The lights in the hall grew dim as  German writer Sarah Khan began reading an excerpt from her latest book Die Gespenster von Berlin or The Ghosts of Berlin at the Annemarie Schimmel Cultural Institute in Lahore, Pakistan’s  second-largest city.

Sarah, whose husband is a co-editor of a UK-based arts magazine called Frieze, is a mother of two- a boy and a girl. She is fair, has coloured eyes and her body language could be described as being very German, but there were streaks of her Pakistani roots in her personality. Born to a German mother and a Pakistani father, she later told me that she had grown up between her grandparents’ and her father’s homes after her parents separated.

I introduced myself and went back to my seat, not far from where she was sitting. I noticed her black shirt with painted figures of zombies from Michael Jackson’s ghost song half-covered by her jacket. I could sense her fascination with ghosts right away.

As she started reading, she thumped the table and changed the tone of her voice to add life to the session.

She read: “If you are looking for ghosts, talk to Anne. That woman can conjure spirits, she has an amazing rapport with them.”

This was the translated version of one of the 14 short stories in the book that she said she was personally fascinated with- a story of a young woman with supernatural abilities who summons ghosts using an empty glass, red wine and a candle placed on a makeshift Ouija board. Her many interactions with the ghosts, trapped in the upside-down glass and dreams with messages finally leads her to the ghost of a Stasi officer in the erstwhile German Democratic Republic (GDR).

Sarah said she had collected all the 14 stories after meeting 20 people in Berlin. Some she met at a park while her children played around and others through friends and family. It took her one year to compile the stories and write the book. The first edition of 5,000 books was sold right away and the second edition will be out soon with three more stories.

Sarah later told me she was visiting Pakistan for a few days to write about Pakistani art for a German magazine Weltkunst.

She is currently working on her next book about Pakistani diaspora in Germany and the UK. Brought up as part on the Pakistani community herself, she said there was a lot more to these communities than what people from their home countries thought or saw.

I found Sarah very down-to-earth and witty. She listened carefully when I shared my stories of ‘summoning ghosts’ back in school days and she replied in detail about things I asked her.

The short but enriching meeting ended with a mutual wish to see each other soon and so we preferred “Auf Wiedersehen” over bye-bye because the former means, “until I see you again”.

The visit to the Annemarie Schimmel center refreshed my memories of my stay in Germany. A German flag hoisted at the center reminded me of a flag hoisted at the Bundestag in Berlin, pictures of Ludwig van Beethoven took me back to the time I visited the composer’s home in Bonn, Germany’s map with all the 16 states highlighted in different colors was like the one I saw at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung office and notices and directions displayed in German reminded me of signs pasted on notice boards and doors at the DW office.

The visit revived one more German memory- the session began exactly on time.

Author: Ayesha Hasan

Editor: Manasi Gopalakrishnan