“NOS television says we're the major European supplier of Islamic jihadists. They recruit them at train stations and homeless shelters, trying to persuade them to join ISIS in Syria.”
“We should take their passports.”
“And keep them here? Are you crazy? Let them go and get themselves killed.”
Katrien has heard much of this before. It no longer shocks or worries her. Her best friend, Joury, is Muslim. Rafik is Muslim. The Netherlands is made up of immigrants. They have always gotten along. Or so she has been told.
Somewhat sheepishly, Rafik ambles out of the kitchen and joins Evi. He puts his arm around her and kisses her cheek. Katrien senses that if it weren't for sailing, Rafik would not bother making the short trip from Amsterdam to see her.
Later, Katrien watches Evi eye Rafik from across the room, willing him to look at her, hoping he senses her gaze, the way lovers do. When he doesn't look up, Evi turns away, disappointment showing in her face.
Katrien wants Rafik to love only her and her family. She does not want to share him. Even at eleven, she knows that is unfair and feels ashamed. Evi has done nothing to deserve getting hurt. Except wanting to be loved. She feels sorry for her.
Finally the guests leave. Rafik says goodnight to Jana as if he intends to take Evi home, but Evi gently lays a hand on his forearm, saying, “No, you should stay. I'll catch a ride with the van Loons.” He doesn't argue about it. He walks her to the door, kisses her, and says he'll see her soon.
Tension leaves the room. Everyone relaxes. The strangers have all gone.
Hans and Marta excuse themselves and head up to bed. Jana, Rafik, and Pieter settle by the potbellied stove and chat softly, the three entirely at ease with one another.
Fog settles in the stonewalled courtyard, dahlias and cornflowers, overgrown, need to be cut back. Pine logs pop, smells of dinner linger. On the stereo, Andre Segovia strums Scarlatti.
A lovely cocoon of music, love, full bellies, wine-fuzzy minds.
While the adults whisper, Katrien snuggles in Rafik's lap, dozing. Too old for it, but she hangs onto the ritual. She folds herself into his body. His solid torso and muscular legs are so much more comfortable than her father's bony lap. Perhaps it is because he is a politieagent, a cop, that she feels so safe. Pehaps it's because her parents trust him so implicitly. Perhaps because he smells of pipe tobacco and cumin and salt air and the deep woods.
He is a big brown bear, and she his cub.
She wants this evening, this feeling, never to end.
14E Montessorischool de Jordaan
The children gather in groups of five, attempting to rebuild the great city of Petra out of terracotta-colored clay.
Their model of Petra—walls and towers, streets and courtyards, pools and fountains—covers an entire cafeteria table. For half a year the children have been working on it, every lesson—math, geology, ecology, history, art, political science—center around the city.
“Remember,” says Gertruda, “Petra is in a desert. You need to find water for thirty thousand people. Where are you going to find it? All around you is nothing but sandstone.”
Gertruda is young with long honey-colored hair, which she wears in a thick braid down her back. She has hiked all around the world by herself, and spent last summer mountain climbing in Switzerland. Just looking at her you can feel cool Alpine breezes on your cheek, or so Katrien imagines. All the children are in love with her.
Katrien and Joury have already figured out they have to pipe in water, and have found a nearby spring on the map. Gertruda then gives them a problem to solve: at what angle should they lay the pipe to provide maximum flow? Already their team is busy with white PCV pipes, buckets of water, and stopwatches. At first they think that a higher angle will create a faster flow, but discover that is not the case. They are close to finding an answer, and already Katrien has realized that once they get water to Petra, they need a reservoir to hold it until the city needs it.
The principal, a thin woman with short brown hair, walks into the room, tapping on the door jamb with her knuckles. She often wanders in to watch the classes, but today she motions Gertruda to the door. Katrien thinks she looks nervous, and hopes no one in Gertruda's family is hurt.
After a short intense exchange, the principal leaves, and Gertruda claps her hands. “That's all for today, children. Neaten your stations, please. We are cutting school short today. Your parents have been called and will come to pick you up soon.”
