‘Embassy. Sri Lanka. Embassy. We go … there. Country embassy. Go back … country … home. Home. Get taxi. Here, hundred dollars I have. I pay … for all. All of us. Others have money also. We pay taxi.’

It is my plan of escape. They are convinced, only too happy to get rid of the burden.

I first go to a phone booth. I repeat the number which I’ve carried in my head. Establish contact with the original agent.

Instructions are given.

‘Wait at the railway station. I will send someone else.’

Another guide arrives and we prepare for the next lap. The last lap of our journey. We look at him silently. We have got to trust him.

We pile into the taxi the policemen have arranged. Halfway, we tell the driver, ‘Look. Money. Dollars. Dollars. Free us. Let us go free. Free.’

The driver accepts the money. We are several kilometres away from the city. He counts the notes before tucking them away in his wallet. Then he opens the doors of the taxi. We get off. We stand in the middle of nowhere. We have to make a split second decision. From this point onwards we will walk back with the guide, to the city. Past the wood. Oak. Birch. Fir trees. Ancient woods. Fugitives can hide here but for how long? And food? From where? We have nothing. Better walk on. A motley group of us. Hope no police patrol cars come upon us again. We reach Berlin and enter through the Brandenburg Gate.

We enter the Unter de Linde. We see parts of the old city which still remain left over from the bombings of the Second World War. There’s no East, no West any longer. No Wall. We see trams. Cars. Innumerable cars. Volkswagens. They remind me of home. The trams belong to East Germany. Police cars stop at the pedestrian crossing. There are little green men with hats in them. That again is part of East Germany. The green men without hats belong to the West. Berlin has known defeat. The defeat of two World Wars. It’s a city that seems to be seeking a new identity, one made up of many nationalities and races, not just pure Aryan alone. For us too it will provide a new identity. We see bulldozers flattening out the past; cranes, cement mixers. We also see the new synagogues like monuments to change. Do the Jews still face persecution, I wonder? No, they are strong now. No longer the victims of the holocaust. It is a past they will carry with them, but the new breed of Jews will be different. I am told that the survivors used to visit clinics in Israel to have the tattoos of the concentration camps removed. The numbers. They did not want that identity any longer. It was unacceptable to the new race of Jews who wanted to be identified with their blond, blue-eyed Aryan counterparts.