"Berlin Blues" by Mark Mendick

For over ten years I have walked these streets wondering what went wrong. I ponder the times my friends and I ran through the streets playing tag and the lot next to our apartment where we played soccer. Now the “mauer”, wall, stares at me with a blank face. It belittles me and contains me like an animal at the zoo. Twelve feet of concrete reinforced with steel prevent me from living a life I once knew as free. I look along the wall and see a guard with a gray, deathly hue. How I hate those men with their big guns loaded and waiting for the oppourtunity to shoot anyone willing to risk their lives for the freedom they once posessed. I cannot fathom the pure evil that is going on in each guard’s mind. If you have to use deadly force to keep a group of people from escaping their own “mutterland” , motherland, then how do you not realize that you are doing something wrong? You have to force your own people to stay in their own homes? Communism is the root of all suffering. I am stopped three times on the way back to my apartment and asked for identification. How I wish the “tag der einheit” or day of unity would come. I have not seen or heard from my family since last spring. If only I had listened to my wife and got out of Berlin and into West Germany. I have always been too stubborn and proud to listen. My luck is always the worst. I thought about trying to escape but after they shot a man yesterday for getting too close to the wall, I have decided otherwise.Its funny how God may be trying to send you signs but you never think it will happen to you.