Dear Bijlmer

The conversations would go something like this:

“So what area are you in?” 

“I live in Bijlmer” 

Pause, their eyebrows raised, “Oh…” like an apology. 

“I like it,” like a challenge. 

The challenge would not be met head on, but I would get the typical: “I would be worried to live there.” “It’s just different.” “It doesn’t feel like the Netherlands.” Classic race neutral language that serves as a very flimsy figleaf for what they really meant. That Bijlmer is the ghetto of Amsterdam, that it does not feel Dutch because the people there are not white, and so how could you ever feel safe there? 

The Bijlmer does have a problematic history. It was designed in the 60s to be an influential example of Modernist architecture and urban planning. Made up of high rise residential complexes, expansive green spaces, and elevated roads, it was meant to become the neighbourhood for the middle class Dutch families of the future. However things did not go as planned. The buildings, instead of modern, were perceived as cold and monotone, and the roads and underpasses, instead of futuristic, were isolated. The Bijlmer did not produce the intended appeal, and when rent prices inevitably fell, it attracted more underprivileged groups who needed affordable housing. When Suriname gained independence in 1975, immigrants from the former Dutch colony were placed in the now increasingly segregated area. The impersonal architecture did little to guarantee social control, and with the high rates of poverty caused by lack of proper infrastructure, the Bijlmer became a place known for criminal activity and drug abuse. Its primarily ethnic population only increased its bad reputation among Amsterdammers, who would come to view the neighbourhood as the first and only Dutch ghetto. 

Then in 1992, the Bijlmerramp - the Bijlmer disaster. The engine failure of a cargo plane caused it to crash, nose-diving directly into an apartment building which housed many illegal immigrants from Suriname, Ghana, and Aruba. It is the worst aviation accident to occur on Dutch grounds, and although it is said that 43 people were killed, it is incredibly likely that many migrant deaths remained uncounted. 

This area which had been abandoned cried for attention from the city government, and finally, efforts for its renewal began. Bijlmer’s initial utopian urban plans were discarded, and the operation focused on social and economic ventures to help employment rates, and reunite the community of this disconnected space. 

And it worked. Bijlmer is not the dangerous neighbourhood that people are still so inclined to believe. 

I’m not really sure what it is, though. It is not a ghetto, it is not a breeding ground for a white girl’s racist sexual fantasies*, it is not a mine for gentrification, and it is definitely not a self-satisfied cheer to commodified multiculturalism and oh so superior Dutch tolerance.

It is many things, beautiful and tangled and disjointed. 

I would go to the market which sold okra and biquinho peppers and herring. I would eat bara when I was sad, jollof rice when happy, and moksi meti when hungover. One day I went on a walk and heard music coming from the distance. I had not seen any signs or notices for any events, so I was surprised when I reached the square to find a festival in full course. 

There was a stage where little children danced to the RRR soundtrack, and their mothers clapped, wearing puffer jackets over their saris. People talked and laughed loudly, it smelled smokey and alive. When it began to rain, no one really seemed to notice. 

I lived with a Bolivian, a Spaniard, a Brazilian, and an Ecuadorian. I worked in a pizza kitchen with a thirty year old Pakistani, a nineteen year old Nigerian, Moroccans, Iranians, Colombians, and of course, a whole pack of Dutch teenage delivery boys. I was the whitest one there, but still not white enough to not be there.  

When Kadisha had a shift with me, we would listen to Nikki Minaj as we cooked, otherwise it was strictly amapiano or latin trap. The girls would show me pictures of their nails or braids they wanted to get done, and I would give out boy advice on absolutely no authority other than being the designated older sister. The boys wouldn’t really acknowledge me, except when they would ask for my lighter, or when I would accidentally make an extra that would very luckily be halal and always mysteriously disappear from behind the oven before the manager spotted the mistake. 

Little brown ladies on the street would take one look at me, and start talking to me in Spanish. We would laugh, and I would feel seen. All it took was one pat on the arm, and I would feel like their granddaughter, because in a way, I am. And we are all here, the cold days making our skin look sickly, our bodies yearning for sun and touch and music, and so we must stick together, show that we recognize each other, pay each other tribute, or we will all fade away in this grey land we were simply not made for. 

I lived in Bijlmer for four months. Every day, I tried to find the common string that held it all together, but I couldn’t. Perhaps that is why I felt so at home there. I know what I am through what I am not. My strings tie me to so many other places and people, some loosely, some tightly, but I do not have one that wraps around myself. 

“Bijlmer just feels different,” they insist. 

And I smile and say, “Yes, and thank God.”