The Countries I Once Loved, Have Changed
Kanak
My brother shows me the word painted across his building in the German town where he’s currently employed. At first glance, it looks like Xanax, which would be funny, not very imaginative, but wholly forgettable and forgivable. But it’s not that. I have looked hard to make sure.
Which is what stands out for me in my fourth visit to Germany in ten years as a tourist: this time, weirdly I admit, I am afraid.
Kanak or kanake is a German word to denote people in Germany with Turkish or Arab roots. It is a colloquial term, often derogatory. My brother’s residential building is a motley collection of people from all over: Poland, Romania, Lebanon, India, Turkey. The word is a slur on all of us, then.
We are all Kanaks.
Can a Kanak ever belong?
Do not get me wrong. I for one think it is a largesse on Germany’s part to accept outsiders into their fold. Over the years, they’ve built what is now a dream and a paradise for most of us — to visit, to study, to work in, or simply enjoy. We are benefiting from the outcome of their vision, we are trying to further it, and perhaps learn lessons to take back to our own countries so we may prosper as they have done. I am grateful. I know my brother is too.
So why do I feel this way now?
Because some things have changed. And it has crept on us like sagging skin: after it has arrived, it’s hard to remember what was once better. And it is harder to get used to it.
During my earlier visits, I felt as if people were seeking me out to talk to me. I was exotic. Locals were curious about me. They asked questions, struck deliberate conversations. At times when they were curt, it was because they did not know how to deal with me. Or did not want to get into the trouble of understanding the different language I spoke.
Now… they seemed to have made up their minds. There is a patient tolerance. A resigned inevitability. They look past me. They let me be. Do I see a faint unpleasant crinkling at the corner of their lips when they see me or do I imagine it? They try hard to camouflage it, but it’s there.
I find this change disconcerting.
The streets feel like those of Manhattan: it’s hard to tell what race people are from, what language they speak, what they do for work. Diversity should be a wonderful thing. But it’s not easy to cope with. I am from India. I should know.
How long will it take?
Will it ever happen?
Laura comes up to talk to me. It is for a selfish reason, she admits. She is writing an article on the tourist scene in the Swiss city I am in, and wants to talk to actual tourists about it. Interestingly, she has checked in to the hostel I am staying in, to immerse herself with said tourists, to see things from their points of view.
What would you like to know, I ask.
Why are you here, she asks.
I tell her I’m on a sabbatical. I started with the most expensive city and planned to work my way down.
She is excited. Says she wants to show her city to me and ask me her other questions along the way.
It’s late! I protest. Maybe tomorrow.
It’s only 9 p.m.!
But…
Just one place, she begs. You’ll love it, I promise.
So we traipse along to this secret netherworld of hers. And it blows my mind.
It’s the first place I see in this Swiss city that follows no pattern, that has blemishes, that is less than perfect.
A grungy fairy tale, I marvel.
Isn’t it? She smiles, knowing she has impressed me.
I pass by a parade of car parts put together more creatively than orchids in a hotel’s lobby. Colourful, rickety chairs are strewn around me like in an AA meeting. Rows of multi-coloured sparkly bulbs wink at me from above. Garish undecipherable graffiti glimmer and dance on the walls, the creepers on them as if thrown-up by a Gothic monastery. Shadows follow me, say hello, and leave, just as suddenly.
I follow Laura up a tree-top café. Over there — much like a literal melting pot — several people spring up to greet me. Abram — the Egyptian handyman, Jakub and Zarek — Polish drivers, the Haddads — the Lebanese family that run the quirky, crammed eatery.
What have you got? Laura asks the nine-year-old Haddad girl.
Alcohol, she says, wrinkling her nose.
We laugh and ask what else. Her mother intervenes and deftly puts together a meal of pizza leftovers and some delicious hummus. We carry the meal upstairs and settle into a corner of the 10-seat eatery. Laura high-fives a few of her acquaintances. She has come here recently for an article and knows all the regulars. They talk in animated German. I watch them fascinated.
Except for Laura, none of them in the true sense of the word, belong here. They haven’t done well for themselves in how we know it to mean. But they seem happy, they seem to think they belong. Can a country’s success be measured by that?
When Abram leaves us, Laura whispers to me. He’s a darling, but I don’t think he makes very much. He needs to go see a doctor, he has a heart condition, but he doesn’t have any money.
Abram came to Switzerland in the 70s and has never gone back, not even to visit his family back in Egypt. He loves the city he has lived in for over 40 years. He knows everything about Switzerland and can talk for hours about the country’s football team.
After he leaves, a question pops in my head: Is the burden of successful integration the responsibility of the host or the guest? If both, who does what part of it?
He screams at us as we pass by. It is intelligible at first, because it is in Danish, and he is drunk. We ignore him.
He half rises from the bench and balls up his hands in a fist. Fuck you! he shouts. Go back to your country. Go back to where you came from.
This time it is clear.
I feel a dampening in my heart. Fuck you back! I want to shout. I want to tell him: I am only a tourist in his city for two days. I hadn’t taken away his job. I was spending money to be there.
But why did I feel the need to explain myself to him?
Yet, it takes one incident to mould a belief, and pretty much form a stereotype.
See where I am going with this?
What he said kept coming back to me through my weekend in Copenhagen — a city I was otherwise amazed by. The people are wonderfully warm, the food and coffee warmer still. But that one incident… plays on and on in my mind…
Because I think to myself, what had I done wrong?
That’s what I feel this time. I am amazed. I am wary. It’s a new world unfolding in front of me. A world that is calibrating itself. It will take getting used to.
These stories are personal experiences and feelings. Names have been changed to protect privacy.
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