Walking the Streets of Rotterdam in late December 2009,
The night is dark and so very cold tonight as I shuffle along Rotterdam’s spinal cord – the Westersingel. I am heading for Rotterdam’s central station, and it’s way past 10 pm. My side of the street seems asleep, in the darkness. All of sudden a door bursts open at the top of some steep steps, and two wayward women laugh and talk as they come trampling down into the cold, and careen across the empty street to the iced-over ‘gracht’, where they’ve spotted somebody to ask for a light.
I change over to the other side of the road – by crossing a modern promenade with sculptures, over a bridge, a carriageway, and the tram tracks, to reach the far pavement. The shop fronts are lit up; and I want to see inside. I am invisible in my big navy blue overcoat, an observer tonight. I walk past a designer café with an avant-garde interior, with ‘bare essentials’ in a minimalistic retro-style.
The next place is older and less concerned with appearances: a traditional “bruin café”, as they are called here. Behind small panes of dirty glass, and probably geraniums, a host of people mingle in dim light on large leather chairs and rickety bar stools, in and amongst dusty musical instruments and piles of newspapers; everything is brown, also the beer. Young and old are deep in conversation. Their underwear sticks out when leaning forward to get the peanuts; the air should be smoky, only it is not. I go right up to the window pane, press my nose against the glass, and peer in, looking straight into their life. And, with my face still 5 centimetres from the glass I move on, along the window front to the next establishment, only to come face to face with a man staring straight back into mine, his face almost bursting with excitement. I start back, to then focus on a face making inaudible sound: we are separated by the thick glass in front of a Chinese Restaurant – and he is on the inside, pre-occupied with his caller, as he presses a tiny cell phone up against his enormous pink head. He had probably excused himself to take the call, and now stares straight into my face, with all his exuberance. Chinese Restaurant indeed: you could see all the sweet and sour pork in the texture of his skin.
However it may be; the observation is made without judgement, and I am coming to realise that it is possible to see and not judge. I almost can’t stop myself from seeing everything lately, all the pockmarks of civilisation, all the heritage in people’s features, the struggle and the Lonely and the Rum. And with it the realisation that at least part of me belongs right here where I am.
I walk on to the station, reading poetry on the street tiles, and being literally dwarfed by the immense bank buildings, now covered in flickering Christmas lighting. I pass Moroccan boys who think they are men; and, mind they don’t spit on your shoe, but if they do, they will say they’re sorry, because they truly didn’t mean it. I see a handful of policemen and women doing a ‘caution frisking’; their subject is up against the wall of a Döner Kebab joint, standing star-shaped while the police patiently pad down their trouserlegs; and the crowd looks on, spitting.
Next door is a high-brow Chinese establishment, catering to top-notch Chinese businessmen (yes! I didn’t know they existed; I thought they all sold 3-Euro patent-leather moneybags on the Thursday market, the world over). This brand of Chinese corporate high-rollers dine on exquisite dumplings and sweet and sour duck at spacious tables, while they talk business with an occasional glance at the pavement, where low-life Rastafarians do the limp-stride past the window, and the little Chinese Tattoo-shop owners shuffle along, and sultry dark-skinned Mamas with hair extensions and patent leather high-heeled boots promenade through the cold, pushing prams while punching in text-messages, their bright lipstick shimmering in the streetlamps.
But the Chinese family business appears to be alive and well – see them strolling in for dinner at dusk, with all members in tow: a luxuriously dressed and modern Chinese family: wives toting babes, sisters and grandmothers in fine suits of black and lace, with flowing collars and fine jewellery. Running in front with her scooter is the three-year old daughter, her lush carpet of jet-black hair spilling out over an immaculate suit of red felted wool, complete with lapels till far over the shoulder, and with large white pompoms bouncing on her white leather boots. There she goes, skipping into the restaurant she knows so well.
A few yards further there are more officers on duty. They are in a friendly discussion with an elderly person who is using his motorised perambulator to display soup packets, peppermints and chewing gum, and he will make a sandwich for you, on demand. The cops are kind and tolerable, and are telling him he needs a licence for this sort of vending. It is true that the last time I ever saw someone trying to pull a stunt like this was in South Africa.
On the station platform there are some twenty-something college girls, coming home from a late lesson at the academy, and they now stand discussing their cultural identity. “How could he have just called me “black” like that?” –the one pitch-black Surinamese-of-African-decent Beauty says in contempt to the other. Her friend is hardly listening, but is hunched over, furiously typing in a text message to somebody. Oh yes, I now realise I just heard the signal myself: and I whip out my own phone to read my very own text-message. Now I am typing away swiftly with my thumb, jogging my feet against the cold. On my other side a Dutch couple are in conversation, a generation away. She is complaining about something inexorably boring and he is enduring it, but now they are both distracted by me, and watch me as I type this message. To them, I am a product of this age of exponentially accelerating technology; to me it is just default nurturing. So now, for that train. I wonder, will the homeless guy with the guitar be there again? Any Rastafarians in three-colour jogging suits? Just spare me any young children who ought to be in bed, and then the night is my oyster. [ACN]
