Running in Berlin

I was running through Berlin.

I wasn’t being chased.

It was for fitness.

‘Kosher’ the word in Hebrew. Funny.

An image of war flickered through my mind.

1940, Jew, pursued by Nazis.

I couldn’t get it out of my head.

I looked for somewhere to hide.

Graffiti on the walls.

The Reich wouldn’t stand for that, would it?

On street corners, homeless people

With two-third torn coffee cups beg,

Alms for the poor.

We don’t call it that anymore.

In the book, Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, set as a text for my daughter’s forthcoming English A-Level. The characters describe a young woman, her fair hair short, dishevelled, sitting on a white sheet on a street in Cambridge, a dog at her side, asleep. There is a question as to whether she is genuinely begging or perhaps looking to supplement her income, it is the classic Right versus Left analysis of poverty or disadvantage, ‘They bring it upon themselves, they should get a job… Get on their bikes.’

I was lost.

This was not a dream.

None of the streets were recognisable.

I remember Neue Jüdenstraße. Which I interpreted as New Jewish Street. I reflected whether this had been named before or after the war.

Running through Berlin and Lower Saxony, both of which are at the centre of the European Massif, the land is flat. Few hills. No mountains.

Nowhere to hide.

If you are being chased.

Even harder if you are lost.

On the Landwehrkanal, young people are punting.

I smell cannabis.

bins are full to overflowing.

I think of the fire risk.