1
I guess Rob was right. It’s been three years. I’ve finished my master’s and I’m back, working as a social worker.
That term puzzles me more and more. Social. Work. The contrast between the two feels starker every day, maybe even cynical.
The snow reaches my knees as I walk to the office, a converted shipping container among corrugated iron emergency housing units, tucked in some godforsaken corner of the city.
About a hundred men live here. They were granted asylum years ago. Asylum means the state is no longer responsible for shelter. Asylum is a sour gift. You’re welcome to stay, but now you’re on your own.
Henry, the janitor, fills up the coffee machine. All of the pipes are frozen, he tells me, but the Afghani men from house 24 said we could use their toilet.
“That’s fine,” I say, going through my colleagues’ notes from yesterday. Again, she didn’t have a chance to speak to the Eritrean boys in house 36. Their letters are piling up to concerning heights. They arrived as minors, without parents or custodians, and turned eighteen while in the asylum process. They were placed here right after being granted asylum, among the adult men. Abadi, one of the older Eritrean men, used to take on a father role for them, kept them in check, but he has moved out now, into a real rental house. One of the lucky ones.
“Anything else, Henry?”
“Not much. Everybody went to their families for Christmas. I locked 36. They left the door open all night again. It was freezing inside, but the radiators were on. What a waste. The key is in the locker, in case they come back.”
“I’m not counting on it,” I say.
“Neither am I,” says Henry. “I’m off.”
***
It’s just me now. There’s about two dozen units here, each with 5 bedrooms. This location was a temporary solution, but it’s been years and hardly anybody can find a real house. I’m meant to help, but it seems all I’m doing is telling residents things will change.
When? they ask.
Soon, I want to answer, but it’s better to be honest.
***
I head out to 24 to see if Amir’s up yet.
Integration trajectory. That’s the word Cas, the city’s Integration Policy Officer keeps using in his e-mails and in the meetings in which they keep telling me to put pressure on the residents to apply for housing. From one place to another.
Integration, incorporation, assimilation, subjugation, domestication.
Cas’s attitude upsets me. Integration implies there’s only one world; one we’re all meant to join. He reduces my work to that of a courier, ferrying people from their multiple worlds into a singular, unified world the state believes exists, one the state believes we all must inhabit.
In Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldúa describes a mixed territory, neither the United States nor Mexico, and a population no longer able to distinguish between the two territories, who have learned to be part of both worlds.
That’s the reality here too. Amir sorts packages in the DHL warehouse at night, sleeps and writes during the day. Most of the men have jobs like that: cleaning at the airport, dishwashing, delivering takeout by bike: jobs nobody wants to see but that nevertheless keep our world spinning.
There are many worlds. Sometimes they merge or overlap, other times they are in conflict. Most often, one world ignores the existence of the other.
***
Amir opens the door, invites me in for tea.
“When did you come back?” I ask as I take off my coat and notice the rings left by mugs on the table. The Rubáiyát by Omar Khayyám is on the table too, and Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.
Amir is a young poet, stuck here, like the rest. I’m the only one who isn’t. I just drop in, help with paperwork, try to figure out how to reunify them with their families, and then I’m gone again.
“Just this morning,” Amir says. His Dutch is flawless. An urban accent is even emerging in his voice. As time goes by, the contrast between his tongue and my own northern, rural way of speaking grows, separates us. “I’ve got something for you.”
Amir runs up the stairs.
***
The house is a mess. It always is. Fahim lives here too but he refuses to clean because he’s only here once a week. So now everybody refuses to clean. You’d think this would be a simple problem for a social worker to solve, but it’s impossible. I’ve decided to just let them vent their frustration to me, because urging them to clean is pointless, paternalistic.
Amir returns and hands me a paper bag. I open it up and inhale. Saffron.
“Delicious. Thank you so much. How was the drive?”
Amir tells me he only made it to the border of Turkey and Iran this time. His brother met him there with bags of saffron, which he sells here. It’s delicious but the restaurants barely pay enough to cover expenses. With what is left, Amir buys books. A romantic at heart.
