~This is the third part of an eight-part series, 'The Making of a Refugee', a deep dive into the lives of Afghan refugees and migrants living in Germany.
Germany was out of the World Cup, and on cue the weather turned grey. Hamburg was bathed by a fine drizzle, a deceptively gentle stream that acquired potency as it was flung around by the wind. This was what summers are usually like, I was told, and people seemed to relax into the routine. Bracing their bodies with practised ease against the wind, cyclists pulled out not only waterproof jackets, but also slick cycling pants, and shoes, and hats.
I walked near the harbour and was caught in a shower of rain that seemed like sand, pouring in everywhere. I cursed my lack of foresight, but I could have more accurately rued the crucial gaps in my knowledge. My tropical assumption that summer was a fixed, unchanging entity fled with the wind. And yet the shift in light gave a new beauty to the landscape. Hamburg appeared anew, like a city full of mysteries, a truth hazily understood, poised perennially on the edge of revelation.
I was following a trail of music across the landscape, one that began in Kabul. Since there were generations of Afghans living in Hamburg, there were generations of musicians too. Like Roya's* father-in-law, whose videos we had watched on YouTube. I caught glimpses of this world: in concert advertisements on Facebook, on the walls of Indian restaurants, or pasted on the doors of Turkish and Afghan supermarkets. Together, they pointed to a parallel city, one unnoticed by the mega concerts and music events held nearly every day. Soon after I arrived, I asked a journalist who wrote on music and who had lived in Hamburg for decades, to connect me to Afghan musicians. He hadn't heard of any. And yet they were there, stretched like a bow between Kabul and Hamburg, encompassing decades, spanning different kinds of music, different journeys.