Chapter 1

What’s he going to do with the thoughts still thinking away in his head? Chapter 1

He’s had his share of success. Chapter 1

Just stop putting up resistance – or is that how dying begins? Chapter 1

Or maybe they were afraid the man would pull them down with him, who knows. (Richard’s thoughts about the strong men who row away from a drowning man) Chapter 1

All these objects surrounding him form a system and have meaning only as long as he makes his way among them … (about Richard’s ‘stuff’ from the office) Chapter 1

Chapter 2

One Thursday in late August ten men gather in front of Berlin’s town hall. According to news reports they’ve decided to stop eating. Chapter 2

They speak English, French Italian as well as other languages that no one here understands. Chapter 2

If nothing special happens, then I can’t make a story out of it. (Journalist asking police about the men) Chapter 2

We become visible. (sign in front of hunger strike men) Chapter 2

Chapter 3

There’s an ideal form for everything, not just in matters of work and art, but also for the most ordinary mundane things. (Richard) Chapter 3

He would have been left behind outright if it hadn’t been for a Russian soldier who handed him to his mother through the window of a train. Chapter 3

You can never count on freedom from mayhem. Chapter 3

What stories lay behind all the random images placed before us? Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Why didn’t he see the men? We become visible. Chapter 4

He liked the notion of making oneself visible by publicly refusing to say who one is. Chapter 4

…that the earth is more like a garbage heap containing all the ages of history… Chapter 4

The placard with the inscription we become visible is probable in the trash can now or – if it’s too big to fit – lying on the ground, sodden with rain. Chapter 4

Chapter 5

‘Negro’ is a word no one would say now but back then people printed it on book jackets. Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Is the only freedom the fall of the Berlin wall brought him the freedom to go to places he is afraid of? Chapter 6

Don’t they know there are white people here? (Neighbour thought in meeting after noise like an explosion) Chapter 6

Just at this moment the lights suddenly go out and for a few seconds all the people in the room are black. Chapter 6

What’s a refugee doing with a laptop? the neighbour thinks. Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Saying his name, it appeared to him, would have been a sort of confession. (Richard) Chapter 7

Chapter 8

… they refuse to believe the world is in idyllic place (sympathisers in square) … The refugees on the other hand are trying to gain admittance to this world that appears to them convincingly idyllic. Chapter 8

The effects of a person’s actions are almost always impossible to predict and often prove to be the exact opposite of what the person originally intended. Chapter 8

When doing nothing gets to be too much for them we organise a demonstration. (woman in square) Chapter 8

Chapter 9

It’s important to ask the right questions. Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Can headshaking be considered a sign? Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Fear produces order, he thinks, as do uncertainty and caution. Chapter 11

We jumped in to lend a hand because nobody else wanted to. (Director nursing home) Chapter 11

Chapter 12

If truth be told Richard wouldn’t mind beating a retreat. Chapter 12

We think and think because we don’t know what will happen. (Abdusalem) Chapter 12

Chapter 13

The colonised are smothered in bureaucracy, which is a pretty clever way to keep them from taking political action. Chapter 13

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. Chapter 13

Chapter 14

And beyond that she has no name, she remains trapped in this lower stratum and silently sinks back down again. (About trying to remember Awad’s grandmother) Chapter 14

On this day, I saw the war. (Awad) Chapter 14

War destroys everything. (Awad) Chapter 14

I can’t see myself anymore, can’t see the child I used to be. (Awad) Chapter 14

Maybe one just has to say: this isn’t me. Chapter 14

Chapter 15

When you become foreign, Awad says, you have no choice. Chapter 15

In other words, so-called ‘asylum fraud’ is nothing more than telling a true story in a country where no one’s legally obliged to listen, much less do anything in response. Chapter 15

The foreigner … is trapped between the now invisible fronts in an intra-European discussion that has nothing at all to do with him or the actual war he’s trying to escape from. Chapter 15

He and his friends still aren’t done exploring all the blessings of this other world that has become more and more tightly entwined with theirs over the past twenty-five years. Chapter 15

Chapter 16

… the usual story, shame and remorse – the crooked pair has made him cower too… Chapter 16

It’s difficult to learn a language if you don’t know what is for. Chapter 16

You have to fill your time with something she says. (Ethiopian teacher) Chapter 16

Chapter 17

When you’re foreign you don’t have a choice anymore Tristan says. Chapter 17

They assail these newcomers with their secret weapon called time, poking out their eyes with days and weeks, crushing them with months. Chapter 17

Chapter 18

A person who kills is not a Muslim. Chapter 18

Richard hoped that what people said was true: that the dead and buried know no pain and feel nothing at all. Chapter 18

From one day to the next I had no father, no family, no house, no workshop. (Rashid) Chapter 18

There was childhood. There was day to day life. There was adolescence. (Richard on Rashid’s life) Chapter 18

