I spent two long, yet already mostly forgotten weeks, in the hospital tethered to tubes and needles, and fighting fear, anxiety, and the topsy- turvy sense that day is night and night is day, sleeping fitfully and unable to concentrate for any length of time. Still, a reader must read, long hours must be suffered through, news seemed irrelevant. But wait, hadn't I been in the middle of a devastating new novel when I was stricken? Could I take my worried mind back to Berlin and re-engage with the plight of the Somali, Kenyan, Ghanaian, and Libyan migrants brought brilliantly to life in Jenny Erpenbeck's "Go, Went, Gone?"
If you ever thought to place yourself in another's shoes, if you ever wondered how it could possibly feel to be stateless, homeless, worthless, and lost, then this novel will open a space in your heart even as it leaves you feeling helpless and hopeless. Erpenbeck points out the horrible, ironic flaws in the European system of repatriation for refugees seeking asylum but she doesn't, no, she can't provide answers to the deluge of questions facing countries that were, before public opinion turned on them, trying their best to handle the onslaught of Africans daily arriving on the shores of Sicily and Greece seeking points north and east.
Richard, a retired professor examining what his future will look like without his wife by his side and his students and colleagues for intellectual stimulation, wanders through the Oranienplatz in central Berlin where the authorities are tearing down a tent city erected by disaffected refugees in search of food, housing, and work papers. On a whim, Richard strikes up a conversation, first with one, then with others. Where will you go? How will you manage? What are your prospects? What was your home like? Why did you leave?
Initially shy and hesitant to pry, Richard finds himself obsessed with the lives of these lost souls. He finds that he wants to question them, find out about their lives before they landed on the streets. He thinks of them when he's back in the guilty comfort of his overlarge home, remembering their tight quarters in makeshift shelters where four or five may share mattresses on the floor. He haunts agencies trying to free up funding, he offers to teach German, and eventually he offers tea and sympathy, and the use of his grand piano to a budding musician. Even his most liberal friends question his naivite, his newly discovered activism, questioning his motives and worrying behind his back.
This novel is probably not one that I would recommend for readers recovering from a major surgical procedure. It requires too much from us. As I mentioned, questions arise but are never answered. Can a single person change the world, one contact at a time? Cynics would say no. Others, like my sister who is currently in Washington participating in Rev. Barber's Poor Peoples' Campaign, aspire to be living proof that one person can. Richard discovers that it takes persistence, an ability to suffer rejection, and to be taken advantage of without exhibiting anger or desiring retaliation.
And yet, this novel must be read and absorbed if we are ever to remotely comprehend the conditions that would propel men, women, and children to leave their ancestral homelands in search of a better life for themselves and their progeny. Why, we ask, will thousands board rafts every day, with the hope that they will float up onto welcoming shores? Why are our southern neighbors risking the walk from Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. boarder, knowing full well that they will be rejected, separated from their families, incarcerated without access to lawyers or the basic rights of asylum seekers everywhere?
Erpenbeck does a masterful job of helping readers walk a mile in those seekers shoes.
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