The White Paper

We're sitting on the edge of their beds in room 12. The Haziti room.

"There too live Albanianians", Latif would have said, galloping over syllables. A week ago Shkandije, Selma, Omer, Osman and Jasin moved into the room.
The third family within Heim, that set out to Germany from Tirana. "Albania is a beautiful country," Osman says, "however, one can not live there." Corruption is a given in daily life and deprives the individual of learning and education. Staakener Strasse is their third Heim. The room - home to Latif and his family for nine months - presents itself as new. Amazing, how a sparsely furnished room can change. Only the wild patterned curtain stayed where it has always been. However, I am still not used to sitting on the edge of a resident's bed as a guest. I am not comfortable occupying this last retreat. But due to shortage of space chairs are rare.
"We never know where we'll be tomorrow," Latif had said, describing an elusive present followed by a vague future. Maybe in two months there will be not more people from Kosovo, Albania, or Serbia at Heim. It is going fast now.
It is going fast for Ruschka and Milan too. On Monday they will buy tickets, Tuesday they will get their passports back after presenting their tickets at the the Foreigners' Registration Office .
Theirs will be the next farewell.
Unthinkable: daHEIM without Ruschka, the colorful and flowery, the unchallenged queen of pastries.
She leans in the door in a red t-shirt with white polka dots. "We got the white paper." In official language this is a Grenzübertrittsbescheinigung (certificate for border crossing) - to be presented at passport control when leaving the country. For two and a half years they lived in room 110, legally tolerated from one month to the next. The white paper obligates them to leave Germany within two weeks.
Behind closed doors the vacuum cleaner is buzzing. Ruschka and Milan are packing. Their belongings will be kept in blue garbage bags. "No more chance for us." They bear it with dignity, while listening to the news and following up on German jurisdiction with regard to a possible intensification of asylum law. They are afraid the borders to the Balkans might be closed. They will go back to the city of Novo Miloševo. "It is a bit difficult", Milan says. "I have not enough medicine and soon there will be winter." No, they have no idea where to stay. Now, strangers live in their house.
"I am no Serb, I am a gypsy." Ruschka laughs. "You know what is a gypsy?"
For her the outlawed term is no swearword.
They will come back in one or two months. "Not as Asylum, but as tourists." German government's thoughts of permitting legal entry to people from the Balkans who can satisfactory show a job is something they appreciate. "Much better." After all they want to "live like perfectly normal people."
They are shocked by the number of people standing in line at LaGeSo.
Zineta is tired. Within the last ten days her daughter did not make it through the door of social welfare office. She sleeps in front of the door. The cold has been life-threatening for two years old Toni and the baby. The grandmother provides cover for them as long as the daughter is unsheltered.
Lisbeta is grinning like a fox - toothless though - from her grandmother's lap. Toni is romping around in the hallway.
Arita has turned five today.