2013-02-09: More than German in German class

This past Friday evening marked the end of my third week in an Integrationskurs here in Berlin — a state-subsidized German-language course that is intended to help immigrants become more fully a part of German society. (I have not yet received the certificate required for subsidization, but even without it, the course is amazingly cheap.) I am in class Monday-Friday from 14 to 17h15 (that’s 2-5:15 pm), and this module ends on February 19th. I joined in the middle of the “A1/A2” textbook (the second of six) — this was both a matter of timing (i.e., my finally doing something about learning German) and the fact that I was not a complete novice.

I am still scrambling to catch up on the vocabulary and grammar I missed: I've bought the first book and am slowly making the content of both the A1 and A1/A2 books my own. Despite the lacunes, I got 85% on my first sort of official test. (Part of that score has more to do with knowing how to take tests than with knowing German — but I digress.) 

Our teachers, Olga (M-T-W) and Renate (Th-F), are very competent, as is the director of the school, Herr Bonev (who fills in when a regular teacher is absent, as has been the case with Olga several times). They all speak several languages each, including English (at least to some degree).

I am the only American, the only native anglophone in class (the only French citizen, too, for that matter). My classmates are from the Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Brazil, and Afghanistan. The women outnumber the men by more than 2 to 1; two of the women wear the hijab. Alana, the Ukrainian woman, is about the same age as I am, and we are the oldest in the class. Two of the men (an Afghan and a Vietnamese) are also older than the rest, who are mostly in their mid-twenties.

As with all such classes, some students are more diligent about doing their homework than others, and some have more natural aptitude for learning languages. Some students are clearly handicapped by their Muttersprachen (mother tongues): for example, the three Vietnamese students are often nearly unintelligible to my ears, as they all seem to have great difficulty pronouncing S and SH sounds that do not occur at the beginning of a word (and sometimes even then). In large part thanks to my previous short year of German way back in the mid-1970s — taken mostly because of my voice training — I have the best accent of any of the students (no false modesty here!)… and about half the class has asked me why my accent is so good. (Frau Frankfurter vom CSUN, ich danke Ihnen!)

But what I really want to write about today is one of the Afghan men. Our latest lesson theme was a more in-depth look at greetings and exchanges of personal information — specifically, why people in class had come to Germany. My standard reply is “unser Haus in Frankreich ist, aber mein Mann muss hier arbeiten, und ich arbeite über das Internet, also….” Most of the women were also here because of some connection to a husband or partner who is either German or for whatever reason lives and works in Berlin.

Unsurprisingly, both Hamed and Farun (not their real names) left Afghanistan because of the war. When they answered the teacher’s query, I could have cried (and could not stop the tears from springing to my eyes): such a stark answer to such a routine question! I am far from my familiar American home places (and sometimes it feels very far indeed), but this is essentially a voluntary choice. Yet leaving for them was a matter of life and death. 

I didn't have the chance to talk to Farun, but I did talk to Hamed during the break… and yes, in German, our common language. Hamed comes from the eastern part of the Afghanistan and has been with his wife and children in Germany since 2001 (his younger children were born in Germany). At least some of his many brothers and sisters likewise have left Afghanistan, where they were a middle-class family until strife and war destroyed their family property and business. 

Hamed’s parents stayed, as did a sister and a brother. Hamed was able to briefly return in 2007 — a visit of less than a week. But not long after his visit, Hamed told me, the Taliban rounded up and beheaded both his father and his brother. Though Hamed would like his mother and sister to leave the country, his mother refuses to leave the place where her husband and son are buried, and the sister will not leave her mother.

Hamed does not dare visit his mother and sister again: he is a marked man. And he is completely, totally convinced that as soon as the European and American forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban will return and ruthlessly stamp out any and all modernity (at least any and all that does not have something to do with weapons and warfare). They will, he said, resume the practice of publicly executing all perceived enemies, usually by hanging, in the local stadium. I can hardly bear to think of how desperate the lot of women and girls will become (again) in a place in which their lot is already so grim,† but a continued American military presence there seems utterly untenable for many, many reasons.

To hear Hamed’s story in the plain and simple German words at his command was far more powerful than I can convey here. It was not that he was somehow indifferent to the anguish of his family’s story — no, it was just that the effort to express the tale in this new language helped tamp down his feelings — otherwise I think he might have wept openly. It was all I could do to refrain from weeping, to hold myself back from apologizing for our country’s role in his family’s past troubles… and in their future ones as well. In some ways I am amazed that he was willing to talk to me at all.

Hamed’s oldest child is a 19-year-old daughter who will be getting her German Abitur (high school baccalaureate degree) this year. There is no question in his mind that he made the right choice to flee to whatever country would take them in — in this case, so generously, Germany. He has prospered in Berlin — at least enough so that he can now take the time to finally learn German. He was very happy this week to learn a word that he will love being able to say to his oldest girl when she graduates: Gratulation! … a sentiment I share with him here, still with tears in my eyes.

†2023: Alas, not very prescient, of course — just all too predictable.