Leipzig, September 4, 2025  I'm going to America and Mom is worried

When my train is delayed, my mother gets anxious. “What's going on? What happened?” she shrieks into the phone – as if I were the person who lay down on the tracks between Halle (Saale) and Gießen. In 2017, I spent a year studying in Seattle, my first year in America, and America's first year with Trump. My mother says she couldn't sleep the entire year.

Every night, the most terrifying scenarios kept her awake:

Me, having missed the bus, stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere, everyone I meet has a shotgun slung over their back.

Me, having trusted the wrong people, suddenly in a freezer, two kidneys short.

Me, having been shot at in a dark alley, covered in blood, white hats fading into the distance, the last words on my lips: Mama, why didn't I listen to you?

While friends and acquaintances recommended sightseeing spots along the West Coast, my mother lay in bed, trembling.

Seven years later, one thing has changed: my roommates, my closest friends, my badminton partner, my boss, the woman sitting next to me on the train who asks about my summer plans - they're all trembling, just a little. They all hold my gaze a little longer when saying goodbye. They all say the same thing, and they all say it with quiet urgency: take care of yourself.
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A month ago, the YouTube channel Jubilee released a new episode of its discussion series Surrounded, which has since racked up 11 million views: 1 Progressive vs. 20 Far-Right Conservatives, the name. The concept: one person with a strong opinion sits in the center, surrounded by twenty people with an equally strong but opposing view. Surrounded, indeed - a miniature colosseum for the modern age.

In this episode, the man in the middle is Mehdi Hasan, a British-American political journalist. For an hour and forty minutes, he talks to young people who proudly declare themselves fascists, who downplay the Holocaust, who tell him, the son of Indian immigrants: You’re not an American. We don’t want you here. Go back to your country.

Take care of yourself. Take care of yourself. Take care of yourself.

I'm not sure why these particular scenes give me goosebumps. My mind understands and despairs at the daily reports of deported minors or pro-Palestinian activists. But this video tightens my throat. Maybe it's the pride with which these young men hate an older man they don't even know; the shamelessness of it, without any subtext, using their real names. Maybe it's because Hasan holds an American passport, but was born British Indian, just like my mother, just like my family, because he sounds like them, because he sounds like me. Maybe it's because this thought won’t let me go: My mother trembles with fear, these men tremble with rage.
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Back then in Seattle, while my mother didn’t sleep for an entire year, I had the warmest conversations I’ve ever had with strangers, learned from the most dedicated lecturers, joked with the kindest servers. It sounds like a cliché, what I quickly had to admit as a grumpy German: wherever I went, whatever problem I had - everyone wanted to help.

How do we bring together things that are opposed to each other? Kindness and hate, openness and isolation, global power and inequality, future aspirations and past affairs? How do we bring together a society that meets at every bus stop and is divided by every breaking news story?

The silver lining: We don’t need to board a plane to ask these questions. “Take care,” a long hug, serious eyes - I get all that here in Germany too: every evening on my way home. In Chemnitz after 2018. In Hanau after 2019. In Oldenburg after Lorenz. In the neighborhood where I live, the strongest party is die Linke and the second strongest is the AfD. We Germans know division too - and we’re quite good at it. “Take care, take care, take care” - like a pocket warmer, this phrase is handed to me by kind people. Knowing full well it won’t chase away the cold outside, but for a moment, it will warm my hands.

How do we bring together things that stand in opposition? By telling each other stories? By living and loving as best we can, and listening as much as we can? By slipping pocket warmers into cold hands, again and again? Or by traveling to America and keeping our mother awake for four weeks straight?

Mama, I'm going to America.

Please take care of yourself.