The Sufi

Only now do I notice that it was a gravestone the boy just came across — that we sit in a cemetery! “Yes,” Sarah confirms, “those are old graves over there in between the trees, we are quasi sitting on the dead, three mass graves from the Second World War are right underneath us.” “That’s fantastic,” I reply, pointing to the couples picnicking in the sun on the green right between the gravestones and to the kids romping around as on an adventure playground, “why aren’t all graveyards transformed into parks?” “It’s not a churchyard,” Sarah responds and herself points to a sign right above the entrance, whose inscription is barely readable from the park bench: ‘Make life beautiful, make it good right here, with all your affection, for there is no beyond, there is no resur-rection.’ I am speechless. After all, he has survived them, the German spirit, the dogma of the churches, of the Nazis, of the socialists, of the capitalists, all the wars, all the dramas, all the walls. He had conquered her, the world, and taken it apart and measured and rated it, he had lived towards a goal and built nets into life and all around it, until no window was left, until the eye could no longer see what happened outside. Now, however, now he remembers again: Only that what he loves, only that can teach him. Now he realizes: She, the woman he has torn apart, she wants to be made complete again, she wants to be seen in her essence again, she wants to heal together with him. And now, now no more dogma is worshiped, no more idol is created, no more pain is celebrated, no more lament is now wasted, and even death no longer adulated and no cross. He has dared it, the German spirit, the step towards the window, and finally sainted joy. He has burned his nets in the fire of unity, he has escaped from himself and finally learned to laugh. From "The Sufi"