When, for the first time, Pegida supporters gathered in Dresden in the fall of 2014, Hussein Jinah took to the streets as one of the first counter-demonstrators.

Initially without a banner, without a poster. Only with his face. Dark skin, brown hair. Some Pegida participants sound familiar to him. One evening, Jinah crowded into the crowd, wanting to know what drove people. One of the folders told him to leave. Jinah saw the face. "Do not you know me anymore? We had a barbecue together." Entered looks. Jinah was allowed to go to the square.

Many people in Dresden know Jinah. Because his job is the street. For around 30 years, he has been working there as a social worker for people who have problems. People who "stand on the edge", as he puts it himself.

Lutz Bachmann still knew Jinah as a bouncer from the discotheque of an afghan acquaintance. He met him again that autumn of 2014. When Bachmann scolded against the "Islamization of the West," Jinah suddenly felt marginalized himself: Jinah is a Muslim, born in Tanzania, today he has German citizenship and calls himself a "citizen of the world". In his new book, he tells how he came to the GDR as a student, past border officials with Kalashnikovs. As fellow students called a friend before the turn "foreigner bitch". As for the European Football Championship 2008 Dönerbuden splintered window panes. And why he stayed anyway.

AFP

Pegida pendant 2015 in Dresden

For the meeting, we meet Jinah in a Dresden café, a few hundred meters from the main train station. Through the window you can see the glass facade of the UFA palace. "I'm often there for my work," he says. As a street worker, Jinah often met cliques of teenagers here at the cinema. Some of them grew up in homes. Others had lived in jail for months.

Jinah never had such problems. His parents were wealthy, traders from India. He was born in 1958 on a British steamer. His mother was traveling from India to Tanzania. Business was bad in British-occupied India. His father had opened a grocery store in the coastal city of Dar es Salaam, selling erasers and pencils.

But when Tanzania became independent, the family in the hierarchy slid down. The father was expropriated, the family moved to South Africa. In the apartheid regime, the blacks came a class below him. Nevertheless, he was not allowed to sit on the benches for white people.

In 1985, Jinah moved to Dresden as a visiting student. In the GDR he was suddenly who. He had a passport in his pocket. Jinah was allowed over the border, came to Westgeld. In the GDR he was so many as a man from the West.

Free from anger or conviction

"Ever since I came to Dresden, I have felt like a guest," says Jinah. With reunification, however, the situation has worsened. "In the time of change, I realized what identity is - and what second-class identity is." On December 19, 1989, for the first time, Jinah realized what boundaries are - and what it means to have a skin color that is considered "foreign."

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Hussein Jinah:
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That evening, he recalls, he stood in front of the ruins of the Frauenkirche, among thousands of other Dresdeners. German flags were blowing around him. At the front of the lectern stood Helmut Kohl. The former chancellor of the Federal Republic spoke of "solidarity", "self-determination of our people", the "unity of our nation".

But who was meant by "our people"? In the crowd, Jinah asked many people that night what he was doing here. It's about "internal German affairs". A few weeks later, insults were added. In the tram some did not want to sit next to him anymore. The reunion celebrated Jinah at home in his apartment. Fireworks shone over the facades. He was advised not to walk on the street, he says. He was never physically attacked, yet he felt a growing fear. In 1991, neo-Nazis attacked the Mozambican Jorge Gomondai at night on a tram. A little later, the conductor found him bleeding on the tracks, he died in the hospital.

Jinah's retraining as a street worker came more by accident. The city had just vacated a job, Jinah was unemployed. In his new job he moved through the Plattenbauviertel of Johannstadt, past the then need of renovation blocks on Strasbourg Platz. Some residents did not want to shake hands with him.

Jinah talks about it in a calm tone, free from anger or condemnation. For him, it was people who had "human problems". Some of them did not have a flat, some took drugs. Others had experienced abuse. If Jinah speaks of them, then it is individual destinies. There is the young woman who prostituted herself and sometimes used to stand in the post office. Or Thomas, who had problems at home. Right-oriented, says Jinah. In front of others, Thomas would still have defended him, Jinah.

"When people experience oppression, they try to compensate," says Jinah. The people in the GDR had suffered oppression for a long time. When the wall fell, the boundaries between East Germans and West Germans also fell. "Anyone who felt like a second-rate citizen before the turnaround could now feel like a first-class citizen," says Jinah. "The second-class people were now us - people with a migration background."

DPA

Plattenbausiedlung in Dresden-Gorbitz: "How should I change anything else?"

Jinah's office is in Gorbitz. Once Jinah went to the youth club Espe, then still meeting place for neo-Nazis to Rainer Sunday. In front of him were teenagers with jackboots and bald heads. Jinah showed in a slideshow how to celebrate a wedding in India. Cooked rice with peas with his visitors. On such days he felt queasy. "But we have to show people other cultures," he says. "How else can I change anything?"

Since the Pegida demonstrations, Jinah no longer sees the problems at the margins of society. Today, he sometimes advises migrants not to stay in certain districts of Dresden. Beer bars where hooligans meet. Even among the young people complained some about foreigners. Jinah listened to them. She tried to convince. In his talks, he quotes sources, seeks evidence. When it comes to culture and religion, what people wear, what they eat at home, Jinah quotes the Basic Law. "Do you really want to give up your freedoms?"

He wants to reduce prejudices by reason, he believes in it. And at the same time he says that sometimes it still feels to him today as if he had just come from the train station to the city. "I live as a stranger among strangers in a double foreign country," he says. He does not want to move away, he says. There is a lot to do for him.