elilla&: kendō club arc<p>the other day in the bus somewhere, a (presumably) Muslim lady in a beautiful multicoloured hijab was kinda smiling at us so I nodded at her and she came chat. you will already be sure that she's not German from this alone, ofc; she turned out to be North African. she said: are you coming from the thing in [redacted]? which is an easy guess cos I had my antifa cap and stuff, so I said: yeah, and she was like, oh that's so cool, I heard about it. and then she said directly: I like you, the antifa, what you're doing is important.</p><p>and then she said that when she was young she was a bit of a rebel herself, and studied political science even though it was frowned upon for women. her father came to Germany after WW2 to work in construction so she came along but she didn't like living here (<a href="https://transmom.love/tags/valid" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>valid</span></a> and <a href="https://transmom.love/tags/relatable" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>relatable</span></a>) so she went back home, and did nurse school, eventually came back. she said again that she respects us and I said, and I admire *you*, you studied so much and defied everyone and came so far.</p><p>then I had to leave her kinda abrupty cos our stop was coming up (in fact had already passed, I stayed to listen to her for longer, but it was time to get down) and as we got up she said, stumbling a bit to find the English words: I have been a lone mother for 15 years now, because, because I said "no". So I fist-bumped her and said hell yeah, cos it's entirely reasonable that she identifies with the antifa girls.</p><p>and I was just telling some younger comrades that it used to be that when we went out to work in Germany people would congratulate us, or say thanks, or come report things they've seen the nazis doing. and the climate has very much changed and nobody comes thank the antifa anymore, and then on the same day this lady proved me wrong. only it's not the Germans who are thanking us, but I guess that's like, figures.</p>