Annie DeppeKreuzberg: The Intimacy of Strangers

Kreuzberg: The Intimacy of Strangers

Friday morning, seven a.m., and I’m drowsing in bed reconsidering a visit to the fruit and vegetable man whose day it is to come from the country and set up his wares on a corner three blocks from here

—all those tempting fruits bearing German names but I’m limited to what I can carry. And that problem of touch. His unwelcome assumption of intimacy.

Shouts draw me to the window: a pair of men, alive with curses, anger-dance their way down cobbled Falckensteinstraße.

Elegant graffiti explodes nightly on the red door opposite ours

but on the bench beneath the linden tree two Turkish women chat together unperturbed. Between them an orange bag overflows with onions. Annie Deppe