Go, Went, Gone

“The thinking is what he is, and at the same time it’s the machine that governs him.” 

Richard is aware that his own mind is a fallible tool. He can only improve his mind by studying it, but he can only study his mind with the same fallible tool. Richard is governed by his mind and cannot step outside of it but knows that he is limited by the machine that dictates his perceptions of the world. 

“The birth of questions is something that always delights him. The appearance of the refugees in this suburb is just such a moment. Fear produces order, he thinks, as do uncertainty and caution.” 

Early in the novel, Richard believes the appearance of the refugees will lead to opportunities that will helps shape a new, better order on the structure of Berlin society. The refugees present a new set of questions, and Richard tries to answer the questions optimistically. As he becomes bogged down in the bureaucracy the refugees face, he begins to lose his hope of order. 

“War destroys everything. When you become foreign, you don’t have a choice. You don’t know where to go. You don’t know anything. I can’t see myself anymore, can’t see the child I used to be. I don’t have a picture of myself anymore.” 

Awad tells Richard the story of his arrival in Germany. His experience as a foreigner has damaged his sense of identity. His memory has also suffered. Because he does not know whether he will be allowed to stay in Germany, he cannot make plans. The war has destroyed his ability to pursue freedom for himself because his life is now determined by the whims and policies of a foreign country. 

“Richard has read Foucault and Baudrillard, and also Hegel and Nietzsche, but he doesn’t know what you can eat when you have no money to buy food.” 

Richard loves his work, but the struggles of the refugees cast doubt on the usefulness and importance of the academic career to which he has dedicated his life. Erudition does not help when one cannot even procure food. Philosophy is only useful when it leads to action, which is further reinforced by the novel’s later focus on Seneca, whose philosophy was more practical than rhetorical. 

“The moment these borders are defined only by laws, ambiguity takes over, with each country responding, as it were, to questions its neighbor hasn’t asked.” 

Richard contemplates the nature of borders, from lines on a map to barbed wire fences. To install a border is to denote a relationship between the groups on either side of the boundary. Once a border exists, each country must respond to what it thinks the purpose of the border is. As situations evolve, the need for borders may grow or diminish, but trying to enforce the letter of the law on a border with no room for evolving political realities results in ambiguity. 

“People wouldn’t throw rulings like this around, he thinks, if they understood what it means to do serious research.” 

Richard is frustrated at the haphazard, shoddy nature of the Dublin II ruling. One of the most useful tools his career as an academic has provided is his expertise in research methodology. He can see that Dublin II was created hastily without serious thought for the consequences it might create for those wishing to emigrate to Germany. 

“Why do people kill other people?” 

Rashid tells Richard the story of the day his father was abducted. It was the last time he ever saw him. Rashid, who has seen so much violence, wants Richard to explain to him why people kill other people. Richard, for all his learning and study of history, cannot give him a satisfactory answer, or even answer the question for himself. 

“Language is never a coincidence, as he always tried to make his students understand.” 

As Richard studies the various rulings around refugee policy in different countries, he notices the deliberate use—or omission—of certain words. The German law pays lip service to refuge and aid, while allowing itself linguistic loopholes that will also help it expel or deny refugees whenever it is desired or expedient. Written language is the produce of choices, and the choices made in the rulings cannot be called coincidences. 

“Learning to stop wanting things is probably one of the most difficult lessons of getting old. But if you don’t learn to do that, it seems to him, your desires will be like a bellyful of stones dragging you down into your grave.” 

After undressing, Richard looks at his body. He wonders if he will ever be with a woman again sexually. He is unsure of whether he could even physically perform with the Ethiopian teacher if she desired him. He still wants things—as evidenced with his constant focus on her attractiveness—but his age has betrayed him and made it so that he can no longer have the things he wants. 

“If nothing special happens, I can’t make a story out of it".

The reporter at Oranienplatz views the refugees and their plight as a chance for a story that she can sensationalize. The fact that so many men are stranded and being barred from working is, in her view, not a special enough detail for compelling news. The refugees are viewed as fodder for publicity.  

“For a long time the old man and this young man sit there side by side at the desk, watching and listening as these three musicians use the black and white keys to tell stories that have nothing at all to do with keys’ colors.” 

Richard shows Osarobo videos of three expert pianists playing. They are both transfixed by the music of Chopin and the elegance with which the musicians play. The stories told by the notes have nothing to do with political problems, war, refugees, bureaucracy, or race. They are beautiful to both men, who are, respectively, old and young, and black and white. 

“For much of his life, he’s hoped in a tiny back corner of his soul that people from Africa mourn their dead less. Now, this back corner of his soul is occupied instead by shame: shame that for most of his lifetime he’s taken the easy way out.” 

