"Do I know you?"

So many Berliners generally walking around with "Fresse," long faces, either distant and withdrawn or jaded and embittered. Some German some Turk or Arab, some old some young, some new-archaic Muslims some "new-left"-whatevers some klein-bürgerlisch-conservative. Encountering these, when I'm myself conscious of what I'm about, I smile as a matter of course, in my glance a warm greeting of simple fellowship as we pass each other by. There was a time when that amounted to a nice chat now and then with perfect "strangers."

Nowadays, whether the star-of-David is visible around my neck or just the cross I carry for the Iraqi Christian community, I get some of the most glowering looks in return. I mean, if I wore a "Free Palestine!" (from whom exactly, Hamas?) T-Shirt I'd be greeted more often with nods or some form of approval. But I'm satisfied with being glared at, because it is not to mindlessly provoke but to show a sovereign presence of conscious solidarity where it belongs – and that presence is in the love for my fellow Humankind with all its shortcomings, without regard for who's worshipping where (or at all). This is not the message you get from either the majority-seeking Muslims I tend to encounter nor likewise from the self-hating Germans nor others who have lost all faith in democracy. If you smile or are heard carrying a melody without MP3 earplugs shutting the world further out, and for no other reason than that it is your nature, you tend to get that look back of "do I know you?" or even "WTF?"

I'm soberly but joyfully prepared for the next time, regardless of my own circumstances, that someone asks me that:

- "Do I know you?"
- "No, but I know you. That is, the light I carry, and which carries me, knows you – and has known you all your life, even before you got here."
- ("WTF?")
- "And not only that: this same light loves you and always has, is loving you right now, and always will."

Well that is what I'm projecting anyway in my glance or in my smile, even if it never comes to spoken word. And frankly, sometimes it catches on.