The village where my mother lives is on the Rhine, which marks the Swiss border here.

There is a Syrian dentist there.

Swiss people, villagers and sometimes I go to him.

The practice is housed in a beautiful neoclassical building called the Old Customs House.

When I was a child, the customs office had long been somewhere else, the building was rotting, the plaster was broken, many windows were boarded up.

Amidst the handsome homes and front yards, it was an eyesore that villagers averted their gaze from.

They looked over to the post office, where the postman, a member of several clubs, accepted packages and sold stamps.

Next to it was a branch of Quelle and the Gasthof Zum Ochsen - that's the only one still there.

People in the village liked to keep to themselves.

Simply speaking its dialect was not enough,

not to be readily accepted.

It was even more difficult for the so-called guest workers who lived in the customs house.

The old shed was just about good enough for them, some said.

Hardly anyone had contact with the residents.

Karen Krueger

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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Among them was Mariella.

She didn't live exactly where the practice is now, but in the left wing on the second floor.

I got to know her because her parents had leased a piece of meadow above our house.

In early summer they were suddenly there, with a car, hoe and spade, and had laid out a small garden in no time at all: Mr. Chiarelli, an agile man with a fringe of black hair, who mostly wore T-shirts with buttons and a collar, and his wife, a southern Italian with strong upper arms.

Mariella was seven years old and wore gold earrings with red hearts that swayed with every movement.

Mr. Chiarelli worked at the chemical plant.

He had just caught up with his family.

Mariella did not yet speak German and remained silent for a long time.

When her parents were in the garden, we played together.

The zoo of water stains on the ceiling

After the holidays, Mariella came to my class.

When she celebrated her birthday, I entered the customs house for the first time.

The stairs were badly repaired.

Mariella opened the door in a princess frilly dress that didn't go with the broken lock at all.

Or maybe right now.

The Chiarellis had prepared their place as best they could, set their arms and legs like an old doll's, styled their tousled hair, hung curtains over the windows through which the thoroughfare could be heard loudly, pictures were nailed to the walls, and furniture was set up that didn't match and had apparently been discarded by others.

Other children from the village were already sitting at the table.

Mrs. Chiarelli had baked;

wonderful cream puffs thickly filled with cream.

We children sat and ate and exchanged looks.

We had never seen a home like this before.

When I had to go to the toilet, I didn't dare at first.

The windowless toilet in the stairwell was used by all residents of the wing.

After eating cake we played.

We lay down on the floor, looked at the ceiling and imagined the outlines of the stains and tears as animals.

Apparently Mariella had played this many times – she designed a whole zoo for us, and whenever I'm in Customs House now, it comes to mind.

I lie in the treatment chair and look at the ceiling again.

Forty years later she is white and smooth with no animal to be seen anywhere.

Contaminated soil in the garden

I never asked my dentist if he knew the history of his chic and bright practice rooms.

He opened it in 2016. The customs house had long been renovated and a lot had happened in the years before.

The neighbor, on whose meadow the Chiarellis had grown tomatoes and lettuce, no longer wanted the Italians there.

Mr. Chiarelli found a replacement directly opposite his place of work, the chemical plant.

The customs house residents had to move out, an investor had bought the building.

A year later it was hardly recognizable.

A supermarket opened on the ground floor, later a Mexican tapas bar.

I don't know what happened after that, since I left from there.

Later I heard that Mariella also lives somewhere else now and has become a hairdresser.

Her mother died of cancer.

It has been speculated

the trigger was the heavily polluted soil in her garden in front of the factory.

The vegetables would have absorbed the pollutants and poisoned Mrs. Chiarelli.

Maybe that was even true.

When the chemical plant was shut down, contaminated soil first had to be removed before a so-called service park was built there.

A friend said that all his father's shift colleagues, who worked in the factory like Mr. Chiarelli, died of cancer.

"So, everything is clean again." The treatment chair whirrs, straightens my back again, and the ceiling disappears from view.

The dental assistant speaks German and Kurdish.

Also Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew;

Spanish, Greek and Italian can be heard in the practice team.

It really only consists of immigrants.

They save teeth in a place that used to be the "non-place" of the village, but which foreigners were expected to do.

I wonder if those who let that happen then and now come to the customs house to have their smiles beautified sometimes think about it.

Either way, the self-confident practice of the Syrian dentist in the village makes for good changes.