After Osarobo mentions the people he has seen drown, Richard puts birch branches on the graves of his parents. This is a yearly tradition, but in light of the suffering he has seen and heard about through the refugees, he sees that his burdens have been trivial compared to those of the Africans. Richard sees that his whole life has been one of ease, and that what he has considered his greatest challenges are mere trifles. 

“Has he now truly relinquished all hope?” 

After Richard buys the rolled-up keyboard for Osarobo, he is ashamed at his thought: He had imagined Osarobo playing it on the street and earning money in the future. But this future would assume that the boy had not been allowed to work in Germany and had resorted to street performing. Richard realizes that part of him may have already given up hope, even as he works for the refugees. 

“You can never know what is coming. It’s possible that you’ll have to go hungry again or that you’ll have nothing to drink, and you have to be able to endure that.” 

Apollo tells Richard that people who eat too much are spoiled. They begin to assume that there will always be enough food to eat and are ill-equipped to cope with the sudden reality of having little or no food. Even his meals are structured around the idea that he may have to endure hardship again, and he wants to remain vigilant so that he can face it without having grown soft. 

“Today for dinner the law will devour hand, knee, nose, mouth, feet, eyes, brain, ribs, heart, or teeth. Some part of other.” 

Richard learns that the refugees will be divided into even smaller groups and transported to locations that are nearly an hour outside of Berlin. The men he knows best will be placed at a facility in the woods that is almost invisible from the road. He sees the law as a creature that is determined to eat the men’s aspirations, and even their bodies, as he hears of Rashid’s heart condition and worries about his stress.  

“And now Richard, an atheist with a Protestant mother, stands with his Muslim guest before the illuminated, heathen Christmas tree.” 

Rashid visits Richard at his home on Christmas Eve. The differences between their religious beliefs and backgrounds have never been more clear, but it does not stop them from enjoying each other’s company. Rather, they talk about their respective views of God, the role of Jesus in the Bible, and the symbolism of various decorations Richard has placed in the house. There is no tension between them. 

“The Europeans bomb us—so we’ll bomb them with blacks, Gaddafi said.” 

Rashid tells Richard that when Gaddafi’s men placed them on the boat and made them leave for Europe, it was part of an aggressive strategy. In Germany, the men feel that they are unwanted and sometimes persecuted. On the other side of the conflict, they were told by the militia that they were being used to punish the Europeans by their mere presence. 

“If you could see me doing my work, you would see a completely other Rashid. You know, he says, for me working is as natural as breathing.” 

Rashid tells Richard that, even though they are getting to know each other better, he will never see what Rashid is truly like unless he sees him work. When Rashid describes work as a natural act for him, it is therefore also unnatural for him not to work, which helps explain his growing agitation and impatience with the slowness of the German government as it decides the fate of the refugees. 

“The older he gets, the more grateful he is to have just as little idea as anyone else what is in store.” 

At the New Year’s Eve party, Richard watches the young people and contemplates the meaning of a new year. He cannot decide what it means that a year ends, or that another begins. With age, he has seen enough of life to know that New Year’s plans and resolutions do not guarantee peace or progress, and he is grateful for the realization. 

“A time to make friends.” 

Richard is required to give the protest a slogan as he files for the protest permit. He chooses “a time to make friends” because he hopes to show that the march is not aggressive or militant. The refugees are asking to live among the Germans, become their friends and colleagues, and do not wish to cause harm to anyone. 

“Richard knows that he’s one of the very few people in this world who are in a position to take their pick of realities.” 

Richard comes to see that even the ability to choose how he spends his day is a luxury. He is able to choose what to focus on, what to read, what to study, what to buy, and when he will eat. He has an array of options that the refugees do not. Before meeting them, he did not fully appreciate the freedom to choose the path his of his life. 

“Time does something to a person, because a human being isn’t a machine that can be switched on and off. The time during which a person doesn’t know how his life can become a life fills a person condemned to idleness from his head down to his toes.” 

Much of the novel describes the discomfort of the enforced waiting and idleness that the refugees experience. The entire time that they are forced to do nothing but kill time in the temporary homes changes them. It is a time when they are not learning new skills or making advancements towards their future prosperity. They are not existing in a relaxing idleness but are condemned to its stagnating effects. 

“The more highly developed a society is, the more its written laws come to replace common sense.” 

Richard speaks with Ithemba’s lawyer. The man is erudite in the law but is aware of how little the law concerns itself with emotions. Codifying a concept in legalese makes it possible to act on policies but does not account for the effects a law might have on people like the refugees when enforced. This discrepancy raises the question of what is really meant by a “highly developed” society.