There are people outside of the tram’s window. Everything’s in a blur, not yet fully comprehensible, in a state between exhaustion and happiness. Still in a corner of Deborah’s mind: „Im Namen des Volkes“1 and the distant fear to look around. Finally the captioners’s typing and a sentence floating in the room.
Passing stations and people. The black flag with the colourful stripes. A line from an old song, Der Himmel ist blau2, so appropriate in Deborah’s head. Merely interrupted by the hard part before „Im Namen des Volkes“.
On the news screen: „Man sentenced to four years of imprisonment for ableist hate crime.“
Deborah laughs. Der Himmel ist blau.
About Carole Jenny Holzmann
Carole Jenny Holzmann is an archivist of things and documenter of places. She digs through rabbit holes and card catalogs. From time to time her works can be found in literature magazines.
Footnotes:
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„Im Namen des Volkes“ („On behalf of the people“) is what judges in court say before they announce a sentence. As Germany has its own particular history of hate and violence against the disabled the impact for the reader is bigger if the phrase goes untranslated.
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Der Himmel ist blau (the sky is blue) is the first line of a song called „Himmelblau“ (sky-blue) by German band Die Ärzte. If you take the hint a whole emotional scape too large for a drabble opens up. Also Deborah’s laughter at the end of the story refers to the song’s last verse’s lyrics „Jetzt stehst du hier und du hörst nicht auf zu lachen, die Welt gehört dir, und der Rest deines Lebens beginnt“ (Now you're standing here and you cannot stop laughing, the world is yours, and the rest of your life begins)
