense in German as it did in English. Her work was boring, yes, but it kept her busy and fed.

And keeping herself alive was the most important part. She kept her mouth shut for the most part. Not talking to anyone she didn't have to. Her coworkers left her on her own, they didn't know where she had come from, they knew she was German, and that was it. And she would like to keep it that way.

She had no friends, but she did have a few people to chat with when the need for human contact arose. When the banks and airports they advertised would be built in the city came, she would begin her freelance work. Perhaps then she would actually begin to speak of the words friend. Maybe even search for a husband.

An American? A Brit? Or maybe a fool from Canada? A war hero. Someone with similar experience to her own.

She knew very well she didn't want to stay in Frankfurt forever. She wanted out of Germany truly. She could get a job as a translator anywhere, but she needed someone to take her out of Germany. She didn't have the resources to do it herself, so she waited.

Waited and waited.

"Lunch!" Her boss called out as the staff looked up from their work.

Layla took her purse from the other desk drawer and made her way to the elevator. Her heels clomping with the hardwood as she and the other translators made their way out. Lunch meant going home for an hour and then coming back, but today she thought she would enjoy an hour sitting in a restaurant.

The cafés that had been destroyed in the bombings were now beginning to open again as the city, at last, was nearing completion of rebuilding. She had arrived in Frankfurt a year after the war had ended to find the city she had always pictured as German metropolis, was nothing but fallen bricks and rubble. And yet people had carried on as if the destruction around them had been but a minor inconvenience.