The woman doesn’t ask to be treated in any special way. Bears everything silently. But she is always watchful and alert where the boy is concerned. She’s prepared for any hardship. Tough woman. Only tender towards the child, but doesn’t cosset him too much. I’m the only Sinhala male in this group. The others are Tamils, from the North of the country which we have left. And the guides? Who knows? They change. German? Russian? Swiss? Jewish? No one questions. No one asks with easy and casual familiarity, ‘Hey, what’s your name? Where are you from? A family? Children? Have you ever travelled before? Visited my country?’ No, no. No time for questions, for entry through the slightest aperture into any life other than one’s own. Danger lies in too much knowledge. We do not share information about each others lives. We have learned to store away all facts that are useful to us. When the time comes we will unearth that store. Moreover, identity isn’t important here, at this juncture. Identity is still the burning question of the day in our part of the world; identity that separates and divides. But here we are one, because we share this journey and all its travails. We eat the same food. Bread, cheese, apples. We quench our thirst from the same flask of water. No one makes me feel that I am not one of them. It would have been easy for them to have done so.

We maintain silence most of the time. I have no one to talk to in my own language at any rate. Nor can we speak in each other’s language. We use signs to communicate with each other when the necessity arises. What keeps us together, keeps us going in a landscape that has no recognizable signpost or landmark is just one purpose and that is to reach Berlin. To disappear there or to seek, through legal means, political asylum. The question of maintaining an individual identity will come later.

Two routes lead to Berlin. One through France, the other through Russia. We have taken the route through Russia.