A Day in Berlin

You arrive in this city, where everything seems white from the sky. All is covered with snow. You get off the plane and feel the degrees below zero typical of a German winter that remind you how far you are from your warm Spain. But well, this is no random city in Germany, this is Berlin.

In Berlin you can become a testimony of most of the historical events that took place in Europe in the twentieth century: World War I, World War II, the Cold War, the end of Communism… everything kind of began and ended here. It is a city that has been destroyed so many times it has become used to rebuild itself from time to time. And it is a fact that if you come to Berlin a year after you left it, you'll surely find something new in the city.

When you are in Berlin you can visit more than 100 museums, yes, I’m not exaggerating, you can spend weeks visiting museums. During this month, in the History Museum, there is an exhibition about Hitler, Third Reich, and the relationship of the German people with it. Something that seems to be new, adressed in such a direct way in Germany. Being in Berlin I cannot avoid coming to see it. The exhibition explains how the German people were persuaded in some way to acknowledge (by comission or by omission of action) with the atrocities of Nazism. Human being can become such a beast under extreme conditions.

I get out of this Museum and walk along the square in front of the Humboldt Universität, where tons of books were burnt by the German students during the Nazi government. "Those who burn books will end up burning people", reads a marble slab on the floor. It's a sentence by Heinrich Heine, a German writer whose books were also burnt in this square. This makes me think about people that, in the name of freedom and democracy, are calling for the prohibition of certain books, like the Holy Quran, in certain European countries, or even preaching the burn of them en masse. Are we sure we have reallly learnt something from our history?

I continue walking towards another museum I always like visiting here, the Jewish Museum. In the Jewish Museum you can spend a whole afternoon learning about the history of Jews, from the first Jewish peoples that arrived in Germany until the Holocaust. It is a fact that Jewish culture has been completely neglected in most of Europe, especially in my country, where Jews had such a cultural and historic importance. I cannot help thinking about the huge power ethnic hatred and prejudices have had in the history of the Jewish people. A whole community can be seen as the enemy, just for the way they speak, think or understand life. But the story of ethnic hatred did not start and end with the Jews. There is still more to come.

When I get out of the Jewish Museum I am in Kreuzberg, the Turkish neighbourhood of Berlin. I go to the area around Oranienstrasse, the most lively area of Kreuzberg, and the area where I used to live four years ago. In the square of Kottbusser Tor one can hear all the languages in the world and one can see people of all kinds. This is no ghetto in any way. I eat some Chinese food in an Imbiss and afterwards get into a kind of Turkish café. As I get in, I hear a song by Sezen Aksu, I see a man ordering "chai" in Turkish, I can tell that now I am in what some call “little Istanbul”. I have no idea why, but this feels somehow like home.

I sit down to have a Turkish tea and observe the kind of people in the bar. A group of German girls are sitting with a Turkish guy, one of the girls seems to be his girlfriend, the others seem to be friends of the couple. A group of guys are seating in a table near me. They speak some language but I would not say it is Turkish. I recognize words like “socialism”, “politika”, “socialdemocrat” and understand they are immersed in a political conversation. One of them seems to be lecturing the others and making them reflect about his ideology. I come to the conclusion that they are speaking Kurdish and of course reflecting about their political future as Kurds. I wonder what reaction would it make if they were discussing Kurdish politics in a bar in Istanbul or Ankara, even more when they are using this language.

I feel like reading something. I stand up and go to the bar. Amongst Hürriyet and other Turkish newspapers I find Der Spiegel. I go back to my table and start having a look at this magazine. There is an interview with a man called René Stadtkiewitz, the man who invited Geert Wilders to Germany. Some reporters have been following him for some days, as he is rallying around the country. He is a man who openly despises Islam and what he considers to be “Islamic Ideology”. He wants to control Muslim immigration and Muslims already living in Germany and expell those who commit any crime. He says most of his conclusions were drawn after his experience with immigrants in Berlin, in migrant neighborhoods like Neukölln, Wedding or Kreuzberg. Then I look around, I look again at the table with the German girls and the Turkish guy, I look at the Kurdish political debate at the table just by me, I look at the other people sitting in this café. How can someone have such a different perception of what I am currently seeing? I realize the fact that probably ninety percent of the people at the moment in this café are Muslims, either culturally or observant, but I can see many different ways of understanding life in this little café. How can one see Islam as a closed ideology, as a closed community with all this diversity I am just seeing around? I kind of remember the antisemitic posters and books in the Jewish Museum. All of which were spread all over Germany many years before the Holocaust. I wonder if we are actually going to let something similar happen again.

