In the Carl-Orff-Saal at the Gasteig, whose 608 seats were fully booked, our young authors Rojin Namer, Shahzamir Hataki and Samiullah Rasouli read out, in their mother tongues Farsi and Arabic, their texts: about expulsion from the paradise of their homelands, their flight and new beginning in Germany. The wonderful reader in German was Cathrin Störmer from the Residenztheater.
This gave hope to everyone at a difficult time. Rojin, who is sixteen, is attending high school; Shahzamir, eighteen years old, is taking an apprenticeship in nursing at the Charité hospital; Samiullah, who is twenty, is in the third year of training for the hotel trade. Today these three have a future that is good for all of us.
After his brilliant speech about events since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the historian Timothy Garton Ash, filled with inspiration, twittered : »Most moving the readings at #literaturfest of poetry by young refugees from Syria & Afghanistan – all speaking excellent German. Maybe, after all, ‘wir schaffen das!’....?«