“My mother and father work in Haarlem,” says one girl.
“Why do we have to leave?” asks a boy. “We have a math test today.”
Katrien sees Gertruda struggling to answer, trying not to lie—children must never be lied to—worried about upsetting them. “You will make up your classes tomorrow. Your parents will explain everything. Put away your books and get your coats quickly and quietly. Everyone . . . single file into the lunchroom.”
As the children march down the hallway, teachers lean against the walls, talking on cellphones, whispering heatedly to one another. Other teachers crowd in the principal's office, watching the news on television. Katrien cannot hear what the newscaster is saying, but sees a clip of a crowd pushing and shoving down a smoke-filled street.
Dismissed from classes, students grab their cellphones out of their lockers. It isn't long before a boy from a higher grade taps into his Twitter account. Word spreads quickly around the lunch room. Groups huddle around cellphones to watch live video.
Joury's mother is one of the first parents to arrive. She gives a percussive greeting to Katrien, then tells Joury to get her things. She gathers several other Muslim boys and girls, telling them to follow her. Her headscarf, usually pinned carefully below her chin, slips as she takes the smaller children's hands, leading them out. Joury waves to Katrien.
Katrien overhears two teachers arguing with the principal.
“I can't get ahold of half of the parents.”
“Call their emergency numbers. We will give them an hour to pick up the children, then we will take them to safety.”
“Where? The church? If they are bombing churches and synagogues, we can't take the children there.”
“The police station? Where is our bombshelter?”
None of them know. They practice fire drills, not bomb drills.
The bells of Westerkerk clang in the distance.
Allahu Akbar
Katrien sits between her parents on their bed to watch television. They sit close, even though the evening is warm.
The newscaster for NPO Nieuws reports that six young actors from the avant-garde Jenever Theater group have been murdered while dining in a private home on the outskirts of Amsterdam. “The troupe is renown for their biting satire of politics and religion, and often present sketches highly critical of the way Muslims treat women and homosexuals.” Their throats were slit ear to ear. A note, pinned to the chest of one of the men, stated that the Jenever Theater group was “a sacrilege to Allah,” and that the actors were killed because they “terrorized and mocked Islam.” It was signed Allahu Akbar, written in blood—Allah is greater.
An Islamic terrorist group closely linked to al Qaeda, and dedicated to restoring a global caliphate under Islamic law, takes credit for the murders.
School is canceled the next day, and Jana stays home from work. At 10 AM, Katrien answers the phone—Rafik calling from the politiebureau. He calmly asks how her science project is going, then asks to speak to Jana. Katrien hunts down her mother, who walks quickly to the phone. Rafik tells Jana that neither she nor Katrien should leave the house. “Everyone is going nuts,” he says. “We're getting calls from all over the country. Twenty-six mosques and a dozen madrassahs have been torched.”
In the days that follow, it becomes a ritual, sitting together to watch the evening news. Muslim districts in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht have erupted in heavy violence. “I don't want you to go anywhere near Oud-West,” Rafik says, calling again after 9 PM. The
Oud-West is southwest of Jordan, not far. “The neighborhood around the El-Tawheed mosque is a major war zone. They blew up the Portuguese Israelite Synagogue and the Jewish Historical Museum.” By “they” he means Muslim extremists.
“Are you still at work?” Jana asks.
“We're sleeping in shifts at the station. I haven't slept in twenty-four hours.”
“Would you like a change of clothes from your apartment? Some food? How can I help?”
“No, no. I'm fine, Jana. Please don't leave the house.”
The Dutch prime minister interrupts NOS Journaal to declare a state of emergency for the entire country. He tells everyone to stay home and to stay calm.
The following day separate jihadist cells blow up three dikes and two train stations. Dozens of blocks are flooded. Public transportation is completely shut down. Ten thousand people march in a demonstration at the Dam in front of the Royal Palace. The demonstrators demand a change of government. They demand sharia law.
