The Berlin-based festival for refugees, “it’s good that you’re here”, in which the author took part. September 2016. Source: Schön, dass ihr da seid.
At the end of September, a tenant moved into our Berlin apartment (fourth-floor two bathrooms, central heating). A JavaScript manual in Arabic appeared on the bookshelf, next to double volume of Blok’s poetry. The internet began to slow down under the weight of live streamed Al-Jazeera football matches. The consumption of strawberry jam trebled: Ali, a 25-year old Syrian from Aleppo, would slather it, two centimetres thick, onto bread rolls. My three-year old son watched in near-ecstasy.
