Some Fridays last for a week. This year, Black Friday started Monday and ended Monday. So Cyber Monday was my last chance at some fabulous bargains.
I had done my research: I perused my Consumentengids, knew the features that were crucial to me, and what price to haggle for, and I had increased my spending limit to be able to pay for the shiny objects of my desire, and off to the races I went.
In this case, the races happened to be at the Media Markt in Hoog Catharijne, Utrecht’s biggest (and Holland’s first-ever) shopping mall. I try to go there as little as possible.
Why? It is beautiful, renovated recently in tandem with Utrecht Central Station into a shiny marble and golden temple of commerce, attracting throngs of lookers and buyers from all over.
The reason is this: in HC, the Dutch are a minority. The biggest group of shoppers and lookers are Arab. In the Dutch context, this means mostly from Morocco or Syria. Then there are black people, from Africa, or from Africa by way of Surinam or the Dutch Antilles. Sprinkled among the multitudes are quite a few Indians, tech workers and their families (I actually had a nice conversation with a lady cashier from Bangalore at the Action. We were talking about the proposed renaming of India. “Is Moodi the Indian Wilders? “ I asked. She nodded vigorously and said: “Totally!”) There are plenty of East Asians, too, also techies no doubt. At places like Action (and, as it turns out, Media Markt) most retail workers are Moroccan. Only 20% of the shoppers are Dutch, those stores being smorgasbords of the peoples of the world. After all, everybody: Arab, Turk and African, Pole, Rumanian, Spaniard and Dutchman, Christian, Muslim and Chinaman alike, loves a bargain.
As to the languages spoken, like the black people from the former Dutch colonies, Moroccans speak Dutch, even among themselves (at least in public). The other groups, Indians, East Asians and Africans, and the non-Dutch Europeans, don’t speak Dutch. Therefore, the lingua franca in Utrecht is English. When approaching someone in the street, your best bet is to start off in English. In many pubs, restaurants, and shops you can only communicate in English. I know foreigners who have been living here for over ten years who don’t speak a word of Dutch (unless you count the G-word, but every British bachelor-partygo-er can come up with that word in a drunken stupor, so that doesn’t count). The English living here rarely speak Dutch. On the other hand, American residents often speak Dutch quasi-fluently (or even perfectly).
Most Moroccan girls in HC (as in Utrecht) wear a headscarf, and quite a few wear complete Islamic garb. To encounter a woman in a burqa is rare though. Many Arab boys and men wear a beard, indicating fealty to Islam.
It feels unheimisch to be among strangers in my hometown and homeland. I am unsure about their thoughts about Holland and about Dutch people: do they like us, do they despise us, do they laugh at our spinelessness? Dutchmen are inculcated with the idea that all cultures are of equal value. I am not sure these strangers got the memo. I notice I often am distrustful. E.g. I had a fraught exchange with a salesman at MM, and when he addressed another Moroccan with brother I felt excluded
Moroccan boys and young men always walk in three or fours, and this can be intimidating, even menacing, regardless of their intent (which, I am sure, most of the time is not malevolent). Somehow, I never see Turkish boys walk around in such groups.
To be surrounded by all those people unlike me would be fun, even exhilarating in Casablanca or Aleppo, but is disconcerting in my own town.
When I had finally finished my sordid commercial dealings (and had my haggling skills vindicated) it was 19.00 and dark. I walked back to the train station’s huge bicycle parking garage (actually there are two, each on opposite sides of the tracks, one for 12.500 and the other for 4200 bicycles) with my €1300 laptop (down from €1700). I realized I might make an interesting target for an enterprising group of young men, especially since a stretched tendon in my heel made me limp, which might be read as a sign of vulnerability by members of the criminal caste. This thought didn’t bother me at all, though, because I like to invent scenarios in my head of how to extricate myself from such thorny situations and I was secretly hoping to be able to try out my imagined remedies in practice. A svelte young lady in the same position might have felt more apprehensive though. The favorite scenario my mind came up with was this one: A group of boys threatens me and their leader tells me to hand over my red and white plastic bag. I look him darkly in the eye and ask him:” I guess your balls are at the usual place, between your legs? “ He is caught off guard by this unexpected remark and his eyes shift back and forth uneasily between his friends and me. Then I say:” Just so I know where to bite if need be.”