***
One hour left in my shift. Three SUVs pull up, circle the parking area in front of the shelter, throttles revving, headlights flashing. Bodyguards of the ultra-right politician who lives nearby. Like clockwork, they show up to intimidate the residents before he himself drives by.
I’m about to wrap up when Fahim steps into my office, pale and shivering, wearing a puffy coat three sizes too big and shorts.
“What’s going on, Fahim,” I ask.
He smiles awkwardly and asks for tea.
I switch on the kettle and hand him an empty cup. He drops six sugar cubes inside. “First thing I had today, except water. Can you play some André Hazes?”
I make a mental note to bring more sugar cubes tomorrow. Fahim is crazy about them – sugar and André Hazes. I put on “Zeg maar niets meer” and wait. Hazes always seems to help. After the first verse of the song, he tells me they pumped his stomach last night.
“Drank too much?”
“Yeah, but not more than normal. It was because of the pills. I called Ruud right before I passed out. He saved my life.”
“Why’d you do that?” I ask.
He shrugs. “You know how it is. I’m going to smoke.”
When Fahim returns, I give him my number, just in case, knowing there’s not much I can do. The hospital will only get him out of immediate danger. Once the psychiatrists decide he’s no longer a threat to himself, they’ll put him back on the street. Often, that’s within hours of admission.
Fahim laughs, he thinks I’m overreacting. Maybe he’s right, maybe I am. I don’t know.
“Are you afraid I’ll do it again?” he says with a grin.
“Well, are you?” I ask.
“You sound like my mom.”
I shrug.
“No, sorry,” he says. “I appreciate it. Really.”
2
The tram is stalled. The railroad switches are frozen. I watch as the conductor tries to melt the ice with a blowtorch that looks like a weapon. I can’t focus.
Paulo Freire wrote that it’s the task of the oppressed to liberate their oppressors.
Did I do the right thing, leaving tonight?
Did Fahim, without knowing it, expose the limits of what I can actually do for him?
Freire also said critical thinking is essential to liberation. It begins with awareness, with recognizing the patterns and systems that keep us oppressed.
The conductor steps back inside and apologizes. We’ll have to wait for maintenance.
I stay inside the tram. At least it’s warm. Outside, cutting winds blow across the lake.
Critical thinking is meant to set us free, but what happens if the system is frozen in place like the that railway switch before me? Change feels further away than ever.
3
Last night’s rain melted the snow, but before sunrise, the temperature dropped below zero again. Now, the road to the shelter is completely frozen.
I look at the Dutch facades, arbitrarily tacked onto the front of each housing unit. They’re corrugated iron too, obviously fake.
The effect is unsettling, an attempt at imitation so crude that it doesn’t create a sense of place but some hollow, dislocated version of nowhere. I suppose that was the intention. This is not a real place, after all, but another waiting room, a frozen bubble. A boundary between two territories that never meet.
As I close the blinds against the harsh sunlight bouncing off the ice-covered parking, Toon, the district agent, steps in my office.
Toon is a big man with small glittering eyes. His presence fills the room immediately, like a fuse catching. He’s impossible to ignore. Jasper, his partner, follows. He’s a scrawny young fellow wearing a black beanie.
I feel as if I’m falling backwards, unable to see when I’ll slam into the floor.
Toon sits down at my desk. He interlocks his fingers behind his head and asks if the municipality doesn’t have the budget for a sack of road salt mix. Fahim must be fine.
“You know they make me bring my own coffee, right?” I say.
Toon laughs and asks how things are while Jasper leans against the doorsill, taps the floor with his boot.
“Have you heard about Fahim?” I ask.
“Our favorite customer,” Jasper says.
“What about him?” Toon says. He lowers his hands on the table and leaves them there, crumbled like balls of newspaper.
Toon sighs after I’ve told them about last night’s events. “You know he spent the night in the cell for disorderly behavior?”
