SPOILERS
Im Feuer starts with a woman sneaking into a refugee camp in Greece. Well, she doesn't exactly sneak, she just walks right past the guards checking everybody's papers and they are possibly too tired of everything to chase her down. She's there looking for her mother and sister, who she sent money to escape from Iraq. She finds her mother in the food line, but her sister refused to come, preferring to stay behind and fight for an independent Kurdistan. She talks to one of the social workers there, who is skeptical that she is a German citizen herself, but eventually she is allowed to leave with her mother. Rojdan, the German citizen, is in the military, maybe how she got citizenship. Her family had moved to Germany when she was a child, but for some reason her parents and sister returned to Iraq, leaving her with other family. Her mother runs into old friends and neighbors in her new city, and Rojdan is troubled to see how they offer asylum applications for €20, "but just because we're like family," when the form is actually free. She is also bothered by the other refugees insistence on watching Kurdish news, because it's all just lists of dead and missing to Rojdan. She is still determined to get her sister out of Iraq, so she finagles her way into an assignment in the country, helping to train women freedom fighters. They were looking for somebody who not only spoke Kurdish, but understood the culture. Unfortunately, Rojdan is really more German than Kurdish by now. At their first meeting she mixes Kurdish, German and English, but eventually settles into Kurdish. However, she can't explain to the freedom fighters why the European military demands a clear leader for the group, or explain to her fellow German soldiers how the Kurds can act as a group without a hierarchy or chain of command. She also doesn't have a lot of interest in being a team player with the other soldiers, hardly talking to them at all. In one training exercise in a destroyed village the Kurds discover a mass grave with clothing and hands just peeking through the dirt. Rojdan thinks she might recognize her sister's shawl, but it turns out one of the Kurds knows her and knows where she is. After they decide to spend the night in the abandoned village, this woman takes Rojdan to another encampment across the hills and there Rojdan is reunited with her sister. She tries to convince her to come back to Germany but her sister is determined to stay and fight, since it's the only thing she has left of herself. The encampment is attacked and Rojdan's sister is killed. Rojdan returns to Germany to be with her mother and the two of them share a coffee, Greek coffee, although her mother says it isn't the same. Although it's somewhat stressful to watch, being set in a warzone some of the time, it's an interesting look at culture clashes and assimilation. The Kurdish refugees aren't angry with Germany or German customs, but they hang onto their traditions as much as possible, since they are expecting to be able to go home one day. Those who assimilate like Rojdan are almost foreigners among people we would call their family.
It would have been nice to link a darker beer to this story, or something with a lot more bitterness, but what came up was a weissbier. Karg Weizenbock is an interesting thing, very fruity with a lot more complexity of flavor than a lot of its kind. I think I get some apple and vanilla in there, hardly any of the typical wheat aftertwang. It does have some power in it, though, the alcohol is pretty strongly present.
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