The Japanese Garden (Satis Shroff, Freiburg)

Foto (c)satisshroff,Japanese Garden 2007

The Japanese Garden (Satis Shroff)

Nine Hauptschule kids in their teens,

Sit on benches in the Japanese Garden,

Near the placid, torquoise lake.

The homework is done sloppily.

Who cares?

The boys are bursting with hormones,

As they tease the only blonde from Siberia.

A fat guy named Heino likes the blonde,

But she doesn’t fancy him.

Annäherung, Vermeidung:

A conflict develops.

The teacher tells him in no uncertain terms:

“Lass Sie bitte in Ruhe!”

But Heino with the MP3 doesn’t care

And carries on:

Grasping her breasts,

Caressing her groin.

She puts up a fight to no avail.

Heino is stronger, impertinent,

And full of street rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the other teenies

Are climbing, kicking the Japanese pavilion,

Spitting, cursing shouting

At all and sundry in German.

The grey-haired gardener in charge comes,

Tells the boys to behave

And goes.

Boredom in the afternoon.

The boys don’t want to play soccer,

Handball or basketball.

Sitting around, criticising, irritating each other,

Is cool.

Creative workshops: music, songs, essays, own movies?

Nothing interests them.

Killing time together,

Cursing at each other,

Getting a kick provoking passersby,

This is the Hauptschule in Germany today.

The clever kids go to the Gymnasium,

After the fourth class.

The trouble-makers, aggressive alpha-wolves

And clowns remain in the Hauptschule.

An ironical name for a school,

For Haupt means the ‘main’

Comprising the lower class of the society:

Kids of foreigners, ethnic Germans from the east Bloc,

Who hope to make it somehow,

As apprentices for hair salons, car repair garages,

Kebab shops, Italian restaurants, Balkan kitchens,

Roofers and masons.

The Japanese Garden, a present from Matsuyama

To the people of Freiburg,

With truncated shrubs and rounded trees.

A waterfall and quiet niches,

A place for contemplation and solitude.

For the Hauptschule kids,

A place to get together,

Be loud, grunt, fight with fists, shove, scratch,

Slap, spit everywhere,

And play the gangsta.

“At night they throw empty alcohol bottles

Where ever they like,” says an elderly lady

From the neighbourhood.

Wonder how the kids are in Matsuyama?

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Missgeburt and Sonderschule (Satis Shroff)

“Halt’s Maul, Du Missgeburt!”

Says one to the other.

‘Halt dein Mund, Du Jude!

Ich hasse Juden, Mann!’ barks an obese Hauptschuler.

The others play football in the classroom.

The teacher says emphatically,

‘It’s forbidden to play soccer here!’

They reply in chorus:

‘It doesn’t disturb anybody.’

A grey-blonde teacher barges into the room and says:

‘Leben Sie hier noch?’ to his colleague.

Are you still alive?

Boris has an appointment with the police.

They nabbed him stealing a car.

Nicky quips to Suleika:

‘Du hast einen fetten Arsch!

Gebärfreudige Hintern.’

Albin runs helter skelter,

Settles down on a table,

Chewing gum between his yellow teeth,

Doesn’t like authority.

Hans, Fritz and Bruno do their extra homework,

Meted out as a punishment by the English teacher.

Vitaly throws scissors in the classroom,

Which land with a thud on the cork wall.

Heino is doing his best to disturb the group,

With his loud MP3 music.

‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Du Hurensohn!’ he says,

To a fellow classmate.

A Kosovo-kid who’s hyperactive,

Steals and fights at school.

The Germans send him to a Sonderschule.

His father’s proud for ‘sonder’ means ‘special.’

His son is attending an elite school, he thinks,

Only to realise later,

It was a school for difficult children.

A dead-end.

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East Bloc Kid Goes West (Satis Shroff)

A pair of heavy scissors fly

In a dark Hauptschule classroom,

Thrown by an Aussiedler school-kid,

Near Freiburg’s Japanese Garden.

The scissors can slash your face,

Or mine.

You can be maimed for life,

Like Scarface,

If the sharp ends

Bury in your eyes,

Or mine.

Let there be light.

Vitaly, a boy from the former east Bloc

Comes to the West,

In search of ancestors and heritage.

What he gets is rejection but freedom.

Freedom to do as he pleases,

With pleasant negative sanctions.

‘Even in jail they have TV,’ he says with a laugh.

He grows up in a ghetto,

And his anger burns.

Anger at his ageing parents,

Who forced him to come to the West,

But who are themselves lost in this new world

Of democratic, liberal values,

Luxurious and electronic consumer delights,

Where everyone cares for himself or herself,

Where the old structures of the society

They clung to in the east Bloc days

Don’t exist.

A brave new world,

A Schlaraffenland,

Where economy and commerce flourishes,

Where the individual’s view is important,

To himself,

To herself

And to others.

The East Bloc boy learns

To assert himself in the West,

Not with solid arguments and rhetoric

But with his two fists.

He fancies cars and their contents,

Breaks open the windows,

Takes all he wants.

Brushes with the police

At an early age.

English, Latin and French at school,

Irritates him,

He prefers to play the clown:

To dance on the table,

Make suggestive moves with his groin,

High on designer drugs,

High all the time.

Opens the classroom door,

Sees a girl from the seventh grade,

And yells at her:

‘Nach der Schule fick ich Dich.’

‘Screw you after school.’

His behaviour brings laughter

But he turns off the girls he admires.

He grins and insults his peers.

Rejected by youngsters,

Admonished by grown-ups.

He watches the society.

Chic clothes, streamlined cars, plastic money,

But he forgets that there’s personal performance

Behind these worldly riches.

‘The rich German drives his BMW

With his head in the air.

What does he care?

What does he care?’ thinks Vitaly.

A pair of scissors fly

In a dark classroom.

His pent-up emotions,

Let loose in a German Hauptschool,

Near the Japanese Garden.

His classmate from Croatia

Throws chairs at the another.

‘Aus Spass’ he says.

Just for fun.

He shouts at the Putzfrau,

Who cleans the classrooms:

‘Sie Geistesgestörte!’

You mad woman.

‚My French-cap is XXX’ he sings

And jerks his pelvis at her.

Is the school-system to blame?

Is western culture, tradition

Social, liberal values and norms to blame?

Are his parents who speak a conserved Deutsch to blame?

Is his Russian mother-tongue

And his great Russian soul to blame?

Nobody answers his questions,

Nobody cares,

Out in the West.

“Verdammt, I want to be heard!” screams Vitaly.

The people shake their heads,

Mutter, ‘Ein Spinner!’

And walk away.

A pair of sharp, long scissors

Fly in a dark classroom.

The scissors can slash your face,

Or mine.