In Munich, IShana finally drew a line. She wanted to emancipate herself from her mother and not make the same mistakes as when she first ran away. She promised herself to never be dependent on anyone again,  finished school, earned her own money on the side to stand on her own feet. Like Ali, she immediately moved to Berlin to study. Coming from different corners, IShana and Ali met in Berlin and learned to breathe. Berlin made them free. Their escape ended here – for now.

Written by Erhan Kobak

Although the war was short-lived, Ali subsequently retreated more and more. He had lost interest in football and worse, he had lost his brother. For him there was only two things left - school and his father's shop. His father was one of the few dealers in East Jerusalem who had access to the Nokia cell phones. So after completing his homework, Ali sat in his father's shop, assembling and repairing cell phones. There, he found his refuge. Once again IShana fled, not from but with her boyfriend. They had to leave Berlin in a hurry because he had gotten into trouble. They went to the tiny apartment of his friend's cousin in Tübingen. In Berlin it wasn't the life she had imagined anyways. But deep down she didn't really knew then, what she was getting herself into when she got on the train to Berlin. And again the intense need to just get far away caught her. But the fear stopped her. She believed she would need him at all costs and she couldn't do it without him. She was stuck in in this situation, had no money or a degree. She was not only emotionally, but almost physically trapped and existentially dependent on this relationship. His abusive behaviour continued in Tübingen. This hopelessness tightened IShana's throat more and more. Panic attacks began and when she was on the verge of a mental breakdown, she pulled the ripcord. She checked in to mental health institution to make sure she had a safe place to stay. As a minor, however, she could no longer release herself; a legal guardian had to be contacted.

Her mother immediately took the first train from Munich to Tübingen. Without a negative comment and with a lots of care, she went after her motherly duties and got IShana back to the Glockenbachviertel. The initial joy of seeing each other expired quickly. Her mother fell back into her old patterns. Ishana realized that her time with her mother was up. During her experiences/time in Tübingen and Berlin, IShana had grown up, so she planned her next escape more thoroughly? The years passed in Jerusalem and Ali hoped throughout his school years that the situation in his homeland would eventually improve for him. Day by day he lost more hope, until he got to the point where he no longer wanted to live in this environment.

Even though Jerusalem was everything to him, the city no longer meant anything to him. He felt like he couldn't even breathe; his suffering was massive. Everything reminded him of his deceased Brother. After graduating from school, he used his passport to get out of the country and he rushed to Berlin to study.

Escapism

At first glance, Star Trek and Nokia cell phones don't have much to do with each other. In the case of Ali and IShana, however, these two fundamentally different things have something in common. The Nokia cell phone for Ali and Star Trek for IShana were an emotional outlet during dark periods of their lives -  short fleeting moments to escape reality.

Ali and IShana's life stories couldn't be more different, nonetheless they found themselves in similar situations to make the same decision - escape. It wasn’t just IShana's short excursions into the Star Trek universe or Ali's work in the father's cell phone repair shop. The life stories of Ali and IShana are about detachment and the search for a new, better home.

IShana grew up as the daughter of a polish-hungarian mother in munich's Glockenbachviertel, not far from the Isar. She never had the chance to meet her moroccan father. Meanwhile Ali was born into a harmonious muslim family in east Jerusalem. He enjoyed a well sheltered upbringing, his youth was carefree - until the summer of 2006.

This summer he, his brother and the neighborhood children watched the professional soccer players as they chased the ball at the World Cup in Germany. And sometimes they chased the ball through the narrow alleys of the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, this was also to the annoyance of the grumpy old, widowed grandpa (from across the street), who constantly chased/yelled them away from the lavishly maintained piece of meadow in his courtyard. Every time they kicked the ball, they shouted the names of the great soccer stars whilst making stepover after stepover and shothing the ball against the sand stoned walls of the old gramps house. But a few days after the World Cup, the once so easy atmosphere thickend immediately. On July 12th ‘’The Second Lebanon War’’ broke out and there was fierce fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. This was the first war that Ali experienced first-hand. That war made the beautiful summer and the World Cup fade away quickly.

Meanwhile in Munich, IShana had no business with the social and political tensions in the Middle East. Instead, she just was trying to get through life, living with her single mother and her little brother. The fighting with her mother increased throughout her teenage years, while her brother slipped into the criminal circles. She was sixteen when her brother was incarcerated because of multiple drug charges, so she was left alone with her mother. Every day the toxic tensions between her mother and her were getting worse until everything collapsed. Her mother claimed she saw her ex-partner at the subway and he ignored her just because she was in the company of IShana. An accusation that she got often thrown at her - she was responsible for her father's disappearance.

The situation escalated until ISHana packed all her belongings and jumped on the next ICE train to Berlin without a ticket. She dropped out of school and ran to her boyfriend, who was almost ten years older. She recently had started an internet chat relationship with him and had never seen him before. This “stranger” and this relationship were her way out of the situation in Munich but she had no idea that she was slowly sliding into the next abusive relationship. She moved to Wedding with him and had neither friends nor did she know anyone in Berlin. During the day she sat in his apartment and waited for him while he was earning some coins with mostly illegal odd jobs. She ignored it, even though she had already seen from her brother's example where something like this could lead. It only took a few weeks until he showed his true colors and began physically abusing her. He took out his frustration and anger on her, hit her, only to apologize immediately afterwards and promise that it wouldn't happen again. Yet, he was never able to keep his promise, so this spiral of violence repeated itself almost weekly. IShana had no one to turn to and found comfort in television programs. Star Trek in particular helped her to block out her boyfriend's beatings. The Klingon World and Captain Jean-Luc Picard's bridge were her refuge. She watched every episode that was on TV to mentally escape, if only for a moment, from this empty apartment. Ali had an experience with Nokia phones, similar to IShana’s with Star Trek. During war the mood in Jerusalem became tense. One day his beloved brother's heart suddenly stopped beating. He had suffered from an undetected heart defect. If access to medical care had been easier and emergency services had arrived earlier, this loss could have been prevented.