The Netherlands is in a state of civil war, which touches off uprisings in England, Belgium, France, and Germany.
The dragon has awoken, swinging its tail, breathing fire.
As the weeks go by, the Islamic nations of the Middle East and Northern Africa organize into the United Nations of Islam and elect a new caliphate, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic World. Their objective is nothing less than the Islamization of all of Europe and Africa. Global jihad.
Later historians will call it the beginning of the Great Eurabian War.
In The Netherlands, as in Germany, the security forces and armed services, are forty percent Muslim. They overrun the House of Parliament and local administrative offices, replacing local police with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, and al Queda.
On June 16, 2012, the Royal Family flees to Denmark to organize a temporary government in exile. The Netherlands is declared the Islamic Republic of Holland, instituting sharia law across the land.
Three, 16 March 2020
Fredrika Maria
Tonight we meet at a barge on Keisersgracht in the Southern canal belt. The Fredrika Maria was built in 1914 to transport sand and gravel from IJmuiden, converted into a houseboat in the 1960s. Hippies painted it in rainbow colors and grew weed in flower boxes. In 2006 the Restauratoren Nederland restored it, and made it into a boat museum for tourists. The flower boxes are now gone, as are the tourists. Dove gray colors its hull. But there is a bit of color. If you look closely, you'll see a curly pink squiggle, written in crayon on a piece of paper, taped to the inside of a porthole.
A pig's tail, the symbol of the Resistance.
We often meet on one canal boat or another. Since the Islamic Council forbids bars and cafés, clandestine café restaurants have sprung up in the canal boats. When they hear there is going to be a raid, they pick up and move on. Word gets around where they are, and they open again for business.
The Islamic Council would like to ban the barges, but housing is in short supply and thousands of people live on houseboats. Also, many on the Islamic Council live in an exclusive area in eastern Amsterdam, IJburg, a small city of luxurious houseboats, built by hip entrepreneurs who wanted more space than the cramped traditional houses of Amsterdam. If the Islamic Council banned houseboats, half of them would have to move.
Inside the Fredrika Maria, the ceilings are low, the rooms twenty feet across. The walls and ceilings are painted white, the original plank floor stained dark brown. Portholes look out onto the lapping canal. Skylights above let in the moonlight.
Two dozen people sit at a long table that runs the length of the main room. A potbelly stove sits in one corner, cozy and warm. Coffee and sometimes illegal beer is available. People bring in food they've managed to find, a bag of onions or potatoes. Some fish. Or a chicken. Someone always makes up a stew or soup.
Smells of mushrooms, onions, and beef fills my nostrils. Someone got lucky and brought some stew meat. My mouth waters as I take off my burka and hang it on a hook. Underneath I wear gray slacks and a pink cashmere turtleneck. The others smile at my boldness. It's a lot of pink.
Before the Occupation, pink was the color for breast cancer. People wore pink ribbons and pink T-shirts to show support for their mothers and sisters.
Now pink means something different. It means pig. The Varken Weg. It means you support the underground rebels. If you meet someone and want to know their inclination, you might accidentally lift the sleeve of your burka, and show the cuff of your pink shirt underneath. Or you might draw a curly pig's tail on a napkin, or use your toe to draw in the loose dirt. Like the early Christians who drew a fish in the sand to find other Christians.
It isn't particularly wise to wear so much pink, but little defiances help our morale. Besides, I look good in pink.
Everyone knows everybody here, although theoretically that's not the best policy in the underground. We all know how vulnerable it makes us if one of us is captured and tortured. We should be more cautious, more rigorous. Yet without our friendships, I don't think we could carry on every day risking our lives. It helps keep our fear under control.
We are an odd mix of people. Gays, lesbians, women, atheists, Christians, Jews, and liberal Muslims. We were engineers, teachers, travel agents, hotel clerks, students, entertainers, actors. Some of us live our everyday lives with our actual identities, doing our other work at night or on the sly. Others live solitary lives, far from our families, in hiding, living in the shadows. We belong to one of many hundred small armed resistance cells in Holland. The cells are organized into regions. Each cell has its specialty—manufacture of false identity papers, social services, underground press, propaganda, information and intelligence, the secret army, and labor action.
