Within a week after arriving in Berlin I managed to break my right arm so badly that it had to be operated under anesthesia. They could not operate me right away as I had eaten shortly before the incident and gave me an appointment the next day. The thing is, when you break your arm, the body releases painkillers in your blood and you are kind of ok. The pain comes after a while.
The pain comes later slowly and the night became one single painful nightmare. In the hospital, the anesthesia kicked in so fast I could not even count till three, and later my aunt had major trouble waking me up as I was in such a comfortable space finally with no pain that I simply refused to get up.
My uncle who arrived a few days later from Iran had the great idea to introduce the first German quote to me by writing it on my plaster: “Wer nicht hört, muss fühlen” - which basically means the person that doesn’t listen must feel the consequences. The only thing was nobody told me not to run around on the street. After the plaster came off three weeks later I was sent to school even though I had very limited German skills.
The director and my uncle who was my official guardian in Germany now agreed that I repeated the 7th grade which I had just finished in Tehran and that they would only rate my progress in German in the first year. I must admit that I was kind of disappointed with the crowd in our class. I mean I thought Germany was full of good-looking folks and here we were, a bunch of unremarkable, boring kids.
But then one day during Art class, (which was actually my favorite class given the fact that I had four years of intense private painting lessons in Iran and that I didn’t really need to speak much) a new student arrived. His whole appearance was different. In the middle of all the mediocrity he had an aura of Rock’N’Roll around him but I somehow still didn’t like him. Joscha was introduced to the class much shorter than me as he was unaccompanied and spoke the language so he sat down a few rows behind me.
As he had just arrived he was totally unprepared and asked in the class if anybody could help him out with a pencil. Nobody reacted so I felt bad and gave him one of my pencils. And the simple decision to hand him a pencil shall a few years later change my entire life. Destiny had led me to my soul mate.