the little turkish Döner place in Kreuzberg with Göran as its king, standing there full of shyness and a big smile, just at the end of the night he refuses costumers with the mask of a strong emperor, giving back orders:" No! No more french fries! No more pizza,tonight! No!" he doesn´t look into the people´s eyes, when he says “No”, like the way I didn´t look to the eyes of the actor who yesterday lied at me about a stupid little thing, I could not look into his face- “No!”, “No more salads! No!”.
Göran never eats and is always hungry, while selling `his´ fast food. “Now”, he says hastily like a secret, “Now I always eat Hamburger, at night before I clean up and shut down the shop. I eat hamburger for two weeks now, before it was salad, I ate salad for a month always the same, before it was Pizza- why should I change? Why I don´t change?- because I don´t like so many things that I sell here. It takes me away my doubts.”
He tells me, that when he leaves the Döner place and heads home, that he drinks three beers, before falling asleep. I think its a beautiful lie, to make me feel comfortable, because I talk with him drinking beer and it´s Ramadan now. Of course he is not drinking alcohol...
Suddenly a young guy puts me an old filthy paper in front of my eyes pushing me,
-“Did you read this?"
-" What?"
I ask hastily to kill the agressive conversation:
- "What?"
He insists:
- "Did you read about the Social Democratic Politician who wants to build a big big Mosque in the middle of Berlin, right in the center?"
I ask in return in order not to answer:
- "But what do you think?”
- "I think..." he makes a big pause-" I think- ",
he continues after his important cheap rhetoric pause:
“I think that´s crazy!!”
He´s in Ramadan too and I drink beer, and I defend nothing and he defends his way of living, calling people crazy,
- "That´s how it can be, just like that,"
he says, and I don´t understand a word, and then I say, I think there is nothing good coming from a top-down approach towards culture and religion, and then I try to explain him my theory:
- "You know this last conference on Islam, that the interior minister of the german government Schäuble put forward two days ago, that the main thing was all about "Toleranz---"
I cannot finish my thought. He hears this word and it falls before his head onto the floor, somewhere near the door, where he stands,
- “yeah yeah”,
the young guy replies,
- “I know the thing about ´Aufklärung´, ´Enlightenment´",
he says this word in disgust, as if he had to throw up something, like these birds that feed their children throwing up food, but here it was about giving something out, that made you sick, something that had no meaning and that he had been fed too long at school:
- “Enlightenment, I know”,
his voice gets more sad, then he speaks without any emotion:
- "Forget it, it will not happen."
His voice gets inaudible and I don´t quite understand his cold voice, but prefer not to ask more.
Then Göran interrupts:
-“I´m fed up with all the food”.
-“Why don´t you bring some kurdish things and sell other stuff that you like, why don´t you sell some stuff of your own ..." I ask to cheer him up.
- “It´s too complicated, no time, no too much stress, I´m working...-“
Göran replies without loosing his time.
Then people pass, ask him if he had had some free time lately,
- “oh yes last week I went out," Göran´s eyes start to become alive, "once, the first time in 6 months.” He smiles again.
*
Göran is always there at the same spot, when noone enters, he stands in between the kitchen area and the costumers place, on the limit, as if he would still think about, if it would be better to leave this place or go on working or maybe better to go away: run to a better place, but back to Iraque there is no way, even that his family is not in a bad situation up in the kurdish area,
- “they are in the north, and since the border is closed and controlled there are no bombs up north”
he´s putting his hands on his stomach, touching his hunger and his slim body with carress, then people pass by on the street and he smiles and waves with his hand with quick big gestures, or says "Salam", as the place is “halal”, but still I don´t get this: they sell me alcohol there.
Always that I enter there, there is someone looking at the newspaper, everyday I meet Iraqui people there, that intervene, they don´t let you alone, Göran explains to me:
- "I don´t like that, they see that you are with a friend that you talk about your own things, maybe you haven´t seen this friend for a long time and they, they always make trouble, they interrupt, they go between you and your friend and disturb, you see, I don´t like that."
But all are costumers, and even more than just costumers, so they all know Göran well, so he has to talk to all, so they come to see him, so they talk, so much smalltalk normally and then suddenly political things, but Göran prefers not to talk about politics, better let the people´s mind stray, let them mind their own business and hang around for a while in this fast food place in between Kreuzberg and Neukölln, Berlin...
the newspaper her that alwazs someone reads, the tabloid BILDZEITUNG or the BZ, has usually fat spots on the front page, it was read by all the people waiting for their Döner, one long day of waiting with the newspaper for 90 Döner, 70 pizzas, small ones big ones double cheesburgers and so on, chicken burgers, all touched that paper with the oily stuff they don´t get away with nappkins, and when there is an Iraqui there, he will talk to me, it´s them that have the urge to say something about Islam, about the terror, about the cultural gaps and the trouble their country is in now for a long time.
