When I met Hedva over Zoom, late in the summer of 2022, they were in their apartment in Berlin, backed by an imposing wall of bookshelves that could barely contain their contents—each row of vertical spines supporting another layer of horizontally stacked books. A ceramic teapot, an evil eye talisman, a smattering of small photographs, and a print of Frida Kahlo occupied open space, lending the library the air of an altar.