Letter to Ama (that you will not read)
by amara_osei · 24 June 2026 · Biography & Memoir
A letter in German to a grandmother in Accra who cannot read German. Vienna's grey, libraries, coconuts, and a language slowly growing.
Dear Ama,
you will not read this letter. You never learned German and I will not translate it, not because I don't want to but because it has to stay in this language to be true.
It is the 14th of November and in Vienna it has been grey for three weeks. Here the sky smells of nothing. That is the strangest thing. I miss smells more than colours.
I am now studying German Literature. My fellow students find that exotic. A girl asked me whether we had literature in Ghana too.
You taught me that the best stories are the ones you cannot yet tell. I am still waiting.
And there is this language. German. It is growing in me like something that was at first foreign — like a guest who has stayed longer than planned and to whom you eventually give a key.
With love, Amara
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