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A couple of days later, after the conference,
I'm back in Kreuzberg with Zafir, the only Turkish literary editor at the conference. We sit at a nice
cafe above a canal, with smiley happy Germans all around us. I mention my previous visit to the neighborhood and tell him
about the young Turks and the
snooty hippy chick. Zafir explains
that it's a skin-free zone, that no
neo-Nazi would be stupid enough to
come here, and says that's probably
why I got a gum wrapper in my face.
He says the area is a stronghold of
leftist Turks, at war not against
the German skinheads, at least not
directly, but with the Grey Wolves,
the militant right-wing Turkish group.
That night, back with the TV in Wannsee, I watch some young Turks and anarchists clashing with the police in the very streets where I walked with Zafir. They're protesting Chancellor Helmut Kohl's visit to Berlin and his refusal to visit the funeral of the Turkish firebombing victims. |
The following day, I head into East Berlin, skinhead stomping grounds. I wonder all over again what they'll do seeing me dressed like them (minus the suspenders and swastica tattoos). Either they'll think I'm an impostor and kick my ass, I'll get all worked up over my 6 million and kick their ass, or we'll go get a beer and swap notes about the latest in shaving machines. (If Isaac Babel could run with the Cossacks, I can at least shoot the shit with some skin jobs from an ex-Communist country.) I get out at the Alexanderplatz subway station. There's a huge concrete plaza with young (long-haired) kids sitting around drinking beer, Russians trying to separate West German tourists from their Marks with a version of 3-card Monte, and Mexican hippies selling jewelry and cassettes of Peruvian music. Then I take the train over to Kollwitz Platz, the ex-East equivalent of Kreutzberg, and as the night falls over Berlin, I stumble by an array of hip bars and galleries filled with young artsy West Germans and other Eurotrash (lots of New Yorkers, too). I've walked for hours, covered miles, consumed numerous coffees and beers, and not a single glimpse of a real German skinhead. |