Antwerp as diamond city

Antwerp is a diamond city and that means that we have a rather large Indian population, the majority of which lives near the more leafy areas around town and a huge Jewish community living in town, right there where I live too.

The Jewish community celebrates their Pesach or Easter between April 22 and April 20. This celebration entails a more than thorough spring cleaning before the passover. The house has to be thoroughly cleaned so that all that is dirty, or contains yeast or that can ferment has to be thrown out of the house. The city of Antwerp organises an extra household-garbage collection in the neighbourhood. I am glad that inclusiveness is working this way. Yet also other communities, like the Moroccan community have their own customs like following the Ramadan. This means no eating during the day, only after sunset and before sunrise one can eat. Mutton with couscous is one of their delicious dishes. Yet the sheep have to be slaughtered in a ritual way, slitting their throat. Often this leads to controversy, or even protests. People feel that electrocuting the sheep is more humane...  Strange concept.

The incident

This just happened in Antwerp, around 9, 30. I had brought my car to the garage to put on the winter tires and do a check up of the car. So I walked back to the first tram stop. It was a tram 6, number 7209 and the conductor was a younger lady. Briefly after I sat down a young man gets on the tram and asks for two 3 € tickets, but he only has a 50 € bill. I couldn't change the bill for him. I hear the lady say: that bill is probably a fake anyway. Did I mention that the young man was well behaved, polite and on his way to his job at the nuclear power plant in Doel, near Antwerp. Oh, I forgot to mention that this nice young man, never was out of line. Although the driver lady thought that a black young man with a 50 € could not be right. To me the whole incident was blatant racism and did disturb me enough to note the number of the tram. Being inclusive seems very hard for some people, sadly I am afraid it is an almost daily occurrence for some. We are all born equal!
I did lodge a complaint to the tram company: file number: 82015038790.

Letter from and to Cooper

Dear Annmarie. I've thought of you so much in the days since you left Chloride. Hoping your short stay in NYC was exciting and you were able to have some good visits with old friends. This morning I'm waking up to the news that Brussels is on 'lock-down'? This is all so terrible. I hope you were able to land safely and then get transportation to Antwerp with no problems. I imagine you and Doggy Dog have been exhausted.

I also read your blog and read your words of weariness about Chloride. I understand completely. I feel that way myself this morning. Don't worry. We of course hope to see you next year but no promises by any of us.

I didn't mean this to be so somber. I wanted to write and welcome you home. Tell you how much your visit meant to us and wishing you all the love and joyousness you deserve. For you are indeed one of the 'good people.' One of those whose spirit and sense of outrage at wrong-doing and your energy to try to make this world a better place, never seems to flag.

Lots of love to you. Get in touch when you can. Now, settle in, rest up and give Doggy Dog a big treat! O:-) Coop

Dear Coop. The travel was all right and I did actually get a lift to Maya.
But what is really worse is the militarized language many so called reasonable people are using. I shared on Facebook a letter by David Van Reybrouck, whom I respect, a letter against the warmongering rhetoric of President Hollande of France. Using such language pushes people away, creates distance, mistrust and makes it hard to find cohesion within our society. We need to stay on the path of non-violence, of being there for other people, being helpful. Many will deem me naive, but that is not the fact. I feel, we women and yes also men, can try to find a way to work and think and live together with respect for each other without prejudice or fear. Tolerance is a virtue in a world of many shades and nuances and ways of living a good life. I wonder how long a person can look the other way in the face of racism, homophobia and right-wing politics. The science day (an all day event Maya was involved in) has been canceled because of the lock down of Brussels. Maya and Bram have lost a friend in the Paris attack: a young woman eating out on the fatal night.
Doggy Dog is doing fine. She is already used to the new schedule of her days. What to say more? Take care my friends and be safe.

Interculturalism made easy and fun thanks to poetry

Fatena Al Ghorra is a star. She writes well and performs well and binds people to her across cultural differences. So she organized a well attended evening in the Stadsmagazijn. People read in Arabic with translation, read in English and in Dutch. Current PEN-Flanders president Joke Van Leeuwen read from her book Four ways of waiting. A lot of people from the cultural scene were present, mainly those working with learning the language and showing newly arrived refugees the way through the long corridors of the institutions, helping to get their papers in order. The poetry was great and so was the music. The sitar player choose popular tunes which all the Arab speaking crowd joining in and singing along.The amount of food was spectacular, three women had cooked all day, thinking about dishes that were vegetarian, nice salads, rice with chicken. All that with the specific spices of North Africa. It all was tasty and cozy. Cake and falafel, home made hummus, it was all there to be tasted.

Her book 'Gods Bedrog' is a bilingual edition: Arabic and Dutch, published by Uitgeverij P.

