Berlin: Stepping through history

“What was your original face like before your parents were born?” asks an ancient Zen koan in an attempt to engage the mediator in self inquiry.
Standing on a tower overlooking the grey remains of a piece of the Berlin Wall that has been left behind as a monument to history, I cannot help but feel deeply touched seeing so clearly how one Berlin was once split into two artificial halves, exactly here, how an arbitrary line was drawn through the destiny of this city dividing countless lives.
It must have been close to here where my mother secretly escaped from East to West in 1958 along with her mother and sister. As these cold images of the Berlin Wall meet my eyes, I wonder who I would be today if my mom’s escape had failed? Who would I be today if East and West had never been divided and my mother had never tried to escape at all? What would be my face, had history not taken its path?