I finish my tea and go out into the cold and snowy streets of the Berlinese night. I am still in the Turkish area, I can hear Turkish here and there. I remember when I used to live here I despised the way Turkish language sounded. It was just disgusting for me, with all these ü’s and ö’s and sh’s… However, after my three visits to Turkey, every time I hear this language I can’t help but think of some of the most interesting, touching and unforgettable experiences of my life, which took place in this country. Now I love the language. I wonder how many times Stadtkiewitz must have been to Turkey or any Muslim country in order to hate Muslims and Islam in such a way.

I’m meeting a friend to have a beer in Oranienstrasse. We go to Franken, one of those places where the waitress has piercings and tattoos all over her body. Hard Rock is being played. This is Kreuzberg SO36, Mann! Apart from being the Turkish area, this area of Berlin is also known for its Punk-rock alternative scene, which is especially active during the festivities of the 1. Mai (Worker’s day), when huge demonstrations and a day full of party always ends with riots and violence against the police by some extreme anarchist groups. Here everyone seems to be not only progressive but also transgressive. We then turn the corner and arrive at Trinkteufel (the devil drinker), a place even “worse” than the one before. Punk rock is loud and we see all kinds of characters coming into the bar, including their dogs. But hey, half liter beers are two euros… I just love this city!

After two beers it’s about midnight. What can we do? Hungry? I suggest going to eat some shawarma. There’s an Arabic restaurant I know where they were delicious. We get in. Wait a minute! I know this guy on the bar! He looks at me and recognizes me at first. It’s Hussam, a Lebanese who used to work in another Shawarma place in Kottbusser Tor, which is now closed. After 4 years he still recognizes me! Hussam is in his thirties and has lived in Berlin for the last ten years. We eat a wonderful Halloumi sandwich as he tells me about himself. Turkey is a great place, you know? He starts telling me. I went there with my Polish girlfriend last summer. It reminds me of home. Polish girlfriend? I thought you had a German wife! That was a looong time ago!!! Hussam tells me about Lebanon. He went there last year too. We talk about the Lebanese diaspora, present all over the world. I have actually met some Lebanese Latin-Americans lately, it’s amazing how they arrived there from such a small country. He says proudly that the richest man in the world is, in fact, Lebanese-Mexican. He refers to Carlos Slim. He explains not so happily how his boss is also Lebanese and has various businesses in Berlin. Lebanese people are kind of gifted for businesses, aren’t they?

Hussam is from Southern Lebanon, where Hizbollah is nowadays ruling. In his words, Hizbollah is powerful and defending the Lebanese against Israel, especially after the 2006 war, which they won. I explain Hussam that I’m interested in travelling to Israel and Palestine to try to understand the conflict. Understand the conflict? That conflict is never going to end! He says. But Hussam, do you think it's because Jews and Arabs can't live together? Are Jews intrinsically Arabs’ enemies or what? Because I know of Jews that have no problem with Arabs, I know of Jews that oppose the occupation of Palestine… No! He says. I have many clients here who are Jews and they are really nice people! So? What is the problem in the Middle East? I say. This is not a conflict between Arabs and Jews, man, the conflict is just between those who want peace and those who want war, he says.

It’s late and we have a relatively long way back into those Soviet-looking Eastern neighborhoods of the city, where I'm staying. Hussam lets me not pay for the Shawarma, and says that he expects to see us back there soon. I hope so too. I realize how generous and warm these people are, even after four years of not seeing each other. I cannot really understand how this Stadtkiewitz can have such a different impression of them. I cannot understand how can all these politicians see in the world a clash of civilizations where different cultures will always have conflicts, because they cannot live together. What is happening in this city, then? Here Arabs, Jews, Turks, Germans, Kurds, even Spaniards… seem to live side by side forgetting their conflicts back home, at least for most of the time. In the huge multiculturalism of Berlin their differences seem to be diminished, insignificant. There is no importance in being a minority any more because almost everyone here is actually part of a minority and none of them is big enough to stigmatize the other, to brutalize the other, to attack the other. Here they can only help each other survive and stay alive in a country where they are not always welcome, at least for some politicians. Ethnic conflicts are therefore fabricated, irreal, fallacious. I cannot but think that in the end, as my friend Hussam pointed out, the name of the game is not any more about choosing to side with one or the other, with Arabs or with Jews, with Westerners or with Muslims, with Indians or with Pakistanis... maybe it’s just about siding with those who really want to live in peace.