Stone to Sand

Winter 2026. Berlin.  

The Ungeheuer that Gregor Samsa wakes up as is no longer an insect but a grain of sand. The room he wakes in is less a room than the transmission of a car. 

A German government official recently told me that every person is like a car. Some run smoothly. Others carry sand in their transmissions. I imagined car-people. Or Automenschen.  

Sand. Sebald wrote of a friend who claimed Gustave Flaubert saw the Sahara in a grain of sand on the hem of Emma Bovary’s winter gown. That sand conquered all. 

*  

Grain. When I didn’t finish my rice as a child, my halmuni told me that it took ten thousand drops of sweat for a single grain to go from the fields to my plate. 

A grain of sand travels farther than we realize before reaching us.  

Stone is ground by glaciers, eroded by rivers, worn against other stones. It blows across deserts and coasts, is carried in sacks, sieved, buried, uncovered, transported again. Eventually, it ends up in glass, buildings, roads, engines, playgrounds, my son’s eyes… 

One morning my toddler asked me why he had sand in his eyes when he woke up. I said the Sandman left it there as a gift from his dreams. My son handed it to me, his eye-sand, and for a moment I thought of Gregor Samsa. 

Part of an abandoned Plattenbau across the street, which was once a senior home but was now a GDR derelict, came into view from our bedroom window, its rooftop fan still spinning. I flicked the sand—little Gregor—out the window. A mistake. I should have left him nearby; then I wouldn’t imagine him everywhere, drifting from transmission to transmission, from one Automensch to another.  

If I walked down three flights of stairs and dug into the grassy patch outside with my bare hands, I’d reach sand in minutes. I know because I’ve tried. The city itself is built on it.  

*  

We had just stepped into the café when a woman aggressively shushed someone talking on the phone, then returned to her table to collect her things. She wore a beige faux-lambskin coat that reached past her knees. My son ordered a croissant. I ordered an espresso. 

We took a seat at a table next to the woman on the phone. She had a hoodie on and worked on her laptop. It was around three in the afternoon, though it could have been any hour. There hadn’t been any sun for weeks; only the clock insisted on time. 

As shearling lady turned to leave, hoodie lady spoke up: she was allowed to work there since it was a public space.  

Shearling lady said she was too loud. That it was inconsiderate for anyone trying to enjoy the vibe. 

There were no other patrons. My son was eating his croissant, I had my espresso, and the barista wiped a surface that already looked clean. He then grabbed a glass and started polishing it.  

Hoodie lady said no one else here seemed to mind. She looked at me. 

No no no don’t look at me. Look at the barista. What do you want me to say? Blame the startups? Rising rents? Sand? You wouldn’t get it if I talked about sand. Or maybe—you’re a mom with kids all in Kita right now. You have ten minutes, shit, now eight before pick-up. You chose this café, Bonanza Coffee House, because bonanza sounded great when time was already short, too short to deal with her, so she should just go.  

Shearling lady said she’d heard about hoodie lady. Her friend called her the woman always talking loudly on the phone. I pulled out my phone and scrolled through Google reviews of the café. 

“Just beautiful people and the place has such a great vibe.” 

Vibe. There’s that word again. 

Shearling lady left. The woman-always-talking-loudly-on-the-phone muttered into her phone. I kept scrolling while my son ate, and the barista kept polishing the same spot on the glass without looking up once, as if something refused to come off. A stubborn speck. Is that you, little Gregor?  

*  

People keep asking me the same question: Which Kita does your son go to?  

They never ask if my son goes to Kita, only which one. So I ask whether they want the short story or the long story, and they always ask for the long story. 

I tell them we tried when he was fifteen months old. When I was excited to pick him up, his Erzieherin corrected me to remain neutral, a training method I had previously associated with dogs. Day after day I would sit in for thirty-five minutes, then thirty minutes the next day, then twenty-five minutes the next, then illness, then twenty minutes, then fifteen minutes, then weekend, then ten, then Feiertage, then five, then another illness, then zero, stretched over months. During all those minutes I saw stone being ground into sand. 

You would have seen it too, little Gregor.  

I still remember those crawling babies and toddlers, their faces blank, neither sad nor happy, just numb. My son always cried like hell, but we kept bringing him there because—wait, I forgot—oh right: “Consistency! The earlier they go, the better! How else will they socialize?” Stone hardens with age; best to grind it while it can still yield sand. I gave in to the pressure. Another mistake. 

The Sandman filled his dreams with sandstorms. His night terrors were so bad he screamed in his sleep NO KITA NO. We tried to wake him, to console him, but days get processed at night. There’s no way around it. The sandstorm raged on. 

“Some children need more time,” they said. 

But time wasn’t the issue. We brought him to another Kita when he was two years old. Do you think it went any better?  

*  

I noticed a bite mark on my son’s arm while he was sleeping. My son, who is now three and does not go to Kita. When I asked my husband if he knew about it, he told a story that went something like this:  

“We went to Hirschhofspielplatz during a birthday party. A kid was already crying when we got there. When his mom rushed over and lifted up his shirt, there was blood trailing from his back. A clear bite mark. I soon learned that the perpetrator was the birthday boy. His parents were completely unbothered, chatting up with the other guests. Then the boy bit another kid. And another. He went all Cujo on them. Trails of blood ran through the sand. I’d never seen anything like it. Then they just quietly left. No one spoke to the boy’s parents, who continued their conversation as before. When Cujo bit our son, I went over to his mom. She said his behavior was normal. Her husband, a child psychologist…”  

I looked over at his wound. A hideous circle. I wondered how much pressure it took to leave a record like that. To break skin.  

*  

Husband, son, and dog are asleep. I tried to sleep (trying to sleep) but the image of a stranger I once passed on the train platform at Pankow won’t leave my mind. 

Or rather, his black hoodie. I can’t remember the man’s face at all, so I’ll call him No-Face. On it a Nike slogan read Just Do NOTHING instead of Just Do It.  

Just do nothing. I’m trying. Heidegger might help me here. Das Nichts nichtet. The nothing nothings. The nothing actively does nothing. I try to actively sleep. Close your eyes. Count sheep. One sheep, two sheep, three sheep, four… 

But No-Face appears again in my mind. The platform beneath him looks wrong. It’s shifting. It’s sand. I tell him to move, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. The sand reaches his ankles. Just step forward, I shout.  

He sinks slowly, doing nothing.  

*  

At the Immigration Center, I made a mistake on a form and scribbled it out. The officer gave me a new form.  

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s pen. I can’t erase it.” 

“Do they not teach in America to durchstreichen?” 

“To what?” 

“All mistakes must be crossed out with a single line.” 

“Why?” 

“It’s tidier.” 

I must’ve looked confused, because he added after a pause—“Each mistake tells you what went wrong so it’s avoidable the next time.” 

I wanted to ask what happened when a mistake became a person, but he digressed. I lost track of what he was saying until he said, as if he understood my question, that some people are like cars with sand in their transmissions. Perhaps this is how systems work. Sand is inevitable. A margin of error. A tradeoff. Easier to locate in individuals than in systems. The Automenschen blame one another, each convinced of their own spotless transmission, while the sand lies in plain view. Only its meaning shifts through time’s hourglass: in one decade a scapegoat for mechanical failure, in another lining the Death Strip dividing East and West. Now they seem to be ghosts—little Gregors—that haunt, marking each mistake as they pass. Yet the grains remain the same, no matter what the system chooses to call them, drifting wherever the wind blows.