Hot summer day. Noon.
The trees are sweating
when my friend tells me
he wants to leave England
because no other country on earth
hates the “other“ as much.
October. Berlin.
Aren’t I “other“, too?
I´m half-German,
same as him,
but pale-skinned, blond.
No one screams at me from street corners.
Hate filtered through
entitlement and fear and cigarette smoke,
because I am not one of them.
December. Alexanderplatz.
Germany’s different, he says.
Christmas Eve. The dinner table.
My friend´s father asks me to pass the gravy
And through mouthfuls of animal flesh
He exclaims:
Germany should stay the way it is.
No more refugees. An identifying German culture.
They haven’t done anything to earn their place here.
And when my father asks what he did to earn his,
and what if you were born in Syria instead?
He replies:
But I wasn’t.