Chapter 19

The reason they were doing so much better than, say, these three African men Richard was talking about? The ones sitting on this sofa were post-war children … (Richard, Detlef and Sylvia) Chapter 19

.. if this prosperity couldn’t be attributed to their own personal merit, then by the same token the refugees were not 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. Chapter 19

Chapter 20

No I lost all my friends… I saw them die, many, many people died. (Osarobo) Chapter 20

Richard wished he knew what questions would lead to the land of beautiful answers. Chapter 20

But his failure isn’t what matters here. He’s not what matters. Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Hope is what is keeping them alive, and hope is cheap. Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Don’t the people here deserve to have as much as a couple of fish? (teacher) Chapter 22

Chapter 23

I looked in front of me and behind me and saw nothing. Chapter 23

Chapter 24

He feels irritated… this African isn’t as happy and grateful as he expected. Chapter 24

Anything predictable and rigid can be undermined and broken. Chapter 24

Only now does it occur to him how long his daily life has been lacking sounds other than the ones he makes himself. Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Richard considers what to say as a resident of a country that has seventy thousand apprenticeship positions with no one to fill … but is nonetheless unwilling to accept these dark-skinned refugees. Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood the right road lost. Chapter 26

Chapter 27

The thinking has been locked up in his head and is pounding his skull from the inside. (Awad) Chapter 27

In wartime, it’s only the war you see. Chapter 27

The visitor rubs one of his hands over the back of the other, as if he could rub the age spots away. (about Richard) Chapter 27

Awad thinks and notes the panic rising up in him. Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Learning to stop wanting things is probably one of the most difficult lessons in getting old but if you don’t learn … it will be like a bellyful of stones dragging you down in to your grave. Chapter 28

Chapter 29

… none stand above the other, rather compliments the other … (Tuareg belief) Chapter 29

What span of time should you consider if you want to know what counts as progress. Chapter 29

Chapter 30

All summer long, the boat lay moored beside the dock, but because of the dead man in the lake, Richard didn’t use it even once. Chapter 30

… without memory, man is just a bit of flesh on the planet’s surface. Chapter 30

Chapter 31

The subway runs underground, you don’t see where you are. Chapter 31

Admitting that you don’t know how to write strikes Richard as no less intimate than taking off one’s clothes at the doctor’s. Chapter 31

Richard hears the chorus of honking horns behind the car of the family still frozen in shock. Chapter 31

Chapter 32

The way he’s standing there, he looks like a blind man. (Osarobo, lost) Chapter 32

… watching and listening as these three musicians use the black and white keys to tell stories that have nothing at all to do with key’s colours. Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Go, went, gone. Chapter 33

But maybe they’ll have it better there … a sign they are going to be accepted. (Sylvia) Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Its normal here, Rashid says, were happy. Chapter 34

Were glad when we have something to do, Rashid says. Chapter 34

… a desperate man can’t throw himself to his death from a second story window. Chapter 34

Where are they buried? Who knows their names? Chapter 34

‘the only ones I really feel sorry for are the coast guard’ DontCare. Chapter 34

‘The planet’s already incredibly overpopulated anyhow’ GodOfSlaughter. Chapter 34

‘Let’s save our cash for Granny – not the Roma and the Sinti’ Party Slogan. Chapter 34

In this sense, every one of the African refugees here, is simultaneously alive and dead. Chapter 34

Chapter 35

… there probably isn’t much I can do. (Awad’s lawyer) Chapter 35

.. he can’t write very well. (about Khalil) Chapter 35

… I need to have proof for the interview. (Zali) Chapter 35

Chapter 36

.. a farmer folds his lamb’s soft ears down over their eyes before they’re slaughtered, to calm them. (video the men are watching) Chapter 36

Chapter 37

At first … my mother was scared of him because he’s black… (Anne) Chapter 37

You mustn’t forget she belongs to a completely different generation. (about Anne’s mum) Chapter 37

When did he turn from being a man filled with great hope for mankind into an almsgiver? (about Richard) Chapter 37

Chapter 38

If you eat more, you become like an infant … too spoiled. (Apollo) Chapter 38

None of them has his own apartment or even his own bed; all their clothing comes from donations. There’s no car, no stereo, no gym membership, no outings, no travel, no wife, no children … Chapter 38

Chapter 39

We’re not giving away anything for free, the law says, unrelenting and hard as iron. Chapter 39

Round up all the boys and girls and send them back to where they came from. Chapter 39

… they’ve got plenty anyhow, they’re all drug dealers or African mafia. Chapter 39

Today for dinner the law will devour hand, knee, nose, mouth, feet, eyes, brain, ribs, heart or teeth. Some part or other. Chapter 39

Chapter 40

What other things might be lurking in the dark reaches of his memory that will never again be dragged out of storage, before closing time arrives and the lights go out for good. Chapter 40

