Status Updates From A Woman in Berlin

“They lined up...there were at least twenty"...Without a word the
redhead opens her blouse and shows us her breasts, all bruised and bitten. I can barely write this; just thinking about it makes me gag all over again.
‘I prayed while it was happening,’ she said, ‘I kept on praying: dear God, thank you for the fact that I am drunk.’ Because the boys kept giving her drinks...
And for all of this we thank the Fuhrer.

And now I’m sitting here at our kitchen table. I’ve just refilled my pen
with ink and am writing, writing, writing all this confusion out of my head
and heart. Where will this end? What will become of us? I feel so dirty, I
don’t want to touch anything, least of all my own skin. What I’d give for a
bath or at least some decent soap and plenty of water. That’s it enough of
these fantasies.

Heart, hurt, love, desire: how foreign, how distant these words sound now. Evidently a sophisticated, discriminating love–life requires three square meals a day. My sole concern as I write these lines is my stomach.
All thinking and feeling, all wishes and hopes begin with food.