‘In my genes I still resemble the boy from the past, but not in my behavior anymore’

The mountains in the north of Morocco

‘This photo with the car was taken years later, I lived in these mountains until I was 15. There are no photos of me as a child, for the simple reason that there was no money for them. I come from a small village in the north of Morocco, which has only recently had electricity, a well and a road. Before that you could only get there by donkey or horse. I walked to school: an hour there and an hour and a half back, uphill. Heavy, but I didn’t think it was a punishment because I came home every day with new knowledge.

‘Before registering at primary school, photos had to be taken. Before that I went with my grandfather to a town nearby. Well, town, there were two or three streets. Those photos from then are now enlarged and hang in my parental home.

‘I was an inquisitive child and wanted to become a poet. Back then I liked to look at the little things in life. Take these mountains: many people there see them as dry obstacles. But I think they are beautiful and I can ask existential questions: why are they here? Who put them down? How long have they been there?

‘Until his death in 1973, my grandfather lived with us – my mother, brother and four sisters – because my father had already left for the Netherlands. Grandpa was the ruler. Not in a negative sense, but more as it should be in a patriarchal society. He was a former soldier, who slept on the roof with a carbine because the occasional cattle thieves passed by. We had a goat and a cow, otherwise you couldn’t get milk. After his death, I was 12 or 13, I had to take over his duties: fetch water, order hay. ‘Let’s start with family reunification to the Netherlands’, my father said after two years. The main reason was safety; there was no one left to protect us.’

The identity document of Ahmed Aboutaleb

‘We arrived on Sunday, on Monday we reported to the aliens police and Tuesday at the consulate, where you have to register as a migrant in the Netherlands. This is a photo of my ID card.

‘We went to live in The Hague. The first two years were a drama. My father didn’t speak the language yet and he didn’t know the Netherlands at all. At night I would sometimes cry in bed wondering what I was going to do with my life, what would become of me. Nobody advised me.

‘It took a long time before my father heard from an acquaintance that there was a good LTS nearby. But my language problems got in the way. I was able to learn Dutch at a fellow school. There was a lady, Alice, who spoke some French and was able to teach me my first Dutch. She has been my salvation.

‘A year later I was transferred back to the lts. There was a fantastic director who gave me an incredible welcome. That’s how my school career started. 15 is a difficult age to move to another country. I especially found it difficult to master the Enlightenment as an ideal of life. It must have taken me another fifteen years to realize that; why you as a human being should put your own truth into perspective. I am a kind of chip baked in Morocco and programmed in the Netherlands.’

During his swearing in as alderman of Amsterdam with mayor Job Cohen

“The city needs you,” said former mayor Schelto Patijn, Job Cohen’s predecessor, to me over the phone. It was early 2004 and I was asked to become an alderman in Amsterdam, but I didn’t want to. It was only when Patijn called me that I decided to take on the position. At the time I didn’t feel what he meant, but in November that year I knew he was right. Theo van Gogh was murdered and that was a dramatic turn in my life. Perhaps the most important, both in my work and privately. Suddenly we were faced with the enormous task of keeping the city quiet, and in that moment I discovered that there was only one person who could do it: me.

‘I felt that someone had to stand up and say, ‘This far and no further, the limit has been reached.’ A great burden, also because from that day on I received threats – partly because of the speech I gave in the El Kabir mosque. Beforehand I had asked Cohen to look at the text. He handed it back to me and had only one word written on it: “Courage.” I knew there would be criticism, that some of the Muslims would feel abandoned by me. But the city was about to catch fire.

‘Am I brave? It’s more that I have to do things myself. I want to make sure I gave it my all. No idea where that drive comes from, that’s how I’m baked. I can’t stand injustice either. I can’t imagine why people wrong others. That sounds naive, but I just really don’t understand. My father, who was an imam, taught me some wise lessons from childhood, including: be sincere, and good intention conquers all. That’s how I live. What I learned from my years in Amsterdam was also a good lesson: never dive.’

Baking bread in the Rotterdam district of Carnisse

‘We used to have a clay oven in our yard. My mother baked Moroccan bread in it and made small sandwiches for the children from the leftover dough. With fresh butter, often creamed that same morning, and if we had a little money also with some olive oil. Food connects, so I took the idea of ​​the sandwiches to Carnisse (vulnerable neighborhood in Rotterdam, red.), where we bake bread with the children. Through them I can talk to their parents.

‘A migrant in another country is nothing. You start at zero, are mistrusted and seen as a fortune seeker. It’s a heavy price, that’s how I still experience it. Life has led me to this moment, and I am content. But all this was not my plan. As a person I don’t believe in plans, because you only have a limited grip on life. I surrender to it, accept it as fact.

‘When I get up in the morning I think: nice day, I’m going to try to experience it as I think is right. Of course I still have wishes and dreams, but they are small. I don’t need to become a landowner or roam the world, but I do want to be with my father when he dies, for example. In my genes I still resemble the boy from the past, but not in my behavior anymore. Looking back, I’m glad I left at the time. In that I recognize what many still want. But it is almost as if as a migrant you have to become mayor to be taken seriously. That is a painful conclusion.’