Etel Adnan, To Look At The Sea Is To Become What One Is
Only the British live in the Erdgeschoss. Germans never live on the ground floor. This is what we joke, because we are British, mostly, and our next-door neighbours are British, completely, and the house-share with the windows left open for the Cat Queen to crawl out of speak in English, mostly, although they've been here long enough to speak good German, loudly, too. 'My friend Jan lives on the ground floor', says A. 'But he is Dutch.'
'It's not too late to demand a balcony!' An anglicised German friend told us towards the beginning of our flat search. I was already well enough into the search – sick competition, application folders, sickening real estate – to do a big eye roll. We're from London, I thought, my room used to be 8m² for work, sleep and yoga stretches. Space without outside-space is enough.
And then it became summer, summer without a balcony. Any social anxiety about being the English in the Erdgeschoss accelerated with the temperature dial. We became the postman's go-to flat for package drop-off (he prefers not to climb the stairs). When I collected my own package from another go-to parcel drop-off flat down the street (because the way of things is that while hosting the packages of eight other neighbours, you will not receive your own), a man with a gammy foot opened the door. There were two jenga towers of +/- 24 parcels in his hallway. We cannot become that parcel drop-off, I told A. Even if you do appreciate the morning conversations with the postman as an opportunity to practice basic German. The postman corrects my German, said A. Geht so.
In Italy my ex-flatmate, Valentina, wrote to tell me she had painted her balcony magenta pink. She sent me a lurid photo. But the plants are still… sad, she wrote. Neither of us was very green-fingered, though she had projected that I should be, because I was vegetarian. You like green, she had said. What should we do to the basil? V. was a carnivore. She ate steak three times a week, and was as slight as me. She sometimes ate a salad before the steak, rarely other vegetables. You'll like my new plates, she said. They are made from bamboo – green, ecological. Simply she associated me with everything vegetal – a crisp youth – and this included how she imagined I ought to act towards the houseplants, with optimism and care.
(I was reading a description of perfumes, and the one I've been wearing for a couple of years, which I had assumed was sensuous, or tropical, not like my genes, read: "vegetal, vinyl, foliage…" so maybe V. wasn't far wrong.)
I do tend to my houseplants now; the mutual sound of pleasure as I water them. They sit on the windowsill, not the balcony – in Berlin there would be no cleaning teeth outside in summer pyjamas, no eating ice cream while inhaling car fumes on high. No urban vanity or balustrade leaning, no political proselytising or Evita speeches – none of that. But when the city reached 36 degrees, our ground-floor flat proved to be the coolest cool-box in town. The canal-side was our balcony, and our living room, a fridge.
There in the lazy middle of August I read Etel Adnan's letters from Barcelona, Beirut, Berlin – Adnan who speaks so much poetic sense:
Why do foreigners – especially those from dominant countries – always occupy the terraces, the uppermost and top floors of buildings? Since childhood I've observed this phenomenon: people who in their own country probably lived in some dark flat, or a hole, wanted in Beirut to live on the highest floor possible, one with a view of the sea. Didn't they thereby have the eagle's view of the lamb? Yes, there must be something in all of this.
To clarify, and to back up Adnan's observation, I did stand this summer on other people's balconies – at a grown-up party in Prenzlauerberg; overlooking a 1930s sports stadium in Oslo, unexpected warmth on my shoulders. At an art opening the smoker's balcony was so over-populated with high-end Nikes I had to leave. Yes, the balcony in Europe is the quotidian version of a squat ivory tower. If often I feel like I have the metaphorical privilege of balconism,* I try to stay Erdgeschossian – grounded. I have never 'demanded a balcony' in my life.
And yet. The last weekend of summer at the Grillplatz of Templehof, smiling Americans and us Brits, grilling Wiener, drinking cava, caught in a haze of grill smoke… the wide horizon behind which the sun sets an orange disc. Flatlands of leisure, worn grass, but effectively on high. Soon a new refugee centre will be formed on Templehof. The city is receiving thousands of Flüchtlinge – those in flight, those who have fled – the German word conjures for me an image of batting wings – who find themselves without status in a way more fundamental than will ever be the case for me, passported and white, 'expat' rather than 'immigrant', wherever I move.
I am troubled for their shelter, and help in small, incremental ways, translating phrases, linking people with other people, rolling out beds on site. The word freedom follows me as I leave the shelter and catch the S-Bahn home. I walk away with the freedom that the structures (balconies?) of Britain & Europe have granted me. I'm typing, and there is a thunderstorm outside. Are the people inside the shelter yet? Have the security opened the doors to non-volunteers? Did they find more bedcovers? Feeling is the minimum human reaction one can have.** Feeling does not change the status quo. Neither really does writing this down; this is not what I want to say; the stories of those arriving are not my stories to tell.*** Feeling empathy does not excuse me from my position, balcon or non.
*Term from artist Constant Dullaart's book of the same name, though my usage has more to do with platforms of privilege than communication.
**As this article by Teju Cole on white sentimentality reminds me.
***The International Women's Space in Berlin, a group of migrant and refugee women coming from former colonised countries, tell their own stories. Read Daniel Trilling's research tracing migrants' journeys into Europe.