Occupied city

Police patrol vans on both sides of the street, the military in the streets with para-commando's in full gear patrolling the neighborhood ... isn't quite something that makes me feel safe. Granted, I live at the edge of the Jewish quarter, cross it regularly walking the dog, going to the supermarket... I can't show you the pictures: it isn't even allowed to take a picture... It would be a bit intimidating if one would try. I think violence begets violence. Non-violence is the only way to live in a civilized society. Talking to all kinds of people and trying to understand the other is always a good start. Understanding the needs of an other human being makes one feel their anguish. Kindness doesn't kill. I know these words are poor in contrast to the beauty and respect I would want to share. Hate begins with exclusion, by being uncaring, unthinking of the plight of 'others'. We are all others, different and have the right to be so.
We would loose such beauty, such song, such poetry, such alternative ways of looking at the world, if we don't strive for inclusiveness.
The New years reception of the Flemish Fund for Letters was inclusive: Three writers who all three spoke a different local version of Arab talked and laughed and gave us great poetry and prose. One musician gave us foreign sounds and longings. This choice was just the right thing at the right time...
keeping the flame of hope and togetherness burning.

A chilling African perspective

Yesterday I translated into Dutch a poem by an African poet and learned about the almajiri... I must admit I have also been thinking about the 200 girls boko haram took and cannot possibly imagine their life, if they are still alive... We know also about the horror of Baga.
A friend of mine, Arlette, has lived in Senegal for almost nine months and she told me about the marabouts forcing the young boys to beg... So I recognised the cruel fate of the boys in the poem... I guess it is a sad Pan-African image. I hope that once the translations are published in Dutch that tons of people will get the education I am getting by doing this work. I gain a deeper understanding. The news isn't just a snipped of news but another injustice, another violence from one human being to an other.  I learned from a friend that in Nigeria, the casualty figures from the past 72 hours run as high as 2000 dead and countless injured, several people now refugees in their own country. I guess this is what the mass murderers want, for peaceful people to be speechless. It is obvious that Europe is in shock at the barbarity of this outrage in Paris. The far right xenophobes will make some gains no doubt and there will be repercussions on otherwise innocent people, that is the human reaction to outrage. What I hope emerges from the ruins of the world as we knew it to be, is a better awareness of the evil now roaming the world. It seeks to kill inquiry, humour, pleasure and dissent. It has no sense of proportions for, if the four terrorists in Paris had access to an atom bomb, we all better believe that they would have used it. The same is true for the ones in Nigeria and Sudan.
That reason and balance will win eventually, my friend is sure of. It may take some time but reason will prevail. My friend has gone back to reading Karl Popper (The Open Society and its Enemies) and is actively campaigning for a change of government (the  president went to a wedding this weekend).
The poem I referred to:

In Sokoto‘s kitchens, ecstasy staggers the pulse
With rare legumes, ricemeal, cabbages and roasts.
Outside, suya, peppered over with panache in the false
Light of paraffin lanterns where every evening boasts

Fresh kills and the kindness of instant noodles
Served garnished with lettuce and a choice of eggs.
A youth, almajiri, receives a serving of tea and huddles
With the waiting troop, all standing on spindly legs

And their chatter continues into early morning
Going over happenings and also boko haram.
There is no consensus, a few cigarettes burning,
And each hoping to be the famous last Imam.

One does, out of that horde, become
The priapic king of that harmattan evening.
He won‘t tell the story; he has made it home,
His store of memories, his final swan-offering.

A desert‘s diaspora whispers in scattered gardens
Where plants like kept women swoon with watering
And the aseptic present bearing dark burdens
Conspires to kill the renegade seed. There is muttering

In the wake of vanished arbors, the plains
Playing dead like Sahara‘s volcanoes. Windborne
Charms are balms to the earth‘s perpetual pains,
Her stripping and rape, her hope forlorn.

VERS 1984-2014

A friend and colleague Karel Sergen launched this fun and serious project. Bar Van Loo had sugested to find one's own audience for an original selection of thirty years of poetry. So Karel mailed out an extended overview of his work and asked his friends poets to choose one poem and write a short commentary like one would send a tweet. The publisher P Leo Peeraer of 'Uitgevery P' accepted the challenge to publish this book, and unbeknown to all the poets who send in their favorite poem they were considered co-authors of the book and received it as a gift. The celebration of this project was the reason we drove with four people from Antwerp to Saint Remy-Geest, the beautiful village just over the language border. I was again impressed by the place. I was even more impressed by the careful preparation of the program for the day. Karel is form the Dutch peaking part of Belgium and lives in the French speaking part since quite a while. I was impressed that the local dignitaries were bilingual. The authors speaking and reading were bilingual too and so is the book. Bernard De Coen, in close collaboration with Karel made a great and wonderful translation into French.

Everything breathes beauty and caring and even a deluge couldn't stop the festivities. In three different spots the poets who had chosen their 'favorite' read it for the audience. Everybody had a great time. I felt hopeful because of the inclusiveness of the whole day. On the picture right you see Karel (left) and Bart (right). French and Dutch, Japanese and English, all together. Hilde Keteleer is reading and I must thank her for letting me use her pictures. I love the attention to detail, the edible flowers, the great people there and the beautiful together of poetry and language.Even old chairs became poetic objects with a haiku.