Day 285: Something to Forget (Part Two)

From the back seat of the police car, I could see, as we crossed the synagogue bridge, how the sun rose over the Elbe. The orange light reflected on the river’s surface, colouring the whole city. Nobody spoke inside the vehicle. The distant hum of the engine and the crackle of the radio were the only sounds. Through the grille that separated us, I could see the shaved nape of the driver while his partner played with his fingers on the handle above his door. To my right, Koki was sleeping. He had a split lip and a swollen, reddish eye. Only a few hours had passed since everything had started. According to Koki, when he saw the first punch, he ran with the whole group fleeing from the darkness. Halfway, he dropped his phone, stopped to pick it up, and when he tried to continue, two Germans caught up and grabbed him. A young woman arrived, and while the two Germans held him, she began hitting him. A guy passing through the park came to his aid, and he managed to escape. Koki was so terrified that he ran non-stop to his unrenovated residence on Hochschulestrasse, 6 km from the park. He didn’t even wait for the tram, let alone try to look for us. That’s where we found him. After combing the park without finding anything and after talking to Joda, his friend, in case he knew something about him, we accompanied a police patrol to ask at his residence. When knocking on his apartment door, Koki opened it with a broken, saddened face. The pair of police officers asked him to come with them to give a statement, and I accompanied him. They took us to the Neustadt police station, in the neighbourhood where the assault had occurred, and there we met other people who had been attacked, including the person who had come to Koki’s aid, whose face had been smashed because, after freeing Koki, they had gone after him. After waiting there for about an hour and giving our statements, they took us back to the park to reconstruct what had happened. There, in the middle of the tragedy, something surreal happened.

Although it was very early and had not yet dawned, there was already enough light to work in the park. While Koki pointed out the spot where he had lost his phone and the police officers wrote in their notebooks, a drunk man, probably coming back from giving it his all at the Sputnik club we were going to that night, approached us. In a worried and loud voice, like Fernando Fernán Gómez in Regreso a ninguna parte, he said to Koki and me:
—Guys, be careful with these policemen, watch out for them. I’ve seen you from afar and came to warn you: watch out! They are not policemen! They are actually dangerous secret agents. Be careful!

While the female officer ignored him, the male officer said:
—Please, let us work.

The drunk man continued:
—Guys, be careful! Even though they look like policemen, they’re not. Please, be very careful with them. Watch out!

The officer warned him again:
—Please, leave, we are working.

But the man, truly concerned for us, went on:
—Watch out, be very careful. These people are going to hurt you. Watch out!

The officer, as big as a wardrobe and as serious as a funeral home employee, said to the drunk man, no longer using the formal “you”:
—Go away, now.

The Saxon Don Quixote tried to continue:
—Guys, they are dangerous, be ca...

He couldn’t continue because the officer got tired and delivered a loud slap to his face, knocking him to the ground. Then on the ground, he grabbed him under the arms, lifted him, and threw him down again like someone stacking potato sacks in a warehouse. The unfortunate man ran away from us, stumbling while crying and shouting:
—I TOLD YOU SOOOOOO!

After this, we stayed in the park for about ten more minutes, and then they took us to the central police station, located in the centre of the Altstadt. That journey is the one I described at the beginning of this post.

Upon arriving at that station, they seated us in a waiting room with plastic chairs like those in a health centre and told us they were going to find a sworn translator to take statements from both of us. After a while, they came back saying that, being Friday night in Dresden, they couldn’t find a Japanese or Spanish translator at the moment, and asked if English would do. The English-German translator took about an hour to arrive, which I spent consoling Koki, who was silent, bent over with his head between his knees, sipping a Coca-Cola I had bought him from a vending machine at the station entrance. He was called first, to an office that must have been very far away because nothing could be heard. I have never heard greater silence than in that German station. Not a single machine running, no human sound, not even the fluorescents hummed. An hour later (it must have been around 7 am), Koki returned, they told him to wait, and they called me to give my statement. After walking down a very long corridor, I arrived at a small office with two desks. They made me sit in front of the larger desk. Across from me, an older policeman with a rough face shook sugar from a sugar packet onto his thick white moustache. To my left was the translator, and at the other desk, in a corner of the room, a young policeman waited with his hands on a computer keyboard. The older policeman asked me what had happened. I started telling the whole story without knowing whether to look at him or the translator. The young officer typed everything dictated by the older officer. “Write this down, write that down.”

From the start, I noticed that the moustached commissioner was not very happy with the idea that we had been victims of a racist attack. He began by asking me not to give opinions but simply to describe what had happened. I told him what happened: we were here and this happened and… The man continually interrupted me with questions to clarify my statement whenever any detail implied the attackers’ ideology. Honestly, I was getting quite annoyed, but when I realised the commissioner was altering my statement, I got very angry. The policeman asked me in German: “How was that attacker dressed?” I answered in English: “He was wearing black clothes, a Lonsdale sweatshirt.” The translator did her job: Er sagt, er habe schwarze Kleidung getragen, darunter ein Sweatshirt der Marke Lonsdale. But then the commissioner dictated to the secretary in uniform: “They were wearing a red sweatshirt.”

I protested several times, but I had already been awake for over 24 hours, and with great frustration, I finished the statement. Upon leaving, Koki was no longer in the waiting room; a policeman had taken him to his residence. I went to the tram stop at Pirnaischer Platz and started waiting for him. The sun was shining strongly, and I just wanted to sleep.