Many cells adopt names: Zwart Masker, Black Mask, Rotmuffen, Barbarians, Horzels, Hornets, Kraaien, Crows. We are the Watergeuzen, Sea Beggars, another term for pirates.
Our group does a little bit of everything, mostly information, intelligence, and safe passage. Each of us has entered a world of duplicity and lies. All quite naturally, as if we were born sociopaths. I sometimes wonder how we will be able to return to being law-abiding citizens once the war is over.
How do I introduce them to you? We all have many names. Those of us who have converted to Islam have Muslim names, which are on our identity papers, our official names. We have our underground names, which we use among ourselves, and the names we use on missions, forged on identity papers, which change depending on the mission. Then we have the names we wear in the flesh of our hearts, the names we were born with. We almost never reveal our real names, not even to our closest friends. When we do it's like ripping a bandage off a moist wound. It hurts. It makes us feel vulnerable.
I will use our underground names. Some of us choose nicknames, like Berger, who is built like a mountain, or pet names we had as children. Or perhaps a common name.
They know me as Lina.
I slide down and sit next to Rikhart, our forger. Before the war, Rikhart was a cartoonist, who ran into his share of problems with the Islamists. He is a very sweet man who grumbles when you ask for false identification cards overnight. His fakes look better than legitimate papers. He rationalizes his illegal expertise saying he doesn't get paid for his work, therefore he's not profiting from crime. We all need our rationalizations.
Next to Rikhart sits Lars, who can get anything you need on the black market, which is how he makes his living. Like me, Lars started as a courier, but when forging demands got too great for Rikhart, Lars joined him, and helped organize a false paper service. He has contacts inside the Islamic bureaucracy who, upon request, will accidentally leave doors and drawers open in certain offices, where we can break in and steal blank identity cards and passes. He has an impressive collection of various types of official identity cards, passes and permits, birth certificates, and official rubber stamps from the local police. Like Rikhart, Lars is meticulous, dependable, and very gay.
Then there is Kaart, a courier, who
also does one of the most important jobs in the group. He finds a different meeting place in Amsterdam every Friday morning at 9:00 for the cell leaders to meet and plan strategies. He then notifies each member, usually through secondary messengers, so there's no chance that someone from the Landweer will follow him. He arranges food to be at the meeting. Not everyone gets enough to eat, and it's important the leadership doesn't go around fainting. He is constantly on the move, and changes clothes often, or wears a burka to throw off anyone following him. He uses five or six distinctive walks, which he changes out—the stiff-legged businessman, the loose-limbed drifter, the gimp, the old woman. He can look completely different just by the way he holds himself. I'm sure I have passed him in the street and not recognized him, even though he's my cousin.
A dozen or so women sit in the middle of the table. Femke, our communications expert. Anika, transportation, who steals bicycles and cars if we need them. Edda and Truus, who help people in hiding, whom we call the onderduikers—the under divers. Margo heads small arms procurement. You don't want to stumble into her. She almost always carries a few weapons hidden beneath her burka.
Women do most of the running around, spying, and delivery. The men plan sabotage, blow up bridges, free political prisoners, destroy railroads, and fight. These roles are fluid. Each does what he or she does best. Or what's needed at the time. But women have the benefit of being shunned and invisible.
Tonight the women are loud and enjoy themselves. We spend so much time being silent, that when we're with friends it's hard not to be a little boisterous. The men understand and indulge us. They know not to take our flirting seriously.
One or two of us are assassins, but none of us know who. It is a secret we hold as closely as our true names. Women make the best assassins. The Islamists don't expect it. They have so little respect for women, they could never imagine we would be capable of carrying off an assassination. They see us as slow and clumsy in our burkas, so that's how they think of us.
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