Normally I would have passed him by. Now I spoke to him because I was a journalist and out to hear what people thought about the election results.
He was a tall, close-shaven man. He lived a secluded life in the countryside, the first neighbors lived hundreds of meters away. The result made him satisfied. Now that 2.5 million Dutch people had made the same choice as him, ‘they’ could no longer ignore it.
By them he meant people like me.
Those were days in which I no longer belonged to what was called ‘the Dutchman’. That was probably fine, we all live here, but in the rush of the election results, the concepts of Dutchman and PVV voter were somewhat confused.
The man and I spoke for a long time, too long for his wife, who trembled as she made her way to the car, and too short to get to the heart of the matter. It went from care, via asylum seekers and Ukraine to housing and the environment.
Sometimes we agreed. Sometimes not.
Next to us, two older people placed a sign with texts such as ‘salvation is near’. They secretly eavesdropped on our conversation. They smiled every now and then but they didn’t interfere with anything.
Everyone looked for salvation elsewhere. The asylum seeker from Nigeria I had spoken to shortly before hoped to find her in the Netherlands. He got here through human trafficking, he said. His first asylum application was rejected. Now he did a new one.
He was wearing slippers with socks inside and was lifting a plastic shopping bag. Life wasn’t about possessions, he said. Everything evaporates. The sand we walk on contains the remains of our ancestors.
I wrote down the concerns of the PVV voter in my notebook. His wife had already taken the groceries to the car. I just hoped she had warmed up there, because it was long in material and I suddenly felt it necessary to tell her that I too had concerns.
Journalists are sometimes just ordinary people.
Normally I would have passed him by. He likes me just as well. The way we pass hundreds of people every day. Now we had spoken and I didn’t know if that helped but it seemed like the only thing we could do.
“I’m really going now,” I said when I started shaking too. “Otherwise you won’t stop.”
He laughed, shook my hand and looked for his wife. Together they drove back to their ‘outside’, where they would wait for the future, just like me.