There is a loneliness to knowing you’re the only person of colour within a certain radius. The dislocation of migration gets compounded through the inevitable performance of being an exception. When I moved to Tramin, I was of course excited to glimpse at a few other South Asian families, but accessing them hadn’t necessarily been easy. When they’d see me on the street, we’d often acknowledge each other, but I could sense their inability to place me, since, not only is my demeanour manifestly westernised, I’d mostly also be walking with my white partner.

In autumn, I was lucky to find a Pakistani woman outside the post office. She addressed me in Italian, possibly to tell me she just realised the office was closed. But I am now more comfortable in German. At first, we were unsure how to communicate, until I switched to my terrible Hindi and she was happy to respond in Urdu. Grammar be darned. We spoke for almost 15 minutes and I remember, that autumn, just feeling so relieved to be able to feel this South Asian intimacy, where you don’t have to necessarily worry about asking very invasive questions because often the information is voluntarily given to you.