Sonnenblumenkerne

to Michael Hennen

 

It has been a long while since I’ve gone running.

The pandemic, lockdown, and eventual home office situation in a country on the verge of a social collapse and total financial meltdown only further aggravated our sense of frustration regarding our unstable future in Lebanon. And so, for better or for worse, my husband and I had become almost obsessed with finding our way out and had concentrated our efforts on landing jobs in Germany.

Nobody tells you, though, that even when you leave your old worries behind, you never get rid of them altogether. In this sense, worries are like energy, and we should begin observing a new law of conservation of worries that ought to clearly state: “worries are neither created nor destroyed, there is only transformation.” That is certainly what we experienced firsthand once we finally realized our goal and left our old home in Lebanon behind, and were suddenly overwhelmed with a new set of burdens and technicalities we had to handle upon arriving in Germany.

Having to deal with the anxiety resulting from the stress of permanent relocation, it had been even longer still that I had spoken to my German colleague and friend.

“But what about you? Happy being here…and sad to be not at home?” Michael suddenly asks me, out of the blue.

Happy.

Sad.

Home.

My life has been triangulating around these three nebulous terms for what seems like a lifetime. Unsure how to answer, I set my phone aside and head to remove the laundry from the washing machine so I can load it in the dryer.

It seems like only yesterday I was waking up at 3am frantic, panicked, upon hearing the power had switched back on, and running like mad to start the wash cycle before we lose power again. And here I am now, loading a 3-hour drying cycle, following a 3-hour wash cycle with the idea of us losing electricity now being a distant laughable memory.

I move towards the living room to help my kids pack up their toys as they ask me if we can go to the park today. I think of how I don’t have a car here and how oddly relieving it is to not have a car here because my brain can only understand this “absence” as me not having to queue up for 3 hours to fill a quarter tank of gas for 3 times its initial cost only to burn through it in a day or two because of horrible road, traffic, and transportation conditions -- an alien thought at best when, in Germany, a few kilometers walk in any direction could take me to the nearest U-Bahn/S-Bahn and then after to any desired destination in a matter of minutes.

I put away the last toy train as I remember the day I commuted to work to meet my HR in person so I could finally sign the hard copy of my work contract. This was the very first time he had asked me for my religion. Having lived in Lebanon for the past 3 decades, I recall being taken aback and feeling instinctively defensive as I began overthinking why he would ask me such a question. “Should I just tell him the religion I was born into? Should I tell him I turned my back on religion years ago and now identify as a nonbeliever?"

The thoughts kept racing and got louder and louder until I hesitantly blurted out “but…why is this relevant?”

“Tax info,” he confidently retorted. “I just need to know if you belong to one of three major Christian denominations here for tax purposes. If you don’t belong to one of the three, then just leave it blank; it wouldn’t much matter what your religion is.”

The nervous chuckle I let out was perhaps my most embarrassed one to date as I reflectively reprimanded myself for my own foolishness. How stiff I must’ve sounded to him, I thought, with my guard up on our first encounter just because I was yet to filter out sectarian traumas I had internalized for so long in my homeland.

Michael’s text continues to glow a few meters across from me as my machine does one final spin and I mull over his question still confused about how to reply.

I want to tell him I am happy here, in Berlin, and am treated like an actual sentient being.

I want to tell him that animals have more rights in Norway than I did as a citizen in a criminal state run by mafias under a totalitarian corrupt regime that is still trying to stall the investigation of the devastating August 4 port explosion.

I want to be angry with Michael for even having the audacity to call where I once lived “home,” when, in the absence of laws and regulations that ensure the very minimum of basic rights everyone anywhere else in the world takes for granted, it was nothing short of a farm, with every one of us being primed for the eventual slaughter to fill the insatiable belly of a warlord or party leader.

But he wouldn’t understand. Michael can’t understand. He lives in a first-world country, has potable tap water, and can shower with hot water any moment he feels like it. He doesn’t have to feel ashamed asking his colleagues overseas to delay an online meeting because he might not have electricity/internet later that afternoon. And he certainly doesn’t have to buy a single chicken breast the same day he has to cook it for his kids because he can only benefit from his fridge and freezer for the generous 3 hours a day the noble politicians decide to grace him with electricity.

My dryer beeps and I think of how wonderful it is to hear a perpetually annoying beep as it can only mean I would have to have power for it to beep.

The flashing lights on my phone start blinding me and I zone out. I begin hearing my kids’ heavy German accents while they dance and sing to Laterne, Laterne, one of their favorite German nursery rhymes. Leaning against the heater and feeling the warmth of my robe against my skin, I've only just noticed I'm instinctively singing along with them, incorrectly mumbling sonnenblumenkerne (sunflower seeds) instead of Sonne, Mond, und Sterne (sun, moon, and stars). I laugh as I realize, sunflower seeds are one of the last few things I think of when I think of Lebanon.

A Freudian slip? I wonder.

Did I finally crack and start subconsciously lamenting my estrangement from Lebanon?

Have I become a double Ausländer: (1) to Lebanese who consider my permanent relocation to be synonymous with me betraying and abandoning my homeland in its time of need, and (2) to Germans who might never consider me “German” enough, even with me studying German every day with the aim of eventually reaching native-level fluency?

My phone goes quiet for a while.

It’s time to exorcise the white noises, I think, and finally silence my dryer.

“I am home.” I reflexively type to Michael.

“Berlin is home.”

“Gute nacht, mein freund.”