A art installation by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei with life vests used by refugees and collected at the Greek island of Lesbos is set up at the Konzerthaus Berlin. Markus Schreiber/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.
While walking last month along Sonnenallee, one of the main thoroughfares of Berlin’s Neukölln district, I had an oddly unsettling feeling of being at home rather than in Germany. Packed with busy shops and markets with signs in Arabic, the restaurants served hummus, falafel, tabouleh and stuffed grape leaves. For just a moment I felt as if I was in Nazareth, an alive city booming with markets, restaurants and shops. Although it was Ramadan, the street was crowded. You could hear the Syrian dialect everywhere: some words are different from my Palestinian dialect, some are pronounced in a longer, more mellow way. And the stuffed grape leaves are with rice, mint and spices, while the Palestinian version has meat stuffing as well.
We sat down in one of the restaurants and ate hummus. From other tables around you could hear German, English, and even Hebrew. This time I felt like I was in Haifa, my hometown, where if you go downtown to Wadi el Nesnas (the Eagle’s Valley), you see falafel stores and Arabic restaurants packed with Israelis and tourist customers. With all this, I had to remind myself that I was in Berlin rather than in an Arab town. I was there volunteering with a community refugee project, and I wondered how newly arrived refugees feel when they first encounter Sonnenallee – how shocking, how confusing, yet at the same time how comforting it must be.
