In The End, It Was All About Love

by Musa Okwonga

They are the howls of every African child, woman and man drowned. These winds have always resisted With every major and minor breath— Whether forming storms that left the slaver’s ship a wreck Or sending mischievous wafts to blow the hats from masters’ heads. What happened to the winds that sent the slave ships? None of them have retired: They’ve migrated to Germany in their millions, And you can find the righteous ones Whispering through its capital city at weekends, Slipping through a window to cool a queer couple after a long afternoon of love: Or sighing through the barbecues at Tempelhofer Feld, Content that there is still a world that knows how freedom smells. Berlin Is Not Germany. Sooner or later Berlin will punch you in the stomach. When it does, please try not to take this personally—instead, try to treat it as a passport stamp, as a sign of your arrival. You won’t get on here if you don’t. If you hang around long enough, it will give you a kiss on the forehead, it will invite you to the less harsh parts of itself. You won’t know when the blow is coming or where the blow is coming from, but if it takes over a year to strike then you should be highly suspicious. The longer you wait, the more likely it is to be cataclysmic: there is a good chance that, like an inefficient yet vengeful tax collector, it is merely getting ready to collect an epic debt. Berlin is not Germany, people will tell you. What they mean, of course, is that Berlin is not like the rest of Ger...

You must take your satisfaction wherever you can find it. If you knew the disappointment that awaited you at the completion of each new work, then you would never start anything. Please be kind to yourself. Remind yourself of the sign you have pinned above your desk: You have a lot to offer. On the page, and everywhere else.

You don’t really tell anyone this but a key reason you write is to save yourself—not in any spiritual way, but in the sense that any form of activity is better than slipping further into despair, and writing comes more naturally, if not more easily, to you than anything else.

There is a part of you that is happiest when looking out of the window of a fast-moving bus or train, gazing at the vast open fields that race alongside, marvelling and aching at the same emptiness that thrives inside you.