Why you build a wall?

"Why you build a wall? It's not functional... Why you build a wall?"

Roland speaks as though he's seen a ghost. Its probably been, what, twenty years since the five year old Roland left eastern Berlin with his ailing father and terrified mother. He claims not to remember much, but goes on to say that he remembers because his parents have always talked about it. So perhaps its the ghosts of his parents past sees as he recounts.

Honestly, I don't even know how this conversation started. Roland and his girlfreind Daniela, who have been traveling South and Central America after getting laid off five months ago, showed up to the hostel to buy some ingredients to "make party." Our sincere but mostly superficial conversation had moved from music to travel to employment. Others had joined and left. But now, after last call for the hostel bar and as the other guests are off brainstorming the next place to party, with little warning our conversation turns to escaping communist regimes.

His dad had worked in the mines, and had "worked so hard his heart broke." His country didn't have th e technology to see his heart, and so they didn't know what was wrong. Apparently there was an appeal
process people with illnesses could make to leave the country, and while some people waited twenty years to be given permission Roland's family was lucky.

"After six months, they tell us, "Just go.""

In western Germany they had the medical technology to diagnose the broken muscle in the back of Roland's dad's heart, and treat him best they could. As history would have it, the wall came down four months after Roland's family left.

Roland is leaned against the bamboo laundry drying rack in the middle of the hostel courtyard. He had been clumsily plucking chords on the guitar, but now the intrament hangs loosely in his hands, as even his gruff German rock fails to express his frustrations. His eyes have a distracted glaze, yet are strangely intense, and he scratches a goatish beard. His timeline puts him at twenty five. The creases that strain at his eyes make you guess thirty.

"Communism promises equality. The same for everyone. But it's not... functional." He finishes the phase in Spanish with an tired and ironic smile. He tilts the guitar at Kristen.

"Some of us have beautiful voices and can play the guitar. Some of us work with wood. We can't be equal. We all need different things. We have to go our own way. Communism... its not functional. Even though we got away, it broke my dad's heart. Now he have to take twenty pills a day. Twenty. And they help, but they make him gain weight. More and more weight. There are lots of ways to say it, but I just ask this: Why you build a wall?"

His voice has lost none of the confusion, but now if full of frustration, too, with tones of bitterness and anger. "Why you build a wall in the middle of the land? To keep people from leaving. To keep them from going there own way. We can't make its so everyone is equal, but we can make no borders, take down the walls, and let people go their own way."

Its late, and while there are plenty of reasons to be tired, but Roland looks particularly exhausted. In a look that I still cannot find adequate words to express, he asks his ringing question thats says more than most answers.

"Why you build a wall?"