Today is a clean slate. It began with stretches and back exercises, because at some point one’s biology tips towards sleeplessness and aches. I had breakfast in a wood-panelled dining room that I will probably not visit again for another decade, if ever. And my day ends strolling through Nuremberg’s old city as the street lamps replace the dusk’s glow. The curved cobblestoned streets carry the voices of outdoor diners at one restaurant, which is just closing, to another down the block. These restaurants doing Sunday business are evenly sprinkled, at the top of an incline, around a corner, with a table or two on the slope or a whole patio by the courtyard fountain.
But now I am in the city where the trials of defeated Nazi leaders were held. So far, the plaques on the buildings have referred to memories on a different time scale—back into the Medieval and Renaissance Ages. The more recent historical events that have held symbolic justice have left virtually no physical mark: they all took place in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.
Still, shame permeates the air. Shame is an essential ingredient in post-war Germany’s nation-building project. It is fed into school books, and in turn feeds on national memory: exhibitions, cultural events, memorials, stone-etchings of the concentration camps outside stations, and plaques in front of buildings where individuals shipped off were known to have last lived. Reminded again and again of how awful they had been, Germany today does not look at how awful they are now: to refugees who fought for their right to stay at Oranienplatz in Berlin, to German nationals of every skin colour other than white, and of Europeans who may seem like they could be from further East. Despite the apologies, Germany has never reflected on why it was easier to take Palestinian land to carve out a new state of Israel than to allow space in society for German Jews.
Memory can become a putrid stand-in for accountability. But that was all distraction. Because what is on my mind today is the memory of the same-sex couple have been stabbed to death in a Hong Kong mall. Will you take the time to remember Daniel Fong (方曉彤) and Amber Lau (劉繼禧)? (More information, in Chinese, can be found here.)
How to cite: Lam, Athena. “Just Another Day: Athena Lam.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 4 Jun. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/06/04/athena-lam.
Athena Lam works as a community builder, public speaker, and event moderator to translate the value of thoughtfully applied technology, for individuals, SMEs, and global enterprises. She juggles the fine line between visibility and community building for underrepresented founders and advises bootstrapped early-stage startups in unlikely industries. Athena spent a decade in Hong Kong building communities through TEDx organising, supporting LGBTQ initiatives, and starting companies.
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