I Sleep in Hitler's Room (46 page)

Herbert gets me a gift before I leave, a nice sweater. Fits, my size. Great.

It takes about ten minutes by car to get from Sansibar to the local supermarket. Worth the trouble. Definitely.

In the spice section you can get a very special spice, yellowish in color. Or, more precisely, goldish. Or, to be totally precise, gold. And to be even more precise, 22-karat gold. Yeah. Here’s what it says on the jar: “Gold Flakes. Real Gold Sheets—22 karat. Store dry.” You can buy a small jar for 25 euros, or the bigger one for 99.

People here, it turns out, eat gold.

Two hundred of the smaller jars were sold the last few months here, a store staffer says. A shopper, passing by, says she would sprinkle the gold on the desert cake.

It takes an Unwilling Capitalist, as far as I can see, to finish a great meal by swallowing gold. Decadence might be a good word to describe this behavior, but let’s not get political.

Don’t ask me why, but I buy myself a liquor with gold. It’s called, what else, Goldwasser. My little souvenir.

Sylt, Germany.

The most beautiful thing in Sylt is nature. A visual miracle to behold.

Here you can fully experience low tide and high tide. The sea changes every six hours. When the tide is low and the sea retreats, you must walk down there. You will be on dry ground, or almost dry ground, yet in reality you’re in the middle of the ocean. Stand there and look around yourself. Start by looking up. The sky is yours. Heaven is yours. You see all 360 degrees of the sky above, and you’re in the middle of it. It’s an amazing experience. You feel you see the whole world, and you’ve never seen the sky so gorgeous. Clear, shining blue, like a bubble, a circular gem, a sapphire above you, a fascinating globe with a diamond in the shape of a sun—and it’s yours for the asking.

That’s Sylt. Heaven on earth.

But don’t get lost in thought and dream. The tide will return in a matter of hours. And if you don’t run for your life, you’ll drown in your dream.

Sylt is beautiful, but it can get dangerous pretty quickly. And so is Germany. A shining gem on the planet, a diamond to behold. With the most beautiful music. Yet such dangerous thought.

Will Germany save itself from its raging seas and run to safe ground when danger approaches? Only Germany can answer that question. Only the Germans can save themselves from the clichés and stereotypes that, sadly, do reflect their true color. But the Germans, people who have proven beyond doubt that they can so faithfully restore every stone of their history to its former detail in all its glory, also have the ability to restore to human honor their dignity, create from nothing a strong backbone for themselves, and turn a corner for the better.

If anybody can do it, it’s the Germans.

Move away from forced PC. Move away from “we decide together.” Move away from gruop thinking. Move away from “intellectual thinking.” And from thinking about The Jew, for better or worse. Let the Jews alone. It’s time for the Germans to think for themselves, of themselves.

And do this before the tide changes.

As for me, it’s time to end my journey. Denmark is across the water, and in ten minutes’ time I am to board the boat that will take me there.

I will leave behind this book, the book that contains the sights and sounds of contemporary Germany that my eyes saw and my ears heard. This book, if it could speak, would say: “I am Germany.” And though it contains the thoughts of this writer as well, they reflect only the first impressions made on him by the people and places of Germany.

I am on the boat. As it makes its way through the water, I look at the land I spent the last few months in. I think of the questions I asked when I started out: Who are the Germans? Is there something “German” beyond mere possession of the passport? Is Germany one nation? Two, three?

Yes, definitely. There is something “German,” many things “German.” The Germans I met, east and west, center, north and south, share these qualities, the ones I call German: Love of technology, self-righteousness, innate anti-Semitism, cultural curiosity, stubbornness, visual genius, emulation of America, legalism, brainy stupidity, and, the worst of all: childish extremism.

While in Berlin, I met one of the finest intellectuals crossing my path these days, the famous journalist and author Peter Scholl-Latour. We spoke for quite some time, and when I left his penthouse he said to me, “As a German, I beg you not to think that most Germans are anti-Semitic.”

Well, yes and no. The anti-Semitism I encountered in Germany is probably more subconscious than conscious. Perhaps it has to do more with the psychological history of the German than with thought-out anti-Semitism. It is, maybe, in the line of: I have to blame the one I killed. It’s not the same anti-Semitism that I encountered, say, in Poland. Polish anti-Semitism, as far as I can tell, is grounded in religion. Germany’s is grounded in psychology and narcissism. Grandpa and grandma built entertainment centers, such as the zoo-plus-crematoriums, and I can’t live with it. For them it was double the pleasure for one ticket, but for their grandchildren it’s double the horror. The fastest and most childish way to ease the weight of such baggage is to blame “the Jews.” They are the real Nazis; not grandpa, never grandma.

A few days ago I had an interesting talk with Giovanni di Lorenzo, the Half and Half of this book. He wanted to remind me of a big change taking place in Germany, the realization that it’s an immigrant society. Well, the question is: Who are these immigrants? I met some of them, mentioned in the book, and they’re as anti-Semitic as any German German. There are others I didn’t mention, like that student in Hamburg who raised his glass of Coke in my honor, in memory of my family “that will soon die, Allah willing.” It was not funny.

But a word of caution is in order here: German anti-Semitism is worlds apart from Islamic anti-Semitism, either that of Gaza or that of Duisburg. I had a great time with the Turkish people of Marxloh, despite the lamentable anti-Semitism I encountered there. But no matter how we differed in thought, we still enjoyed each other’s company greatly. I think they’re racist, they think I’m racist, but we felt perfect together. We share “racism” in common, and we go to eat together, laugh till the wee hours of the morning, and have the time of our life. Never so with the German. Children don’t play with “bad” people. Islamic anti-Semitism is grounded in politics, or in religion, but German anti-Semitism runs far deeper.

It will be much easier to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and between Arabs and Jews in general, than to uproot the Jew hate of the German. The first two are on the table, no surprises; the third is wrapped in heavy brainy arguments and eye-blinding magical color shows in addition to being hidden behind the many masks so common to our present-day Western culture.

Do I generalize? Yes, I do. I’m sorry, but this is what I saw.

“You Americans always generalize.”

As these thoughts fill my head, there is only one emotion left in me: I want to cry. The dream I once had of buying a little house in Berlin is over at this point. I don’t think I’ll ever do it, not in this lifetime.

Germany gets smaller and smaller the closer I get to Denmark. I look at it from afar and I imagine it to be a teakettle. A boiling teakettle.

Time passes, the boat sails, and then there’s no more Germany. I disembark in Denmark, a land that impresses me as a quiet place. Might be a teakettle too, if looked at from afar, but this is not a boiling teakettle. Just a teakettle. In Denmark, it seems, the tea has already been prepared and its people are relaxing and drinking it. Will it be boring here?

In an hour’s time I miss Germany, the boiling teakettle that might never cool down.

I have the Gold Liquor with me, my souvenir from Germany. The gold particles have settled to the bottom, like the gold on the German flag, but there’s no black on top. It takes a little shaking to bring the gold up, to shine in its fullness. Perhaps a little shaking of the Fatherland will move its gold to the top as well.

Shake it, baby! I love you, child.