I saw a fire blazing from the window of a fifth-floor apartment. The air was thick with smoke; police cars were in place, but there was no sign of firefighters. Strangely, police officers and other bystanders stood quietly, chatting, eating. Then I realized it was a movie shoot; trucks were parked nearby, bearing the unmistakable signs of a production company.
Why do we love the thrill of catastrophe—the adrenaline of contained horror— while we comfortably sit on our couches and get up only to fetch the next snack from a well-stocked fridge or to order something on a delivery service app?
To achieve a realistic reproduction of flames, burnt walls, and charred floors, the production company lit a real apartment on fire; it was probably more convenient than CGI-ing their way to it.
It is also more convenient, some say, to destroy a large ten-storey office building and erect a new one to replace it instead of renovating it. Das Gebäude ist komplett marode, die Räumlichkeiten standen zu lange leer und es kann nicht mehr sinnvoll vermietet werden. (The building is completely dilapidated; the premises stood vacant for too long, and it cannot be rented anymore.)
Stones tumbling down the slope of the remains of the last standing wall, metal rods and wires sticking out of lacerated ceilings, emptied-out rooms, and a tempered glass door strangely still in place, untouched and opening into the void of an indifferent sky.
The architects in charge of the new building that will replace the rotting one from the 1960s claim that their projects are completely eco-sustainable and are built using debris from the old blocks they tear down. I wonder if all this is necessary; where I’m from, some constructions date back 3,000 years. The marketing team carefully selected names generated by AIs like SPRINGBLUE or HORIZONGREEN to give it all a feeling of delight, a breath of fresh air on a crisp morning.
When I pass by the demolition site on my way to work, a thick fog of dust and water hits me in the face and settles on my hair and clothes, and I cannot help thinking about the videos showing destruction in Gaza that I’ve seen on the screen of my phone for the past two years.
Everything from the construction site to the pile of unwashed clothes on my bedroom floor makes me think of war, of how fragile a comfortable life is. Piles of rubble and debris cover the land that is Gaza, it's people dead or displaced. Destroyed buildings stretch for kilometres. Homes, hospitals, schools, offices, and vital infrastructure systematically destroyed by aerial bombings. Nothing is left of farmland and wildlife. The environmental disaster will cause long-lasting damage.
Many people in my social circle repost original videos and photos of the horror, hidden behind images of art exhibitions or plates of delicious-looking food, to fool the algorithm that thrives on consumerism and would otherwise hide death. The comfort of everyday life in Berlin becomes apparent, and it is almost unbearable to even draw the comparison.
The Palestinian genocide happened during my lifetime, and we all witnessed it unfold. Frustration with the mainstream media and politicians grows, knowing they are driven by deeper and more obscure interests, and confronted with the fact that not all lives are valued the same by the people we democratically elected to govern.
I live in a country that exports weapons killing tens of thousands of people.
The Wikipedia article today states that Germany is potentially complicit together with the US, UK, Italy, and various companies—petrol barons, car manufacturers, and big tech. There are 100,000 direct violent deaths, but for each one, there will be many more indirect deaths from famine, disease, and unreported cases, making the total an even more frightening figure.
As an expat I chose to live here, and in the past ten years I have seldom doubted this decision. But what now?
I cannot even imagine a life without the luxury of lazy mornings, long phone conversations with friends and family, or a kitchen full of fresh food and a supermarket open until midnight within walking distance from home.
There is a pile of unwashed clothes lying on my bedroom floor—hues of grey and black, with a touch of pink lettering and white stripes emerging from the undefined mass. I always take care to separate lights from darks, reds from blues, cotton and polyester from more delicate materials. On weekend mornings, the sound of the washing machine is soothing: the drum spins and spins in one direction, then reverses, washing away days full of emotions. Clockwise and counterclockwise, clean, soapy water swirls around my clothes, which were never truly dirty.