He is a striking figure: a thin man wearing a light pink jacket and a tie. In a square I see him dancing alone to music that only he can hear. He keeps his eyes half closed. It is a beautiful sight that someone can be so absorbed in his own world. You used to see such eccentrics more often in Amsterdam, I have the impression. Would this be one of the last?
I want to talk to the man, although I think it’s a shame that I have to get him out of his trance.
“Haven’t I seen you here before?” I ask.
“That is possible.” He takes off his headphones. “I walk for miles through the city every day and if I feel like it, I go dancing somewhere. That’s gymnastics for me.”
“Do you always look so fine?”
He smiles. “I was born next to my mother’s sewing machine. She thought it was important that I dress well and I took that from her. Even when I used, I never looked like a junkie.”
We sit on a bench. Faroek (66) says that he moved with his parents from Paramaribo to the Netherlands in the mid-seventies. He had his MTS diploma and went to work in construction, but he was bullied there. “I couldn’t connect anywhere and then the crash started. First weed, then heroin. My luck was that my parents continued to support me.”
I liked going out and drinking, she didn’t. Now I don’t use alcohol anymore. I’m going to dance if I want to get into a daze
Faroek was an addict for four years, until he started drug addiction on his own. He started working again via Pantar, a social work company for people with a distance to the labor market. He married and raised two children. After thirty years he divorced his wife. “We were too different,” he says. “I liked going out and drinking, she didn’t. Now I don’t use alcohol anymore. I’ll dance if I want to go into a daze.”
“Don’t people bother you when you dance in the street?”
“I often don’t even see them, I’m so concentrated. Actors also have that when they are on stage: they know the audience is there, but it doesn’t hinder them.”
“What kind of reactions do you get?”
“They clap or they shout something. When someone makes a comment, it says more about him than it does about me. A man just said to me: how many women have you hooked up so far? I replied: zero. I’m not there for the women.”
“So you dance only for the pleasure of dancing?”
“You dance better that way. The moves come naturally because you don’t think about how you come across to others. I’m not a great dancer at all, but that’s not the point. I want to feel free.”
“When I first saw you, you seemed to me from another time, when there was more tolerance.”
“Someone else has already said that, but I don’t know what to answer. Everyone sees in me what they want to see. I just keep dancing.”