When I explored the Jewish Museum with Jonas two months later (what a trip that was – I lost my way and was late and had to run; the museum was closing and Jonas was angry) – it was there I confronted the journeys the Jews had made. Families that had been wiped out had left behind a handkerchief, or a doll, or a photo album. The Jews came after the grandeur of the nineteenth century – the last age of the monarchs. They were nothing if not ordinary; recognisable. I knew them.

The owners of KaDeWe would have been deported to one camp or another; the store was gutted in the war. All this made sense to me that day in the museum. After all, weren’t department stores the century’s cathedrals? And is it any surprise that they should be destroyed? I had a sense of confirmation.

Where had Faqrul taken me? If KaDeWe had gone, what did we see?

A woman came to clean the flat on Fridays. She was in her mid-sixties. I felt guilty she had to do the work, but she was robust. She wore a white dress, and she beamed. From her warmth, and the fact that she didn’t know a word of English, I deduced she was from the East. I managed to extract from her – how, I don’t know, because I don’t know German – that she lived beyond Kreuzberg. We had conversations underlined by nods and smiles about the weather, the flat, the bathroom, each other’s health.

‘What are you doing this weekend?’ She elaborated on something animatedly. I smiled in agreement. Before she resumed cleaning, we both shook our heads from side to side at the state of the world.

•

On my last trip to Berlin – my first visit – I was taken to Kreuzberg to eat a Turkish meal by an academic and was later shown the ‘prefabricated flats’ workers in the GDR had lived in. Most still lived there. The balconies were bright blue. He said that Easterners knew no English.

On Gerta’s arrival (that was her name), I’d think of blue buildings.

Right next to Oskar-Helene-Heim station is an imbiss. I never saw it closed. I stopped to check its name. It dispensed currywurst, fries. I didn’t go in.

•

As Faqrul met me at pre-appointed spots, he never came by my apartment. But he was unsurprised when I mentioned the bedrooms, the bathroom’s spaciousness, and empathised when I confessed to my self-consciousness sitting on the toilet Oe had sat upon. I think he’d been to the flat in the tenure of another Böll Professor.