Actually, Elnathan John is on his way to the State Library, to work on his next book. But Berlin just allows lunch to be paused on the Spree, he says - even for a meeting with a journalist.
John, writer and satirist from Nigeria, has brought it to international fame. For the French translation of his novel "Born on a Tuesday" he recently received in Switzerland the literary prize Prix Les Afriques 2019.
John was born in 1982 in Kaduna, a Christian family in the Muslim north of Nigeria. Dantala, hero of "Born on a Tuesday", is also from there: Dantala is a Muslim, his family is poor and he is a street boy who, after several blows of fate, gets into the vicinity of Muslim extremists. An evolutionary novel, but in a setting that Nigeria is sadly known for: radical Islamic sectarians, poverty, state arbitrariness and corruption, misunderstandings that gave birth to the Boko Haram terrorist doom in the 2000s, and tens of thousands have since fallen victim to it.
John's second book, "Be (com) ing Nigerian", which has now been published in English, again deals with problems of his country of birth - but with quite different means. If the author thinks of his old homeland Nigeria, which he left in 2016, hardly any friendly words come out in his conversation. "The news from there are sometimes too absurd, so satire can not compete," he says.
He tried it in "Be (com) ing Nigerian" anyway: John describes here the problems of his country, grotesquely enlarged - "like in a bathroom mirror, where you can see every scratch and every pimple". The book is an anti-counselor. John writes ironic rules for the right Nigerian life, which is in fact deeply immoral.
Nigeria, John writes, has a very special Nigerian god who listens to Allah and God alike. He must be called upon every wrongdoing, from adultery to fraudulent contracting. The Nigerian god also heals everything, from HIV to tuberculosis. Exception: "The Nigerian god does not heal corruption, do not make fun of him." There are moments in which "reason is abolished", for example in miracle healing in churches. "'This person was born deaf, now she can hear again!', It is said, and then the supposedly healed answers to the question: what is it? Immediately correct, or, a supposedly blind person is made to see. 'Which color has the handkerchief? 'the pastor asks.' Red, 'says the blind person, and everyone screams with enthusiasm.'
"People completely separate the idea of good and evil from the idea of a god," says John now. It happens that kidnappers testify after their arrest before they go away, are always prayed.
The book is a continuation of his newspaper columns, with which he dissected years ago what spoils his beloved homeland: the corruption of the political class; the bigotry of the priests with their private jets; the indifference of many when public money is stolen, cheated, robbed and abducted. According to John, the reason is rooted in the history of a country that has long been ruled by a military dictator with no rules:
Nigeria was a "post-shame dystopia", a kind of horror vision of a country in which rule violators were no longer ashamed of anything. The doctrine of the military dictatorship was: whoever plays by the rules, studies to honesty tries, is the stupid one.
"People caught hijacking public funds can win elections, and soldiers filmed murdering people go unpunished." This would erode the positive values. "Those who grow up in such an environment normalize such misconduct."
The result is that most Nigerians live in a "Hustle culture" - the constant racking, so as not to perish, in a race for prestige and status symbols. By what means you reach a goal - legal, semi-legal, illegal - many do not care in the end.
The eternally broken Africa? The Nigerians as the worst and John, who saves from it to Germany? Of course it is not that easy either.
Exchange uncertainty and power outages against everyday racism
John came to Berlin because his girlfriend lives here, he misses many things: readings in which people jump up in the middle of the event and ask questions in the hall. The market, just behind his home in Abuja, with so much supply that he did not have to stock up in the fridge. And the nights in clubs where everyone can sing along to the hits.
He traded all of this: for a power grid that almost never fails, for functioning public transport, but also for a new problem: racism.
However, the city is doing well too, says John. "Berlin hates you", carved into the door of a luxury car, that had pleased him on his arrival three years ago. Wear shorts, daytime leisure, relative safety. And the green around Berlin, biking on the Spree, to Mecklenburg and in the Grunewald.
The question of whether he can write about Nigeria, where he lives so far away, stirs John up a bit. It also occurs in readings that ask visitors about current Nigerian politics, and whether he can not explain the Boko Haram problem: "They do not see the author, the intellectuals, they want their Nigerian, and if they are in Germany lives and works, it is like eating at a foreign country: is it really authentic? "
Shortly after talking to the Spree about jokes and abysses in Nigeria and Germany, the Nigerian reality breaks down into John's life. This time, she is not laughing: a close relative and her family were attacked by kidnappers at night, John tells by phone: "Her husband shot himself, the gangsters moved on to the next neighbor, abducting the child Ransom payment was released. "
John himself initially ruled with a curse on Twitter, in which very often the words "Fuck" and "Nigeria" occurred; straightforward, not irony. It is possible to keep the danger and the bad things going on with satire and to point them out. But of course they are afraid of everything.
