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Nestled in the far-east corner of Treptower Park, past the abandoned funfair with its rusting dodgems and the Ferris wheel overcome by climbing ivy, stood a midnight blue and bronze tent. It didn’t look like much—particularly tonight, when the inky sky blotted out the stars—but each evening at the stroke of seven, the circus came stutteringly to life.
From the moment the circus materialised, it transformed the landscape. Once in full flow, the emerald grasses vibrated with the rhythm of the house band. The winds carried peculiar scents far afield. Nostrils twitched when exotic odours replaced altogether familiar ones. Walking deep into the park, the waft of smoking sausages on summer barbecues or the tang of wet autumn earth disappeared, leaving only the scent of sawdust, sugared almonds and a fog of incense.
This was a circus for all seasons. Whether birds chirped in the park, great gusts of wind rocked the boughs, snow crunched underfoot, or thunder pulsed across the Berlin skies, the big top beckoned like a mirage. If curious individuals followed their feet towards the tent, they found sticky trestle tables outside it, where adults clinked glasses and children slurped pink concoctions through winding straws.
Here and there, between the patrons, clusters of performers lingered in full costume: young women in shimmering leotards with plumes of feathers attached to their rears; a clown with a magnificent bowtie that seemed to increase and decrease in size as you watched; stilt-walkers who roamed the lawn in between faded dinosaur figures and could be confused for great oaks. Neither the performers’ faces nor their accents stemmed from Europe. A strangeness pervaded this circus, an other-worldliness. The circus people gathered at the banks of the River Spree to play stones, a ritual to dispel their nerves. They disrupted the calm surface of the river with a flurry of ripples, and became animated at the sound of an eerie gong to summon them to their starting positions.
Tonight, a sparse crowd filled the tent amidst a jumble of fairy-lights, sawdust and clattering seats. Close to half of the stands stood empty. The immigrant circus, as it was known locally, was no longer Berlin’s newest curiosity, but no matter. The spectacle didn’t dim. Three girls in long flowing skirts paced through the tent, holding jasmine-scented incense sticks aloft, their hair in swinging pony-tails. Parents shushed their excitable, popcorn-popping children. A group of women celebrated a hen night and attracted the attention of four boozy men sitting in the row behind.
The microphone boomed as Emir the ringmaster, rotund and buoyant, his moustache thick like a bristle brush, entered the ring. He plumped out his ruffled shirt and tipped his tatty top hat. “Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, welcome to the circus. We’ll dazzle you, we’ll enchant you, we’ll make you rub your eyes in wonder. You’ll be transformed by what you see. It’s showtime!”
The performance commenced with a display from gleaming horses which galloped into the ring unaccompanied. The audience gasped when the three girls in their midst set aside the incense sticks and climbed onto the rafters. They leapt and, for a moment, appeared to pause in flight before landing on the bare-backed steeds, racing around the ring until beast and beauty became a whirr of hooves and skirts. Wild applause whipped through the big top.
There followed a giant man, more nimble than he looked, leading a troupe of goats in a merry dance, and the goats danced in pairs, courting each other, and seemed to waltz and tango, such was their magic. Next, a woman slid down aerial silks, bending her limbs at impossible angles with the gracefulness of a willow tree before cocooning herself and disappearing a breath later.
So, the evening hurtled forward at break-neck speed, the circus-goers cheering and quietening by turns as the artists turned their tricks into spectacle.
High above the unfolding acts, Yusuf shook with nerves, as he did every night.
Emir reclaimed the microphone, his voice a foghorn of exuberance. “Next up, it’s the man—nay, the star—you’ve been waiting for! He can leap. He can somersault through the air. He can land like a cat. Our resident acrobat, Herr Yusuf Alam!”
Not for the first time, Yusuf wondered whether the performers should change their names to be more palatable to this audience.
Less strange.
For Yusuf and the motley troupe who had become his family, the circus wasn’t merely a performance. The big top that flared above them might have been an inanimate object, but it symbolised the chance of a new life. After he’d fled Syria, he hadn’t thought he’d ever find another home, until the circus found him. The performers forged new ties because without each other, they had nobody. The circus had become a lifeboat, as if they were still making the treacherous journey across the globe away from disease, war and uncertainty. As if the twinkling lights of the tent amounted to the North Star.
If only the city kept her arms open.
He’d arrived in Berlin two years ago, an alien being adrift in a foreign landscape with its own stinking history of violence and hatred. Grief knotted with gratitude at the centre of his chest. Two years had passed since he’d seen his mother and filled his belly with her stewed curries that stained his fingers. Two years since war threw their lives off track and imposed its will on them as if they were nothing more than flies.
“And here he comes!” said Emir the ringmaster, drunk on energy.
Yusuf locked away the errant thoughts that flooded his mind and slipped into his acrobat’s skin. He smoothed down his costume and stepped out onto the beam, high above the spectators. The moment of jumping always overwhelmed him. Each time he jumped, his experience divided into two halves: the fear of falling and the joy of flying. Sometimes, when he leapt through the tent with his acrobat’s grace, the weightlessness of flight—for a nanosecond—removed the burden of his memories. Tonight, not even the thought of momentary release helped. He didn’t want to do this. He scanned the crowd. The faces of strangers blurred into a mist. His heart clamoured in his chest.
Will I ever be safe?
He wobbled. The roar of the wind at the top of the tent echoed in his ears as he regained his composure. He balanced, body taut. Better to pause and let the crowd imagine him falling for an instant. He blinked to shake the image from his own mind, his legs suddenly like jelly.
Yusuf leapt, and when he did, the spectators held their breath—a suspended moment, like after the shells landed in Syria. He somersaulted through the air, spinning like a top, and a shower of stardust raced after him, microscopic particles twinkling in his wake. He gave himself to the freedom of the fall, although he quivered with fear and his people were dying, still. When he landed, dust swept into the air, reminding him of the dry earth at home, which sometimes became wet with rains or blood.
The audience burst into applause.
