1

I’m sitting in the backyard of Sinema Transtopia, a small independent cinema in Wedding, a neighbourhood in North-West Berlin. When the city gets too loud and I’m feeling a little lonely, I come here.

I usually come when the movie is already on, because that means the bar – along with the garden outside – will be relatively empty for at least 90 minutes.

I sit down in the quiet. I sit down in the familiarity. I sit down in this place that makes me feel – in a lot of ways – the way fono did in KL.

Here, I feel a sense of belonging. The feeling of being somewhere I’m recognised. Not only do they know my order, they know my name.

Today, I’m here writing.

2

There are two types of safety: the safety of knowing that you won’t be shot by an arrow, and the safety of knowing that if you were to be shot by an arrow, you’d be well taken care of.

Bauchi, Nigeria, is where my nervous system feels the calmest. All the administrative chatter in my mind shuts off because it knows that even if I don’t move a finger, I will still be taken care of. There will be food on the table, a roof over my head, and in the evening, people to talk and have tea with.

In Malaysia, my full-time job gave me some 20 or 30 days of sick leave. This means that when I got sick, I could rest and recover without the fear of losing income. And with a bit of pro-activity and enough notice, I know people who would glady come over to bring food and check-up on me, which of course brings a certain kind of safety.

Here in Germany, as a baby-freelancer, falling sick means losing income. And because I know fewer people and the relationships are less established, the need for proactivity is greater, and the notice required, potentially longer.

But I feel safe here. Very safe. Safe in the sense of not being shot by an arrow safe. Safer than Malaysia, and certainly safer than Nigeria.

But if I were to be shot by an arrow, this is the last place I would like it to happen in.

3

One of the prompts on my Hinge profile is: Which would you rather have access to, a time-machine or a teleportation device?

The answer, to me, is obvious: Teleportation.

The name “Time Machine” is a misnomer, as it implies that the machine’s purpose is to travel (mostly backwards) through time, which – in a very technical sense – is true.

But the real use of a time-machine – the reason why it exists (in literature and pop-culture) – is to either take actions that weren’t done in the past, or undo those that were. It’s a machine conceived, at its core, to fix regrets.

The reason why teleportation is the right answer to the question is because the problem of travel and borders is solvable, whereas regret is not.

4

After my second date with the Iranian journalist, I spent most of the night Googling Isfahan, the city her family currently lives. A city I barely knew two weeks ago, and definitely couldn’t point to on a map.

I watched a travel video by an American couple going through the major sites – the massive town-square, the UNESCO world-heritage mosque, and a carpet weaver selling a rug that apparently costs $10,000.

“Isfahan nesf-e jahan.”

Isfahan is half the world, announced the thumbnail.

And halfway across the world, I laid in my bed, in safety, thinking about the sound of bombs falling.

5

Some years ago, I read an article about how you have to keep earning your title, otherwise it expires. Calling yourself by something you no longer do, the article claims, brings –

“Satisfaction without action.”

The feeling of having done the thing without actually doing the thing.

It’s been really hard to make anything creative in the past 20 months, and practically impossible in the last 12 months. And the thought of losing that part of my identity scares the shit out of me.

6

When we matched, her main photo was of her in a huge pink fluffy coat smiling, her big curly hair cut shoulder-lenght. She looked really cute.

As an opener, I asked what she was currently reading, and she said “The Devil’s Verses” by Salman Rushie.

“Do you mean the Satanic Verses?” I wrote. “Are you reading a German translation or something?”

“Not German, no,” she replied. “I’m reading it in my mother-tongue.”

“And what’s your mother-tongue?”

“Hebrew.”

I wasn’t sure whether or not to ask, but I did anyway –

“So what’s your opinion on the occupation?”

“Would you ask an American the same question?” she asked. “Or a German?”

7

A German friend told me about a privately-run Universal Basic Income lottery experiment.

The way it works is, you enter your name into the lotto, you get a number, and once a month, they do a draw and 20 or so people get about 1000 EUR, each month.

I currently have money anxiety, probably more than any other time in my life.

My family, which for years had been comfortably middle class, is now – at best – lower middle class. I’ve been sending money back home for about five years now – mostly as a gesture of support – but in the last 12 months or so, with the economic situation in Nigeria getting so much more dire, my contribution is starting to move from a nice-to-have to a need-to-have.

And in the midst of all this, I’ve also moved countries.

Many years ago, when I was estranged from my family and none of them were talking to me, they still sent me money for food and rent, and they paid my tuition fees in Malaysia. And even at the time, I knew that if something were to go horribly wrong, they’d come save me. Or at the very least, buy me a ticke to fly back home.

That, also, was a kind of safety. But that financial safety I used to feel from them is no longer there.

So I signed up for the lotto.

8

I procrastinated having dinner with my Palestinian neighbour so long that by the time we eventually met, he was no longer my neighbour.

At the thosai place we met, he talked about how he couldn’t quite afford the place he’s at now, but he also couldn’t keep on living where we were.

I congratulated him on finding a place within the ring, but was also a little sad that he was no longer living next door.

He plans to apply for German citizenship this year, he told me. And I wondered what it would feel like for him to have to affirm the existence of the state occupying his people, in order to gain the safety and the right of mobility that comes from being under the flag of a country that funds the occupation.

9

The Iranian journalist isn’t very responsive to my texts. I send her paragraphs and paragraphs, and when she replies – usually a day or so later – it’s only a few lines.

I feel insecure about that. A part of me is worried that I’m becoming the DM guy. The guy who’s always in some attractive woman’s DMs, always reacting to her stories, all while having little to engagement from her.

“Is she actually into me?” I ask myself, “Or am I deluded?”

But, of course, I also realise that her country is literally being bombed right now*. She’s overwhelmed and worried for herself, her family, and her country’s future.

And on top of all that, she still has to wake up, go to work, conduct interviews, and write non-war related articles like it’s business as usual.

10

Here’s a thought experiment: If some sort of apocalyptic war broke out, and money and borders became functionally useless, what would we have left?

It’s not really a thought experiment because for most of history, this is how we lived. And the thing that kept us alive was our social connections. Our families and friends and communities.

Sometimes, when I think about my family, I wish I’d never left Bauchi. Or – at the very least – I wish that after my bachelors, I’d taken the first plane back to Nigeria.

I wonder where I would be and what I would be doing now, if istead of 19 years, I’d only been out of Nigeria for 4.

I wonder what my relationship with my parents would be like, what my relationship with God would be like, and if I would have a couple of kids running around by now.

But here I am in Berlin thinking –

“How does one maintain a creative identity in a genocide?”

“How does one fall in love during a war?”

And,

“Am I the DM guy?”

11

It’s been a couple of days since I started writing this, and I’m back at Sinema Transtopia again. This time, I’m sitting across the table from my Ecuadorian friend who works here, and I’m telling him about this feeling of regret that I’m wrestling with.

“There’s this thing I read in the new David Graeber book about safety…” I tell him.

“I mostly feel the same,” he said. “The care we have access to here is pretty much non-existent.”

I nod in understanding and belonging.

“But I think that’s the trade we make as migrants,” he continues. “We move from countries where we’re scared of being shot by arrows, to countries where we’re not as scared of being shot, but at the same time knowing that if we were to be shot, there won’t be as much care around.”

---

_{*at the time of writing, the ceasefire hadn’t been announced yet.}