I wish I could write a different text. One about how the Book Barn, the venue for our reading, looked like Bilbo Baggins' house. How Carol, the 90-year-old owner, showed us one book after another and tried to sell them to us with a mischievous grin (What about cookbooks? Do you enjoy cooking? Maybe some Wilhelm Busch, some German classics? You look like a guy who's interested in the military!). How her partner Frank held my hand as we said goodbye and said with a smile: “You're always welcome here in West Chester.” And how he meant it.
I wish I could write that text. But then we went out for dinner.
On the way there: A man and his two girlfriends engage Iven in a conversation about Germany, literature, about the trip. As with other conversations, I don't exist here, no one looks at me, no one asks me anything. That's not new, not here, not at home. Iven is supposed to say hello to her friends, Renate and Dieter from Stuttgart, in a video. I accidentally appear in the frame. They say goodbye effusively, one of them waving with one hand, holding a MAGA cap in the other.
Bye Renate, bye Dieter.
Before we are given the menu, an argument breaks out. Across the street, two men are standing, one wearing a Trump shirt, the other not. One says to the other: You know, you're supporting a pedophile. The other starts shouting.
Biden is the pedophile. You're the pedophile.
Two African American women a few tables away join in: “Leave him alone,” they say, and then: “Trump IS a pedophile, that's just a fact.”
Shouting, screaming.
The Trump supporter's daughter finds the words to end the argument. She pulls her father away by the sleeve, turns around one last time, and shouts as loud as she can: JESUS LOVES YOU!
Cheers and applause erupted in the restaurant. Three women sitting next to us chant USA! USA! USA!, just like my friends and I used to in Giessen, ironically and after two glasses of wine. Only now do I notice that each of them is wearing a MAGA cap, one in red, two in blue. Passers-by walk past them, looking at them and calling out: “I really like your hat!”—and the cheering starts all over again. Most of them wear the same cap, some wear T-shirts that say: Police Lives Matter.
The daughter of migrants sits nearby, trembling. I feel sick, I'm angry, I'm scared. I vent to Iven in German, I don't know what to do with myself. I walk over to the two African American women and crouch down next to them. I thank them. They say, “You're welcome.” They say they're from Philadelphia and that it was hard to make friends at first. They say, “Everything is different here.”
Back at the table, I shake my head several times. The loudest of the MAGA women, short hair, androgynous, looks at me. “You okay there?” she asks me, and she asks it provocatively.
“Yeah,” I reply. “All good. You?”
“Oh, I'm great,” she replies sarcastically. “I just see that you're staring at me. Your stare is literally piercing my skull, so I just want to know if you're okay.”
“I'm okay, if you're okay,” I reply. “Are you okay?”
“I already said I'm okay,” she says louder.
“Well,” I say, trembling, “I guess that means we're both okay.”
We look at each other. Her mouth is twisted, her eyes narrow. My pulse is racing.
I look away, focus on our upcoming reading. Ask Iven where our next hotel is, when our train leaves.
150,000 right-wing extremists are demonstrating on the streets of London and the woman next to me says: I can just feel her staring at me.
I stare at my plate, at the broccoli, the wine, at Iven.
Three times as many people in North Rhine-Westphalia now vote for right-wing extremists, and the woman next to me says: That lady right next to us. I swear she's staring at me.
Pasta, plate, glass, Iven: „Do you think there's a laundry service at the hotel?“
On the way to the train station, two young men kneel in front of a picture of Charlie Kirk, and the woman next to me says: “It hasn’t been easy these past years.” And I know what unpredictable voices sound like.
I wish I could write a different text. But even more, I wish everything here were different. Another man walks past us, nods at her and says: “Nice hat you’re wearing there!” Our eyes meet briefly. She smirks, keeps eating, and then calls out to me: “Welcome to America.”