Chapter 41

The Europeans bomb u s- so we’ll bomb them with blacks, Gaddafi said. Chapter 41

Under the water I saw all the corpses. (Rashid) Chapter 41

Even today sometimes I think I see one of our children suddenly walking through the door. (Rashid) Chapter 41

If you could see me doing my work, says Rashid, … you would see a completely other Rashid. You know, he says, for me working is as natural as breathing. Chapter 41

Chapter 42

The German language is my bridge into this country. (Ali) Chapter 42

Under different circumstances, he’d no doubt already be enrolled in medical school. (About Ali) Chapter 42

You really have to be careful, a lot of times they’re carrying illnesses – hepatitis, typhus. AIDS. Or so I hear. (Monika about the Africans) Chapter 42

In the subway the Italians get up and sit somewhere else if I sit next to them. (Osarobo) Chapter 42

Chapter 43

The police official isn’t sorry, let alone very sorry. Chapter 43

The Africans have to solve their own problems in Africa. Chapter 43

‘eradicate corruption, cronyism, and child labour in Ghana’. (Karon) Chapter 43

‘file lawsuit against Areva group (France) install a new government in Nigeria’. (Apollo) Chapter 43

‘broker a reconciliation between Christian and Muslim in Nigeria’. (Rashid) Chapter 43

‘prohibit the sale of weapons from US and China to Chad’. (Hermes) Chapter 43

It would be one year before the first harvest. Chapter 43

Karon’s worries have ground him down to such an extent that he’s even afraid to hope. Chapter 43

Chapter 44

January 8, lists arrive in Spandau … with the names of the first 108 men. Chapter 44

Only when a name is known can there be a list like this. Chapter 44

… this country of bookkeepers will be aghast and blame the objects of the transport for the expense, as used to happen in other periods of German history. Chapter 44

So a border, Richard thinks, can suddenly become visible. Chapter 44

And is it a rift between Black and white? Rich and poor? Stranger and friend? Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Let’s make friends. (Protest march slogan) Chapter 45

.. the thunderbolt hurler is so occupied with hurling his bolts he doesn’t hear: Change the Law! Chapter 45

A friend, a good friend, is the best thing in the world. Chapter 45

Chapter 46

The practical thing about a law is that no one person made it so no one is personally responsible for it. Chapter 46

Richard, sitting at breakfast like other readers of this major German newspaper, in a warm house, toast, tea, orange juice, honey and cheese before him. Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Karon writes back: I have no body. Chapter 47

The line dividing ghosts and people have always seemed thin to him … (Richard) Chapter 47

… and with outstretched arms drops it, just as it is without counting the money, into the crevice in the floor. Chapter 47

Always good morning, Richard thinks, indeed what better thing to wish a friend. Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Tutto e finite (everything is finished). Chapter 48

… these guys still believe in the medicine man. You dance around him in a circle a few times and he’ll be as good as new. (Jorg) Chapter 48

As so often, this examination has revealed that everything depends on asking the right questions. Chapter 48

Chapter 49

The time during which a person doesn’t know how his life can become a life fills a person condemned to idleness from his head down to his toes. Chapter 49

What if the drowned man tried calling out to them from beneath the ice, and they saw him beneath their feet … but in the time it would take to fetch an axe … he would have sunk back down. Chapter 49

Chapter 50

.. kindly remember that he whom you call our slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives and dies (Seneca). Chapter 50

And might reasons journey be compare to what these men have been through? Chapter 50

Could these long years of peacetime be to blame for the fact that a new generation of politicians apparently believes we’ve now arrived at the end of history, making it possible to use violence to suppress all further movement and change? Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Where compassion is, and prudence is, is neither waste nor hardness of heart. (Pope Francis) Chapter 51

Your own property is in peril when your neighbour’s house burns. Chapter 51

It is accounted a sin to turn any man away from your door. (Tacitus) Chapter 51

Chapter 52

He can already see them baring their teeth like the lions in Osarobo’s profile picture: What did we tell you? (about people like Monika and Jorg) Chapter 52

Or maybe it wasn’t Osarobo after all. Chapter 52

Chapter 53

The ghosts, Karon says, only come as far as the Italian coast. Chapter 53

Outside because everything was flying around. And inside because the roof might fly off and take us with it. Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Where can a person go when he doesn’t know where to go? Chapter 54

Even if we help them the problem won’t be resolved. Chapter 54

Gehen, ging, gegangen (go went gone). Chapter 54

Mother oh mother, your son has made a terrible journey. I am stranded on foreign shores. Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Rashid says he wished he could cut off his memory. Chapter 55

All of them think for a moment about women they have loved, who once loved them. Chapter 55

For the refugees, preserving their dignity is an arduous task. Chapter 55

… the things I can endure are only just the surface of what I can’t possibly endure. Chapter 55