Go, Went, Gone

by Jenny Erpenbeck

Bureaucratic geometry—he read this term a few days ago in a book by a historian on the consequences of colonialism. The colonized are smothered in bureaucracy, which is a pretty clever way to keep them from taking political action. Or was it just a matter of protecting the good Germans from the bad Germans, sparing the Land of Poets the indignity of being dubbed the Land of Killers once more?

The Africans probably had no idea who Hitler was, but even so: only if they survived Germany now would Hitler truly have lost the war.

he is reminded that one person’s vantage point is just as valid as another’s, and in seeing, there is no right, no wrong.

War destroys everything, Awad says: your family, your friends, the place where you lived, your work, your life. When you become foreign, Awad says, you don’t have a choice. You don’t know where to go. You don’t know anything. I can’t see myself anymore, can’t see the child I used to be. I don’t have a picture of myself anymore. My father is dead, he says. And me—I don’t know who I am anymore.

He spends the day studying the regulation known as Dublin II, and it takes him until it is time to turn on the desk lamp again to understand that all this law regulates is jurisdiction. It doesn’t concern itself with the question of whether or not these men are victims of war. The details of their histories are the sole legal responsibility of the country where they first set foot on European soil. Only there may they seek asylum, nowhere else. But the way their cases are handled varies from country to country.

Dublin II allows all the European countries without a Mediterranean coastline to purchase the right not to have to listen to the stories of arriving refugees. In other words, so-called “asylum fraud” is nothing more than telling a true story in a country where no one’s legally obligated to listen, much less do anything in response. And the soon-to-be-implemented fingerprint scanning system, he reads, will preclude all misunderstandings as to whether an individual belongs to a group that must be listened to or not.

who deserves credit for the fact that even the less affluent among their circle now have dishwashers in their kitchens, wine bottles on their shelves, and double-glazed windows? But if this prosperity couldn’t be attributed to their own personal merit, then by the same token the refugees weren’t to blame for their reduced circumstances. Things might have turned out the other way around. For a moment, this thought opens its jaws wide, displaying its frightening teeth.

since the overthrow of Gaddafi by various militias, whose aims are increasingly unclear, the entire country has been turned into a battlefield. The people of Libya have by no means been devoting themselves to delving into their pre-Islamic roots—they’ve had their hands full just trying to survive. It’s true enough that Gaddafi allotted the Libyan archaeologists only meager resources for their research, but now even the Europeans have frozen their aid, the archaeologists themselves have no doubt been in exile these past two years, and the only aficionados of antiques left studying the fortresses, cities, and villages of the Garamantes are men in uniform systematically stripping them of all their treasures that can be converted into cash. The descendents of the Garamantes are now regarded as foreigners in today’s Libya, for which reason they were forced into boats two years ago with all the other foreigners and sent to Europe.

Have people forgotten in Berlin of all places that a border isn’t just measured by an opponent’s stature but in fact creates him?

all the Germans who were murdered during the so-called Third Reich still inhabit Germany as ghosts, sometimes he even imagines that all these missing people along with their unborn children and the children of their children are walking beside him on the street, on their way to work or to visit friends, they sit invisibly in the cafés, take walks, go shopping, visit parks and the theater. Go, went, gone. The line dividing ghosts and people has always seemed to him thin, he’s not sure why, maybe because as an infant, he himself came so close to going astray in the mayhem of war and slipping down into the realm of the dead.

There are black birds in the world, so why shouldn’t there be black people? To Richard, this sentence from the opera The Magic Flute always used to adequately explain everything there was to say about differences in skin color.

Must living in peace—so fervently wished for throughout human history and yet enjoyed in only a few parts of the world—inevitably result in refusing to share it with those seeking refuge, defending it instead so aggressively that it almost looks like war?

Tunc tua res agitur paries cum proximus ardet! and is very pleased when Richard nods in assent and promptly murmurs the translation: Your own property is in peril when your neighbor’s house burns.

It is accounted a sin to turn any man away from your door. The host welcomes his guest with the best meal that his means allow. When he has finished entertaining him, the host undertakes a fresh role: he accompanies the guest to the nearest house where further hospitality can be had. It makes no difference that they come uninvited; they are welcomed just as warmly. No distinction is ever made between acquaintance and stranger as far as the right to hospitality is concerned. As the guest takes his leave, it is customary to let him have anything he asks for; and the host, with as little hesitation, will ask for a gift in return. The lawyer claps the book shut and asks Richard: And nowadays?

Where can a person go when he doesn’t know where to go?