After 23 years living in Holland, I have been reminded that I might share a story with the ones that we call refugees. Soul searching and trying to understand how all this makes any sense... good guys, bad guys, people that save you, perspective, and only questions left. Born a stranger, living as one, searching for a home but only finding a solution in adjusting the lens. All other ways lead to suffering…

This March, once again, we celebrated Woman’s Day. When I was a child, it was a sort of day where we made handy artwork for our mothers and gave a red flower to all our female teachers at school. Every year we listened to the stories about the brave Clara Zetkin and the political movement, which led us, women, to have the right to vote, work and be equal to men. All women at home, on the streets and most importantly at work, got a red carnation. The flower that represented the power of our ideology…

Ever since I was a small child, I liked sneaking away in my grandparents’ house into a not that much visited room full of unorganised bits and pieces of life and history. I loved to hide in there, connecting bits and pieces of objects, wondering where they came from, what they might have been used for, and who they belonged to in the past. It was a room full of stories, a lot of black and white photos, some torn in half, or with someone cut out, all over the drawers. I liked to try to find the missing pieces and put them together, wondering what could have happened to trigger that act of violence.

One of those fascinating things, inhabiting the drawers of the rarely visited room, were the red, round cartridges of a dangerous object hanging above my grandparents' bed, my grandfather’s hunting gun. 

When I emigrated to The Netherlands, I left my hometown in the middle of the night. It was not one of those nights when the streets were pitch dark and only the light of the moon was showing the silhouettes of the ghostly town. Not one of those nights you walked almost running, hoping you will soon find yourself in the safety of your home, passing the places known for hosting packs of street dogs or potential maniacs. At home, the candlelight would give a sense of comfort and warmth in the fascinating silence. Silence in which you don’t only experience the lack of sound, but also lack of vibrations. No waves of electricity. It is a silence in which your bones rest and which makes you whisper out of humble respect…

Nothing makes you start living your life like seeing a body lying in front of you without the person that inhabited it in it. Eyes from which the soul moved out. Motionless fragility decomposing in front of you.

My father was negotiating with the creator for a long time. Years were passing and he was proving again and again that he will win over death, over God. Operation after operation, less and less of his body was coming back home until one day several bags were hanging out of him to make it possible to have just a little more time. The last operation was experimental. No guarantee, no responsibilities. No care provided. The time he gained was spent in agonising pain, desperation and loneliness. I watched him having long silent conversations with God those days. His one and only bitter enemy...

One day, when I was about six years old, my uncle brought home a young woman he wanted to marry. I thought of her as a fascinating petite gentlewoman. Her different beauty than what I have seen in my family mesmerised me. She was quiet and kind. She treated me with warmth and understanding. Almost like a child. I fell in love with her pretty fast.

After the wedding passed in a usual manner, smelling of alcohol, music and reckless joy, she was mostly alone and I was always welcome in her home. I felt being in her company, that nothing else mattered to her, that she had no other ambition at those moments than focussing on my wellbeing, feeding me something delicious or telling funny stories…