As they say, the teeth are the last respite of the handicapped (this reminds I have an appointment at the dentist tomorrow). Oh well.
I used to find myself in many hairy situations in the past and somehow I always made it out alive and in one piece. The story in this blog post contains a faint echo of the attitude that led my younger and less mature self into many strange and possibly dangerous, but rather exciting situations that made for good stories when one came out unscathed.
The first time I viscerally felt the Dutch were about to be eclipsed by foreigners in their homeland was half a year ago. It was 23.00 and the night balmy and I waiting at Tilburg Central Station for the train to take me back to Utrecht. I was one of the few white Dutch persons on the platform. Usually, the train was almost empty at this hour, but now it was filled to the brim. I sat down on the stairs of the vestibule1 (it was a double-decker train), me the only Dutch person. There were Poles, Ukrainians, Africans, French and Italians. A man in a t-shirt and jeans spoke on the phone in a language that sounded like Farsi, but not quite; maybe it was some Afghan language. He had a little boy with him and a folded-up wheelchair. As the train approached Den Bosch, a woman in a black robe and a head scarf with a baby in one arm descended the stairs, holding the hand of a six-year-old girl, who was also dark-clad and a headscarfed. They stood next to the man, and then another lady in the same outfit with a toddler on her arm joined them, and yet another one and then a twelve-year-old girl with a child. When they were all gathered the man climbed back up the stairs to help an old gaunt man descend without falling (the train was still moving). The old man wore a light brown djellaba over his slight frame, a white turban on his head, and sandals on his bare feet and peered at the world through thick glasses. Verily, he could have walked the streets of Baghdad in 1250 AD (or the year 648, as the ancient Baghdadis would have referred to it) without causing any commotion.
What does all this mean? Was this modern-looking guy granted asylum and had he then sent for his extended family? Was he a polygamist? Had he been a translator with the Dutch army in Uruzgan province? Many questions.
I wondered what was to become of this nation when people with such vastly different outlooks on life and such dissimilar sets of morals arrived in droves. Many would cost us (“the treasury”) tons of money. How would they change the social and moral fabric of this country? Would it bode ill or well for the future? Would it be possible to have a cohesive society with people with such disparate outlooks on life?
Bound by laws and treaties, the Dutch are required to provide refugees with a house we don’t have (according to estimates we need to build at least 900.000 homes 2 just for the current population’s housing needs) and pay for their living expenses (therapy and counseling and extra educational needs for their children included) with money we don’t have, thus have to borrow.
In some municipalities, a refugee has the right to a home within a year. At the commune where a friend of mine lives, they have a temporary place for a refugee. He has been there for a year now and wants to sue the town because it hasn’t provided him with a home yet. Who cares that there are no houses for Dutch people either and many grown-up children after university have to move back in with their parents because they can’t find an affordable place to live.
When the young refugee moves he will get new appliances courtesy of the municipality. He has been partying all year, enjoying the freedom of gay life after fleeing Iran. No time to work.3
I think it is fair and just that the majority of the inhabitants in Holland are Dutch, that they speak Dutch, and that the Dutch culture is the leading culture for every inhabitant to orient themselves towards. In the big cities, there is no Dutch majority anymore. Let’s not let the same happen to the Netherlands as a whole.
It is not hard to see that all this is unsustainable. No amount of calling the 2.3 million people who voted for Wilders racist will change that.
The part where one enters a passenger train.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2023/11/17/nederland-kreeg-er-dit-jaar-90-000-woningen-bij-te-weinig-om-doel-van-kabinet-te-halen-a4181286
I imagine most refugees are more grateful. Still, when you teach someone they have a right to free stuff, they will eventually start to believe you, probably sooner rather than later.
One of the problems with a right is that the receiver of the right is unlikely to be grateful. After al, why be grateful to someone for something that’s yours by right? Also, when one doesn’t receive what iś ones right, it creates resentment. That’s one of the reasons why expanding the scope of legal rights is often a bad idea.