A Shadow over the Rainbow

When a friend reminded me that I should stop doomscrolling, I didn’t take it seriously enough, until I woke up from this dream today.

The dream began with my parents visiting me in Berlin. We had lunch at a Chinese fine-dining restaurant somewhere in East Berlin. We decided to take the subway to a nearby major train station to top up my parents’ travel card.

Not long after we entered the subway station, we were ambushed by this dark, human-like jelly creature, who pulled me into its body. I was so scared. I twisted my body but still couldn’t get rid of it. Then the creature grabbed me by the genitals. I burned with shame, devastated. Finally, the creature decided to let me go, seeming to have already secured its next target. I heard it singing “where there’s people, there’s me” as it left me.

We rushed towards the platforms, trying our best to stay surrounded by the crowd, for fear of being attacked again. Fortunately, the train finally arrived. We squeezed onto the train, only to find it headed to areas I was least familiar with in Berlin. We decided to get off at the next stop.

Stepping out of the station, we saw from a distance a row of dark jelly creatures surging across the street, attacking people who got left behind. Alarmed, we decided to head away from them. My father asked, startled, “Are they angels?” I didn’t know what he meant, but I replied, “No, they are sin angels.”

“Since when did the situation in downtown East Berlin become this bad?” I couldn’t help asking myself, as I had been thinking of moving here from the west.

We decided to take the next taxi to get back to downtown West Berlin. Some Indian guy drove a three-wheeler past us, a sticker on the car window saying “95% off”. We decided it was not a good idea and kept waiting for a proper taxi.

I woke up before the next taxi arrived.

I didn’t take part in Berlin Pride this year due to a viral infection. The infection was supposed to clear up before Pride, but fortunately it didn’t. Thanks to the virus, I didn’t experience Pride in person, or the terrorist attack.

As reported, someone drove a car into the crowd in the heart of Berlin’s tourist area at the end of Berlin Pride last Saturday. Apparently the suspect was not satisfied with just crashing into the crowd; he even got out of his car and attacked people with a knife.

I learnt everything almost before the news broke, from the friend I mentioned at the beginning. The friend was there that night, not far from the scene, and was asked to evacuate. He sent me a voice message, sounding terrified: “Something happened, check the news.” At first it was only one post from Berlin Police on X, then a full timeline, detailed news all over the media, all kinds of articles on Instagram. In the following days, friends who live in other cities texted me to check if I was okay. Queer friends in Berlin texted each other to share the shock and sorrow everyone’s been through. Even my mom in China texted me in relief: let’s appreciate the virus.

But I didn’t fully understand how triggering and traumatic it was to me, until I woke up from the dream this morning. Somewhere deep down in me, a seed of fear had already been planted: that I could’ve been, or might yet be, a victim of a random attack. It took the dream for it to sprout. The fear is so deeply buried, and no one, not even my parents, could reach it, let alone heal it. And the fear was not the only thing buried in me that the dream dug out; there was also the ease with which, even in my sleep, I knew which taxi was proper.

After the suspect’s Islamist background was revealed, hatred towards Muslims reached a peak. Right-wing politicians weaponized it to argue for stricter borders against Muslims. I saw a post from a queer Muslim person who shared his prayers and condolences for the victims and anger at the extremists. It was not until I saw the post that I understood there are also queer Muslims alive, and that I should not let the hatred get the best of me.

As reported, the suspect was shot dead yesterday. Still, the fear he gives me will probably live in me for a while longer, and the same goes for all queer people in Berlin, some of whom are now feared in return, and the wider queer community. We’ve seen some sad years already, and this only makes it worse. Sometimes I still hear the creature singing: where there’s people, there’s me. No one should live in fear, as that’s the idea of pride.