else, he retreated to his room. Remi was left alone, once again, with her thoughts. This pattern continued for two weeks, with Kayode mostly blaming Remi for something. If it wasn’t the food, it was the laundry. And if it wasn’t the laundry, it was the way Remi chose to clean the bathroom, throwing lots of water on the floor, and mopping it afterwards, the way she was accustomed to doing it in Nigeria.
Eventually, Remi called Kayode aside one weekend and told him in no uncertain terms, that she was tired of him finding fault with every little thing she did. They both finally agreed on a compromise: if Remi needed to do something and she was not sure how to do it, she would ask Kayode first. Kayode said he would be more patient with her seeing that she was trying to adjust to a new culture, and a new country. Such was the agreement this couple came to. One would have thought that two adults would have made this arrangement from Day One, but not Remi and Kayode. No. They worked backwards.
Later, that same day, Remi approached Kayode with another proposition. Although she had barely gone out of their apartment since her arrival, save for short walks around the neighborhood, and a few trips to the grocery store, she had not really met anyone or been anywhere in particular, that was of interest.
She informed Kayode that she would like to learn German. There was no point in postponing the inevitable, for if she was going to live in Germany, she might as well learn the language. So, she asked him to enroll her in a language class to while away her time. Remi was not surprised to hear Kayode voice his agreement with her new proposition. In fact, she expected it. He had felt guilty that Remi was left alone at home by herself all day, and they barely did anything together when he returned because he was usually exhausted after work. This would give her a chance to meet other people and keep her busy.
Within 24 hours of her request, Kayode had enrolled Remi at one of the numerous beginners' classes for people looking to learn German. This particular class was held at a local art institute close to Central Berlin.
On her first day, Remi was surprised to meet several African immigrants taking the same class. But, the most surprising part was that there was a good number of Germans taking the same class. Apparently, they had grown up and lived in other mostly European countries, and spoke every other language except German. Remi considered this absurd, how a person with a German name, with roots closely-tied to Germany, could not speak the language. But then, one of her classmates, a Sierra-Leonean man, pointed out that this was not very different from a familiar trend: Africans living in Africa and all over the world, who were fluent in every other language except their native languages. After making this observation, Remi was a lot more understanding.
Apart from this discovery, Remi made another startling discovery: of the 80 students in her class, roughly 47 of them were Turkish. In fact, the elderly gentleman who taught the class was a Turkish man who was born and raised in Bonn. He used to own a bookstore, but had since retired and handed over the reins to one of his children to manage. Remi usually stayed behind after class to ask him questions, which this patient man answered.
It was her teacher, who first suggested that Remi should change her transportation arrangements. She was always more than an hour early for class, since Kayode dropped her off around 7:30 am, as he had to be at work for 8. Class, however, did not start until 9am, and they ran every week day for three hours. Kayode initially took Remi to the venue for the first couple of days, on his way to work. But, after her teacher suggested an alternative transportation arrangement, Remi, who saw this as an opportunity to regain her independence, insisted on Kayode showing her how to use public transportation. That very weekend, Operation 'Gain-My-Independence' was launched.
On Saturday, Kayode took Remi on several test runs from the art institute to the train station nearest to their home, using the underground train, which the locals called the U-Bahn. The point, of course, was for Remi to master the route so that she could eventually ride the train on her own. After he had satisfied himself that she knew how to get from one point to the other, they went home. The following week would be time to see how much Remi had learned.
As it turned out, she had learned enough. Although she was very nervous, she was able to navigate her way seamlessly from home to her class, and back. With each passing day, her confidence grew, and she began to enjoy her independence little by little. She was enjoying her language class, meeting new people, and certainly not as bored as she had been just a few weeks back. Everything was going well for Remi. Until that day.
That day was a Wednesday. Class finished earlier than usual, as the teacher had to travel out of town that afternoon. So, at 11:15 a.m., the class was dismissed. Minutes later, Remi walked to the station to catch the next train. The train she usually took, which was a later train usually took about fifteen minutes to arrive at her regular stop. This time around, due to some construction work, the train she boarded would take an extra ten minutes to arrive at the destination. This was what she heard some of the fellow passengers say in English, after the announcement was made in German over the public speakers on the train.
"Great! I'll just use that time to catch up on sleep, then," Remi thought to herself as she found a seat. Kayode, who had caught a cold, had kept her up for most of the night, with his intermittent nose-blowing and trips to the restroom. To top it off, when he actually fell asleep, his heavy breathing progressively evolved into a very noisy snore. Remi who slept in the room next to Kayode, and who was generally, a light sleeper, had found herself staring at the clock, counting the hours until daybreak. So, by the time her class ended, she was seriously sleep-deprived.
After setting an alarm on her phone to wake her up in exactly twenty minutes, Remi promptly nodded off to sleep. And she had a dream, right there on the train. In her dream, she saw herself wandering down a familiar street. It looked just like the street on which she grew up as a child, the one in Ikeja, except that the houses were all the same. She was looking for something and seemed to know intuitively exactly where to find it. So, she kept walking, until she got to a side street on her right. The minute she turned into that street, she saw a man walking towards her, holding something in his hand. It looked like a brown parcel that was neatly wrapped. Just before he handed it over to her, he opened his mouth and said something to her. The language was not familiar and she said so in English. As soon as the man heard her speak, and realized that she did not speak the same language with him, he retracted the hand bearing the gift and began to walk away from her. She kept running after him, but even though he was walking, she could not catch up with her. Suddenly, she tripped on a stone, and fell. That was when she woke up. The train had come to an abrupt stop and it was the jolt that woke her up. As she stared wildly about her, it took her a few minutes to remember where she was. The first thing she noticed was that the faces of the passengers around her were different. These were not the same people who had boarded the train with her.
She grabbed her phone. One look at the screen and she realized that she had been sleeping for almost an hour! The alarm had gone off at the time she set it for, but she had forgotten to add a tone to the alarm. It had gone off silently, as the phone was set to silent when she left her class that day. Just then, a voice announced over the public speakers that the train was now departing for another stop. That name was not familiar to her. Confused and dazed, she quickly got off the train. Once she got on the platform, her suspicions were confirmed. While she knew the name of the station where she stood, she had no idea how to get back home. Remi was lost in Berlin.
The first thing she did was to try calling Kayode for help. Unfortunately, his phone was turned off. She had not saved his office phone number, so that was out of the question. She began to panic. She tried to ask a few people she saw for directions to her apartment complex, using a combination of the little German she had learnt and English. It did not work, either because she was mispronouncing the
words or the people she asked really didn’t understand her questions.
Remi resolved to keep calm, but she felt herself veering closer and closer to the edge of absolute panic and fear. So, she made her way upstairs from the subway to the ground level. She found herself on a street lined with cafes, restaurants and bars. Not exactly knowing what she would do, she darted nervously into the nearest one. It was a small café called Café Isabella.
As soon as she entered the café, she noticed that there was only one customer sitting down at a table, deeply engrossed in a newspaper. She could not see the man's face, but she definitely saw the top of his head. He was quite bald. There was soft jazz music playing in the background, which ordinarily made the atmosphere calm and relaxing. But all that music was wasted on Remi, as it did nothing to ease her nervousness.
She half-ran, half -floated to the man behind the counter. The man behind the counter was really a young boy with red pimples decorating his milk-colored face, who looked like he would much rather be anywhere else than working at a café. He looked to be about 19, though