When I passed at Göran´s Imbiss with T. there was a guy packed with war trauma from the 1st Gulf war, and during the talk it just flashed inside my memory, that I did co-organize a peace-demonstration at that time in Munich for the innocent Iraqui civilians, tried to make the philsopher Habermas speak on the Marienplatz, but he cancelled me down on the phone, "No! I´m not a market place preacher!, he said back then. "No! No more french fries todaz, no more pizza, no more talking in public, no!" At the time 1991 noone talked about the 100000 civilians killed in the news, and I don´t tell anything about that, it feels so insignificant, inexistent, unreal in comparison to the crazyness of that guy in front of me, that rescued himself into a small little Berlin-crazyness, that noone can stand here, even here at Göran´s place, but at least he can be here in Berlin where noone wants to be too close to him. The wartrauma makes him talk to much, he just talkes about his new family, his little child about how much he works. "I cannot stand him anymore", says Göran, "he just talks about himself, always the same stories, about how his child will have the best of all lifes,how his children will make it here and will become a judge or whatever, all this power he wants for his son to judge people, to redeem the unjustice with a strong hand, he actually wanted to become one, but now it must be his son to become a judge and to have power to decide over other people´s life´s- I don´t like that", Göran repeats and turns to the next customer:
- “Was kriegen Sie, bitte?”
But the traumatized guy continues to speak:
- “I saved a man´s life yesterday, here in Berlin, a big black guy, who wanted to jump in front of a car, and all that, because he didn´t have the money to buy some food, so I gave him 10 Euros and said go buy some food”.
That´s the story the Iraqui guy tells, nothing is true about nothing, all is trust, war, and the difficulty to understand who is your friend, who he can trust and the rest is survival and then again: mistrust all over.
This guy just tells me, that he is a workaholic, work work work work to create the condition of a better future for his recently born baby, and then goes on, that his family in Iraque were all killed, except one brother, “but the big thing is”, he says “the big thing is, that I don´t know where are the dead ones, they are all somewhere, somewhere in the sand, and I don´t know where they were burried, if they where burried, where they went when they died, that hurts…”
Then he sees in my eyes that I have warstories in my family and he finally looks up into my eyes and confronts me:
- "But did you write them? Did you write them?
- “No”, I get embarrassed, “no, but I can, I mean I am able to write, I have the capacity. O.K?”
He pushes me. He´s not satisfied, so I give up and have to lie a promise:
- “ I will write them.”
2.
On that day the big news was that the woman that is the director of the Berlin Operahouse, had canceled the "Idomena" opera encenation of Neuenfels, a great director and filmmaker that did a lots of great Kleist films. She cancelled it, because she got political pressure of the cultural senator of Berlin, that the security of the people, of the operagoers, was not secured, and that the police of Berlin could not secure this opera, because bomb attacks were expected.
Wow! I started to like opera again.
But what a mess, Ossama Bin Laden will blow up the Berlin opera, and Berlin theatergoers are not safe??
This is one of the strangest things I ever heard in my life… In the opera piece, I think it is the main character, that proposes to live without religion, because he doesn´t wants to sacrifice his son... A story enough to be canceled today. At least good old Merkel was shoked by this panik attack, and this "falta de coragem e falta da liberdade das artes", but if you see in the eyes of the Iraquis when talking about this, they are afraid, like I don´t want my son to live in this crazy trauma and fear- Then suddenly a old blond toned whore comes in with all her long legs "a vista" and her slightly fucked up face and sad "Verwirrtheit" in her eyes, asking for a small Tunna pizza to take away. Then suddenly she goes to the icebox, and opens one of the glass windows with a real big bang, so that Göran and the other Iraquis that are present, put automatically their heads down. She moves on, says “Bye!” and Göran smiles and seighs: “I thought it was an explosion.”
3.
The actor passed yesterday at Göran´s place, he is strange to me - I think, he thinks I´m a spy , he must have things to hide, I´m such an open book in all my weary looks and this feeling of disequallity of life stories, and that we´ll all die and have difficulties to let go of what we fought for in our all different lifes. Small creatures of love, we are creatures of love, from the sleep of reason life is born, sing TalkingHeads, like all other creatures we don´t wana let go... just the memory of others stay, just a handfull of images a couple of books, some objects we found, just the words written in stone, just the stones on the tomb, and Vicente saying " you have to tell me where you go when you die, where it is, you have to tell me, so that I can visit you, if you are dead and I´m still alive, father”, only these gestures count, I swallow something down with my dry falafel for now, the actor enters with his more or less girlfriend, a nice Berlin girl, that said on this day "Fuck u all " to her boss, fed up of her precarious job and the slimy boss that threated her like shit, where she was working as a bartender. She fired herself today, onlz possible act of freedom in a precarious world. Göran asked her in bad german:
- "Bist du frei?" (Are you free?) instead of "Hast du frei", and she askes back
- "What?"
