My booster, I’m losing count, I have to get near the Kraaiennest metro station in Amsterdam-Zuidoost. In other words, the Bijlmer, as it is still popularly called. It is almost at the end of the metro line from Central Station to Gaasperplas, but the journey time is not too bad – just over twenty minutes.
It is remarkably quiet in the afternoon in the GGD building, I can walk straight to the injection site. I am used to that differently with previous injections in the RAI. Where are my contemporaries? “It was still quite busy this morning,” says the GGD employee. Then she notes: “You come from afar.”
That’s how it feels, because compared to the city center of Amsterdam, you end up in a different world here. As a white Amsterdammer you suddenly belong to a clear minority and you realize that this makes you stand out. The environment looks chilly and unapproachable with the towering blocks of flats around a characterless shopping center. I had been there many times, but never for long.
Last year, the neighborhood was discredited when a 2-year-old toddler was hit by a stray bullet during a shooting at the metro station. There had been more violent incidents since 2019: an exploded hand grenade at a shop, a liquidation, violence between youth gangs. Local residents demonstrated against the violence, Mayor Halsema spoke of structural nuisance with a lot of drug-related crime.
On such a weekday afternoon there is nothing to notice for an outsider. The residents stroll along the shops, around the Taibah Mosque on the Karspeldreef, one of the most striking buildings in Southeast, there is peace.
Southeast is still by far the poorest part of Amsterdam. “Many children go to school here with an empty stomach,” said Jerry Afriyie, foreman of Kick Out Zwarte Piet and Bijlmer resident, last year. de Volkskrant. “Their life does not resemble that of other Dutch children. They grow up in inequality. As a result, young people and young adults become sensitive to these gangs.”
That poverty also remains largely invisible to the passer-by, but that will change on the return journey. The subway train at Kraaiennest station is about to leave when a young, dark woman, clad in a white cloak, squeezes in with a pram. There are plenty of free seats, but she prefers the seat next to an older, dark-skinned woman checking her cell phone.
The women look at each other for a moment, the young woman laughs with the warmth that befits a familiar contact, and she pushes the pram in the direction of the other. They know each other, I suppose, they will start a chat. But then I notice the other woman shakes her head briefly and looks at her cell phone again. Not a word is exchanged. The young woman gets up and quickly moves away with her baby. She walks through the entire compartment and gets off at the next stop.
She must have been a beggar, I realize now. I only know mothers who beg with babies, usually on their arms, from abroad. In my mind, I see this woman transferring from one subway train to another for hours on end, always on the hunt for other mothers to endear and captivate with her child—an underground quest for grace.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of November 9, 2022