I feel good wherever the shadow of priestess Frau Ras Maskan precedes me, inviting me to place my steps securely in hers. And I have to say that in Berlin, I feel especially good in her company. As I remember it, it is through the eyes of Ras Maskan that I discovered the capital for the first time a good dozen years ago or so, and after each visit, a new page, a new layer of our common past has been revealed to me. Like opening the door to an abandoned garden.

I arrived in Berlin three days ago, and to be frank, I was in a singular psychic state. Berlin had the distinct advantage of being the final stop on a long concert tour that, week by week, month by month, broke up the band. The lack of privacy, stress and fatigue had left their indelible marks on One Love, the band that I started four and a half years ago. And to put the icing on the cake, I had to keep a sharp eye on our pianist who was in great danger, overtaken as he was by his old demons. As for our Bahianese drummer Zé Preto, he had dumped us in Hamburg. Just up and left without any explanation at all. We recently learned from a Swedish journalist that he had joined the Odun Ifa band, a Scandinavian quartet that had just raised Fela to the level of pantheonic Afropunk god.

On tour, bad luck never left us. And guess what I did when I got off the plane? I took a taxi to Tegel and twenty minutes later, I was literally in the arms of Frau Ras Maskan.

As she welcomed me in, Frau Ras Maskan whispered that Berlin is nothing like the cold and empty city drowned in fog depicted in those 1950s espionage films. I drank her words with the same fervour as I swallowed the fragrant tea so graciously served by the house of Arkin Dede. I felt as if I were being reborn: the air, the light, the surrounding commotion kept me company. It was enough just to be alive there – amidst a crowd of strangers.