I try to translate to her:
- "He askes if you are on vacation, if you have a day off? Hast du, Hast du frei?"
and she says
- "I quit today", and we laugh,
- "So you are free!"
She talks and probably she talks way too much to me, the stranger, at least the actor, she is with gives me strange looks.
The actor, that is what he sazs he was back in Iraque, that will open a new music bar next week is getting nervous and starts to pack his things nervously to go, but she still has her pizza to eat, as she starts to talk about her relationship she has with her Iraqui boyfriend, the actor, and how the people in the house whisper in her back and tell her openly that they think that she is a whore, "but I´m well educated" she tries to defend herself. And then she throws a cigarette over from one of the high tables to mine, which falls and I have to pick it from the filthy floor,
- "In this shitwhole I worked, they talked so badly to me and to the customers, and then they told so many lies, I could not stand it anymore."
I said that it would fall back on the people that say so many stupid things, that one should not worry about bad tongues, but then I ask the actor where it was that the new music bar would open.
- "Bergmannstrasse" is his reply. He doesn´t look to me.
- "Which number?" I insist.
- " 55 " he says, then his girlfriend looks up surprised:
- "Bergmannstrasse?" She almost starts laughing with her pizza in her mouth: "55?"
I understand, he didn´t want to tell me, I´m an alien, a nosey observer, way too well dressed and still prefering to drink a beer in this place, I must have second thoughts, I must have something to hide, I must not be trusted,
- "I´m a sailor", Göran always says, "but you are looking for a place to stay without contract?", and when the girlfriend of the actor says, that she knows something cheap, Göran repeats raising his voice:
- "HE DOESN`T WANT TO HAVE A CONTRACT!!!" like I had an disease or something. He is on the way trough. People have to be carefull.
I trz again to explain myself
- I tell you that I don´t want to say to people, that I will stay longer, if I don´t know, but this seems a wrong thought, a wrong openness. People here don´t like this frank style, then the girlfriend says, when Göran tries to make her understand about “Hast du frei?”, “Bist du frei?”, she understands:
- “Hast du was frei?” which means: Do you have a free room? She must have understood this, because later on she says almost on the leave,
- “I could have offered you a room, but you know, I don´t know you.”
I look at her a bit worried about all this mess and confusion lost in sematics, this confusion between open thoughts and mistrust and the only possibility I have: to talk to the strangers I meet at this place, and say
- “Of course, I understand” and, of course, I don´t.
- “Because I´m a man and-“ I want to build up mz thought, but she interrupts,
- “No! it´s not that, it´s simply because I don´t know you.”
- “Yes, it´s true.” I still am confused.
- “The thing is”, she continues, that here is like Istanbul, no Germans, and the understanding is so fuckin difficult, noone understands my language, even him,”
again she talks too much, pointing to her boyfriend,
- “Look, he just understands when he wants, and in any official things he is just a stranger without german, but he knows perfectly well german.”
I again try to explain myself and the situation gets more strange, why I prefer X-Berg, Neukölln than Prenzlberg, because Prenzlauerberg I say is like Munich, rich, just the same kind of people, a virtual fucking golden ghetto, now all with little kids trying to be an alternative family, reinventing the little small world with soja and vegtables grown on their balconies... But she:
- “I don´t understand, because you know, they speak german, they are o.k. This here is a mess, this is full of shit, this is full of violence, I wonder why I was so lucky until now and nothing happend to me. Yesterday a young beautiful girl dissapeared, she will probably never come back. This is Berlin, it is a dirty place.”
And before she says this, 5 Min before I had told her that I find Berlin more real than when it was still in big works of Potzdamer Platz, -“now Berlin is better”
--“no, it´s so much worse”, she kills my argument,
- “no respect, people treat each other without the rules, without--- trust”
I don´t know, if it is just because of his girlfriend talking or because its complicated to install an open lie that he noticed before, that I had noticed, thinking "I don´t know them", they leave Göran´s Döner Imbiss quietly without a sound, I say "Tschüss" without voice, looking down on the little paper where I start to write about all this...
Alexander Gerner (text&photos)
Berlin, Wednesday, October 25, 2006
