I have been seeing her around, meanwhile waiting for our kids to get out of school. A big woman, with a bigger mane of curly raven dark hair. One day, she just walked to me, faced me, and started talking in turkish. As far as I could tell, it was friendly, but I couldn’t (and can’t) tell very far. So in my best dutch I excused myself, saying that I could not understand her. She was surprised.
-But you look turkish!
She said without thinking, and then, she blushed. So the two of us laughed at the same time. Smiling I explained.
-Thanks but no, sorry. I am from South America, but perhaps some ancestor…
-But, are you married with a turkish woman then?
-No… why?
-Well, your daughter has a turkish name…
So I had to explain that my son liked to carry his hair long, and indeed his face was delicate… but he was a boy. And actually his name -Ayden- meant fire in a celtic language. We didn’t know that it was a turkish maiden name too. So she explained this time, after blushing again, and excusing herself about a million times and get to laugh together again, that Aidin is indeed a maiden name in turkish, and that it meant light. We wondered for a while about the coincidence, or the shared roots and meanings, and then our kids run out and interrupted us, and in one way or another, we did not talk again that much. But we kept smiling to each other up to the day that our kids went away from school, and we saw each other no more.
As any other kid, in those days of primary school Ayden had extra lessons. There was aikido, and music, and for few years street dance, and eventually guitar. And swimming. In the summer the kids were encouraged to maintain a little potager, in the winter there were workshops and indoors courses. All these happened about one or maximum two hours after school closed. So, instead of going home in a hurry, have some lunch and bike in a hurry to the next thing, we picnicked.
Utrecht is a fairly segregated city. We do not live in the center, and the school that we choose for Ayden is yet further away. The neighborhood is what the dutch call, in their talented bluntness “a black neighborhood” meaning that the percentage of migrants is way above average. But it could also be called a “green neighborhood”, since it was designed and built in the sixties, following the ideas of Le Corbusier. So there are big apartments blocks, but there is also plenty of green space between. We used to go to a square facing a path, and a little lake. And meanwhile eating a couple of sandwiches and chatting about school and life, we saw the people passing by.
Besides other parents bringing their kids home, the retired people. Mostly immigrants, so relatively young elders limping, with early retirement and a damaged body after a life of hard physical work, accompanied by younger looking women, conservatively dressed and perhaps with a head scarf. Also, here and there, at the other extreme of the age pyramid, young people hunched and looking around, in between defensive and defyiant. Some perhaps hoping to deal some hashish and became rich and be able to sing rap for all their remaining lives. Most just killing time, waiting for a chance at a job, in a discriminatory society and in austerity economical dogma. But also the street-coaches, and the parents-of-the-street, and many other voilunteer organizations that placed people in the street to talk with the young out there, and prevent petty crime and unemployment. A young man in a long beard and a kaftan, walking behind, or ahead, a beatiful young woman of dark skin, brown big eyes and aquiline nose, in a mini skirt and a blue jean jacket, without a care in the world. And a very elder lady, walking straight behind a rotator, delighted and disoriented at seeing the richness of differences that her old nighborhood got to have.
And just like the window of my cafe in the center, here another one, to another Utrecht.