40 Days In The Desert

Chapter 2 - A Lesson In Humanity

Souss-Massa Region, Morocco, 3rd of July 1999

As the night came, something of a huge impact happened between me and my feathery friend. The enormous eagle extended its wings and, almost like he was wanting to hug my body, the bird glued itself to me in an attempt to protect me from cold.

I'd lie if I say I didn't feel a thing, but I know that I survived the first night and managed to get some sleep only with the help of this amazing creature. And, even if I didn't identify its nature yet, I stopped questioning it at some point, during the long night, when I was shaking and trying to focus on breathing in order to calm down, and the eagle has put his head on my neck and let out a very strange noise. Something like a mix of pain and an attempt to comfort me. A thing I never experienced in my entire life, even if I always liked to be around all sorts of hunting birds.

And, while I was staying in the embrace of this majestic animal, I remembered about a time when I learnt what sacrifice is from a person I wasn't expecting it from.

~

West Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany, 10th of December 1987

I put on my coat and gloves before I turn off the lights in the record store. It's a cold winter outside, like you'd expect for this time of the year in Berlin, and, even if inside my current workplace wasn't amazingly warm either, I shouldn't complain. After so many failed attempts of securing myself a decent job, someone has finally taken the risk to hire me to work for them.

It's not that I'm a bad person. Despite being quite alienated by normal society and having few norms that I go by, I happen to have terrible math skills or regular life skills in general. And, I'm not sure which is the bigger turn-off for most of my job applications.

After my father died, an older man from his knighthood order adopted me and raised me along with his two children. One girl older than me and a younger boy. And, if someone wouldn't know the story, I'd easily pass by as their sibling. All of us were blondes with blue eyes and the same chaotic behavioral patterns. Even though, the last trait probably happened after I went there and started involving the two kids in my own kind of fun, like hunting, running, or spontaneous fighting.

Gerhard Erbach was in no way a bad man. I'd rather describe him as an authoritarian kind of father and a good husband. I'm not at all upset for the random slaps I was getting from time to time, because, now, I'm completely aware of the things that I was doing. From almost setting the house on fire and the chaos I was creating with my two step siblings almost daily, from skipping school to always getting in all sorts of trouble, I'm certain that I deserved way more than some random hits when the man was losing his patience over my big mouth, which was shouting insults with the same ease as breathing.

At seventeen I ran away from his house for good. There were too many rules, and I couldn't keep up with them. I found my refuge in one of the many squats around the city. These abandoned buildings were occupied by young people like me due to the housing crisis of West Berlin, when no one could afford a place for a decent price, neither were there too many options available. Artists, creatives, everyone was coming from a certain background and trying to continue to pursue their dreams while commonly living, sort of illegally, in a space claimed as theirs.

As far as I knew, squatting was illegal, yet so many people were doing it that it was hard for the cops to hunt everyone down. Plus, after so many protests and violent demonstrations, they had no option but letting the squtters be. There were hundreds spread through both East and West Berlin. Even though, more happened to be located on the East side, I still found myself a nice place in my part of the city as well.

Sharing the room with just three other girls, those years happened to be the best of my life, even if I wasn't the most social person. I was taking theater lessons just for the sake of pleasure and having an activity, as I wasn't excelling in any other domains. However, I still needed the money to pay for those classes, and that's how I started having a series of jobs.