Solidarity

On the way home with the subway I had 6 minutes to wait for the next train. I turned to the ads wall, and saw that a black actress had a big sticker over her body with "Ausländer raus!" (Foreigners, leave) scrawled on it. Someone had taken the time to write: We are all foreigners, pretty much everywhere.

It was one of these postal address stickers available in the post office and loved by the young vandals because they use some sort of superglue, these things are really difficult to remove.

Someone had started trying to scratch it off, and since I had a bit of time and long nails, I set to work, scratching it off millimeter for millimeter. I wasn't working long when an older women joined me. Her nails were not good, so she got out some nail scissors for scraping.

We worked in silence for a few moments, then I started making comments. She didn't answer. The train came in and I nodded at her, she nodded back, and I realized that she was a foreigner herself. She couldn't speak much German, but she understood these words, they are all over the place.

Our ways parted, after this brief moment of solidarity. We didn't finish scratching off the label - perhaps I should have missed a train and kept working.