“We found him drunk and shooting up near the main square again,” Jasper interjects.
Toon nods. He seems genuinely saddened by the news. “Maybe we shouldn’t have let him go after all. But his girlfriend picked him up.”
“He’d have found a way,” rationalizes Jasper.
“I suppose so,” I say, but we’ll never know. When we’ll never know it’s best to not blame yourself.
Noise comes through Jasper’s porta phone. “Hang one,” he says and steps into the corridor.
“He’s the type we’ll find dead in the street someday,” Toon says. “It’s sad, but that’s how it is.”
“We’ve got to go, Toon,” says Jasper. “Emergency.”
“You’ll keep me informed?” asks Toon as he steps out of the office.
“Sure, I’ve got your number,” I reply.
I roll up the shutters. The sky is overcast now. The police van’s siren reflects in the ice as it pulls out awkwardly, trying not to skid.
4
The blue light of early spring pierces the glazed facades of the former Ministry of Social Affairs. Amir and I move through bare concrete corridors and skywalks that stitch the complex together, passing stripped offices and gutted conference rooms.
Cas, the city’s Integration Policy Officer, has been working for months to try and relocate the residents to this building. Today, he’s presenting his final plan to the residents.
We finally find him leaning against the balustrade on the eighth floor.
“Only Amir?” he asks.
I shake his hand and join him at the railing. Next to it, an atrium opens to the ground floor, where we hear the rowdy voices of the residents entering the abandoned building.
“And them.”
Just as Cas opens his mouth to voice the disappointment that I already noticed flickering in his eyes, the door swings open. A lanky man with grey curls steps into the hallway. The corridor behind him stretches under fluorescent lights like an illuminated runway, blue and yellow doors on either side.
“Lucas,” he says, offering me his hand, then Amir’s. “Integration Program Manager. Go have a look inside, Amir. We’ll be right with you.”
“Okay, thank you,” says Amir.
Lucas closes the door behind Amir and walks back to us.
“Remember,” he says. “The goal is to enthuse them. We want as many signed contracts as possible.”
Just then, the rest of the group arrives, thirty men rounding the corner. Lucas welcomes them with practiced warmth, and we enter the D-wing.
Each of us is handed a glossy information package: brochures with digital renderings, maps emphasizing the building’s proximity to shops, transit, the city center, and a sample rental contract.
After checking the shared bathroom, kitchen and a communal living room with a pool table, we’re ushered into one of the bedrooms converted into a presentation space.
***
A couple dozen chairs face a projection screen. The room is unmistakably an office – carpet tiles, humming fluorescent lighting, an excessive number of power sockets. The window frames a view of distant skyscrapers.
I sit in the front row, beside Lucas, who crosses his legs, impatiently rocking a flamboyant, pointy shoe in the air. A clear sign he’s high up in the Dutch bureaucratic hierarchy.
As Cas sets up the slideshow, I skim the contract. It’s a month-to-month lease.
The space is undeniably better than the shelter, but the contracts for the shelter are indefinite. Legally, those can be only annulled by a judge, and judges are reluctant to evict, especially when it comes to vulnerable groups. This new contract, though, is precarious: it’s renewed monthly and revocable at any time.
***
During the presentation, Cas stresses that local students will live here too. Integration through cohabitation, he says. His trump card.
I listen, but all I feel is betrayal. I’m being asked to sell a scheme that strips residents of their rights. I’ve been made complicit. I glance back and see blank, disinterested faces.
After the presentation, Lucas promises five hundred euros in moving expenses to anyone who signs today.
The room breaks into chaos and shouting. It’s hard to track who’s saying what.
Lucas and Cas look genuinely surprised. Amir leans over.
“What should I do?”
I look at him. I’m torn. Signing means giving up legal protection, but if I tell him that, I could lose my job. I’m already on thin ice, doing work I’m not qualified for on paper.
The room is nearly empty now. Only Fahim signs.
“How do you feel?” I ask Amir.
