poem is black

June 19, 2024, Berlin

It wasn’t that the world was ending or beginning. I didn’t feel the slightest anxiety or sadness. No, it was boredom all over again. We didn’t take the train to hell, but hell has a way of leading us to boredom. It was late afternoon when, after twenty-something years, I sat down behind my computer and started writing with red nails I recently had done in a dreary, artificially greened corner nail shop in Kottbusser Tor. Every now and then, an addicted homeless person shouted loudly, or someone of probable Arab descent sang a loud song.

Which story to tell or write? My brain is flooded with thousands of thoughts! Just like when I was a child, when thoughts bombarded my brain, I’d set aside the pen and paper and instead take out my calendar to plan when to write my thoughts and when to edit them. As it turns out, even at this age, planning goes on without any writing materializing. Sad, it might seem.

So right now, my mind drifts back to that tiny nail shop with a surprisingly good English-speaking Vietnamese man who was, again surprisingly, way too chatty. I don’t exactly know the reasons behind his extreme racism towards the Chinese, “calling them too loud,” and Indians, “calling them too dirty,” while seeing Vietnamese as superior, but it was probably something similar to those I met in Iran. The least educated part of society, with no idea of political correctness, only after their benefits and what makes them more money. He was somehow conducting the entire conversation for a good Google review, but his sense of humor was so non-English and, in English culture, somewhat offensive that I started laughing.

The poor man continued asking why I was laughing, and as a kind of nonsensical slang, he kept saying, “Your life, not mine.” My life it is… and now here we are. My very first piece of writing after two years of moving to this city. Berlin is brutal but, at the same time, full of stories. You don’t need to come up with a good story; you just need to keep your eyes open. I had my eyes closed all these years, but the older I get, the wider my eyes open.