At the train station in Washington, D.C., soldiers welcome us. They patrol through the entrance hall. The echo of rolling suitcases drowns out their footsteps. “They look like the boys on the schoolyard back then,” Sonali says. “Yeah,” I say, “back then I’d be scared they’d beat me up.” The machine guns don’t scare me, but I definitely don’t feel safe. Outside, it’s dark. In the distance, the Capitol glows. We wait for the Uber to the hotel, we get in, my suitcase has grown heavier again. I follow the car on the map. From our hotel to the White House it’s only a fifteen-minute walk. “I’ll go for a walk tonight,” I tell Sonali. “I’m only going to bed,” she says.
“And how was it yesterday?” Sonali asks me at breakfast. “It’s just smaller than you expect, even though you expect it to be smaller than you would have expected,” I say. “And?” she asks. “That’s all I have to say,” I reply. “I don’t know either—power can’t be seen, you feel it,” I say. We start the day again with greasy food and weak coffee. “It feels like you’re kind of at home somewhere,” Sonali says. We haven’t stayed anywhere this long yet, but I’m not at home here.
Outside the hotel there’s a pool. The sun is shining, but the pool stays closed after Labor Day. “Cool, a pool!” a kid shouts in the lobby. “It is too late, sweetheart,” his mother says.
We drive out into the countryside. By now, we’re spoiled by Ubers. Sonali sleeps, I look out the window. A small U.S. flag flutters on the dashboard in the wind of the air conditioning. An hour and a half passes, then we’re in Virginia. “What are you doing here?” we’re asked again and again—in the bookstore, in the outdoor and souvenir shop, in the brewery, while eating burgers—and we ask ourselves the same thing. I think the plan was to see the countryside. Also, a Civil War battle took place here, many of the dead are buried here. Washington feels far away, and the new civil war they talk about on TV every day is not happening here—or is it? It’s quiet here. That’s what everyone we talk to says. And what is there to do? Everyone tells us: hiking. So we go for a walk.
We stand on a parking lot the size of a village. A few cars are scattered across it, dusk is setting in, forested hills rise in the distance. Along the road, some construction workers carry their tools on their shoulders. I look away for a moment, and they’re gone. I stare at the trees behind the road for a long time. Then a light turns on. In the thicket, there is a tent.
Behind the Starbucks, too—where we’re waiting outside for Uber to find us a ride back—people are camping. I had heard them playing guitar when I walked to CVS on the other side of the lot to buy myself a beer. On the way back, I stop by them. They’ve built a small campfire by now. In the distance, the lights at Goodwill go out.
Uber has abandoned us—or we were careless. The Goethe-Institut is already looking for hotel rooms for us in Virginia, but my medication is in Washington. For 300 dollars, a way back finally appears. With public transport, according to Google Maps, it would take us more than two days. I didn’t look too closely at the route, but I was surprised it was even possible. Now we’re sitting in a truck, with a couple in the front seats—he just finished his shift at the factory, she is starting her night shift. I ask whether it’s worth driving taxis out here. “We mostly drive old people,” she says. “And Germans without a driver’s license,” I say, and we laugh.
The next day it’s raining in the capital, but there are always moments when it clears up. On the backside of the White House, a line forms toward a security check, in two directions. In the driver cabins sit construction workers with dark circles under their eyes, transporting debris out of the White House. The vehicles on the other side are loaded with cement.
In front of the White House stands a Black man selling MAGA caps. “Charlie Kirk used to wear these!” is his pitch. We stop in front of him. “You should speak English,” he tells us. “You are in America!” If we were in Arizona, he’d shoot us, he says, but we’re not in Arizona.
We are in the National Museum of African American History and Culture, outside it’s pouring rain.
It’s still raining; I stand under the Abraham Lincoln Memorial. Then I ride an e-scooter through countless puddles.
We’re in a pizzeria, part of the reading series by The Inner Loop. Along with other writers, we read excerpts from our texts. The conversations afterward are heartbreaking, full of solidarity and curiosity. Many colleagues talk about struggle. “I just lost my job because of the cuts of the Trump admin,” a poet tells me—she can’t live off poetry, of course. “Oh, that is terrible,” I say. “Oh, never mind, I just got another,” she says. I hear that several times that evening. Lost a job—who cares, then you just do something else. Outside, it’s still raining.
The next day the sun is shining again.