“I’m not signing. Not yet,” he says. “We’ve got the cards, they don’t. Let them wait.”
5
“I used to be the road,” Ahmed told me last week. “But then I fled. Now, I travel the road.”
Ahmed has a way of saying deeply profound things, though I’m never entirely sure what he means. He reminds me of an iceberg that moves gracefully due to only one eighth of it being above water. What submerged events shape Ahmed’s dignified way of speaking?
***
As I wait for Ahmed to bring tea from downstairs, I notice the wildflowers behind the parking lot. I’ve never really seen them; a sloping hill blocks the view from my office. From Ahmed’s room, the field unfolds beautifully.
Sometimes Ahmed lets things slip. Once, he mentioned eating grass for a week when his city was under siege. Another time, he said that he cut off a fingertip with his V-document out of sheer desperation while parked in the asylum I used to work at.
I’m always tempted to ask him for the full story, but I never do. Maybe it’s a habit I acquired in art school, letting the unspoken remain so. Besides, I suppose it’s better to meet him on his terms, at his pace and not mine.
***
Ahmed hands me tea and a folder of paperwork, he needs help objecting to the rejection of his internship at a local garage. Tea’s what we drink all day. In winter, it was a necessity, something to keep us warm when the heating failed. It’s spring now, but habits are hard to break.
Ahmed is one of the most dedicated students of Dutch I’ve met. He writes Arabic words alongside their Dutch translations on slips of colored paper and tapes them to everything. Every surface of his room covered: the ceiling, the floor, the bedframe, the door. Even his desktop computer and the office chair I’m sitting in.
The first time I saw his room, I told him it reminded me of a Zettelkasten, the slip box system used by Nabokov, Mallarmé and Barthes to uncover unexpected connections between ideas. Except here, it had burst free from the box. The whole room had turned into a colorful constellation of words on the bare walls of the emergency shelter.
Ahmed smiled. That’s what he was thinking too.
He’s lucky. He found a social housing unit in the city – a place of his own. It’s hard to move out of these shelters. At best, it can take years. I’m happy for him.
I ask if he is happy too.
“Yes and no,” he says. “I’m glad to have more privacy, but what am I going to do with all this?” He gestures around the room.
“Your Dutch is good enough. Maybe you don’t need the words anymore?”
“Yes, but it was so much work.”
“You could photograph it. That way your work won’t be lost.”
“I suppose. Still, a photo is not the same. I wish I hadn’t used this tape. I didn’t think I’d ever leave.”
I nod. Then I say, “It’s my last shift. Looks like we’re both saying goodbye.”
“Why?”
For a second, I consider telling Ahmed about the reorganization. How even sheltering status holders is subject to the logic of the market, with organizations underbidding each other for a contract. But I swallow my words. He knows all that better than I ever could. He’s felt it every day for nearly four years, while I just dropped in and out. Besides, these social organizations come and go like mushrooms, full of empty promises, and they disappear again just as quickly. I’ve seen it happen before.
So I say, “With my kind of background, you’re not meant to do this work. Studying art means endlessly justifying your choices.”
“Maybe that’s why you were meant to do this work,” he says. “We’re the same in that way.”
“Maybe,” I say, reaching out my hand, but Ahmed pulls me in for a hug.
I tell him I hope we meet again, though we probably won’t. Then I go down the staircase and head to the office where I grab my backpack and close up shop. I have to run to catch the last tram home.
***
The lake by the tram track looks so beautiful in the spring night. It reflects the skyscrapers where decisions are made that I could never comprehend, the first stars, and the deep chill of space.
Stories are constructions – lines that depart from one point to another, ideally leaving the reader with a new way of seeing, of feeling, if only for a moment.
But other stories have no beginning or end. They tangle tragedy, allegory, myth, report, satire and so much more without ever departing or arriving anywhere, until the form breaks. They’re right there, below ground, like a web that’s always reaching, extending, collapsing. Sometimes light breaks through, and light can be blinding.
