ONE DAY THERE WAS A fracas as a result of a ruling in the magistrate’s court. The magistrate had ruled that Herengracht 51 had been illegally occupied by the squatters who lived there and had ordered the inhabitants to vacate the turn-of-the-century warehouse or face forcible eviction.
The street had already been barricaded. A skip filled with builders’ rubble and abandoned furniture had been manoeuvred onto the cobbles, blocking the way. I was nervous. My first experience of this potential violence had left me not wanting to experience it again. I was content to attend the squatter movement’s rallies and demonstrations, but here we being were required to defend a squat from forced eviction by the Mobiele Eenheid (ME). We had already seen their vans, which had windows reinforced with grilles against potential stone throwers, drawn up in the streets behind the Groote Keijser. The police were all over the place, armed with metal shields, helmets and batons. They were busy drilling, their visors pulled down over their faces, which made them ominously anonymous. They were more like a phalanx of blue-uniformed minotaurs than human beings. They walked down the street in formation, drumming their batons against their shields, setting up an intimidating rattle that echoed over the water of the canal. My stomach knotted. There would be violence today, that was certain, the only unknown its degree of ferocity.
I was ambivalent about the proposed defence of the building. Although I needed no convincing about the moral force of the squatters’ cause – after all, I was a squatter myself – I worried about the tactics, and especially about the use of violence. I had been considerably influenced in this doubt by Mandla by now, who derided the squatters’ tactics. He had no time for anarchism.
But in the face of Mauritz’s fervour and the beauty of him that morning, I was torn. Freshly showered, in his anarchist T-shirt, cargo pants and Doc Martens, with his keffiyeh tucked into the lapels of his denim jacket with all its badges, he looked the part of the romantic revolutionary. My comrade lover. How could I resist? He kissed me with fervour in the street outside Singel 500 before we set out.
A masked squatter waved us through the barricade. At the entrance to Herengracht 51 a large group of squatters had gathered. Many carried makeshift weapons – the customary metal pipes and baseball bats. I was unnerved by their intended use. Bart was there, breaking the crowd into groups and giving them instructions. I stuck close to Mauritz, who was delegated leader of our group. Most of the squatters were instructed to barricade themselves inside the heavily fortified building. They were to resist the eviction with projectiles and petrol bombs.
Bart had a hand-drawn map with crosses marked on it, showing where units of the ME had been gathering since early in the morning. You could see the logic of their deployment. Their strategy was clearly to encircle the immediate vicinity of the Groote Keijser and contain the rioting that was certain to ensue. They would try to hem the squatters into the side streets and make arrests. Our strategy was to get behind the police lines and to create diversions in the surrounding streets to draw them off into the larger city-scape and divide their forces. Our small group followed Mauritz who, demonstrating a keen knowledge of the geography of this part of the city, took us through a series of side streets and back alleys until we came out on the gracht directly behind a phalanx of ME. There were about fifty in all. They were about three metres away from us, facing towards Herengracht 51. They had not seen us.
Mauritz drew us into the shelter of a side street.
“Cover your faces,” he instructed. “The streets will be crawling with plainclothes cops.” He tied his keffiyeh across his face so that just his eyes showed under his fringe of dark hair. Two squatters at the back of our group moved forward and drew crowbars from beneath their coats. With these they began methodically levering up the pavement cobblestones. Others, clearly already schooled in the art of street-fighting, began piling up the stones in a curiously neat and ordered pile. Mauritz and a few others moved forward in a line until they were very close behind the ME. Others formed a chain and passed the stones down the line.
All of this took place methodically, with quiet precision. It was as if time had been arrested and our movement reduced to slow motion. The noise of traffic and the overhead shrieking of gulls had receded, leaving us cocooned by the metallic ring of crowbars against cobbles.
Then the stillness, the eerie state of suspension, was rudely shattered. Mauritz began to run, shouting loudly. He hurled a cobblestone into the line of ME. It bounced across the roof of a riot van and struck a policeman on the thigh. The noise of the city came roaring back and the banshee wail of a siren rose up from beyond the ME line. Taken by surprise and shouting expletives, the ME turned to face the onslaught. Our cobblestones bounced off their plastic riot shields like gunshots, but they held their line. Cobbles ricocheted across the street. The window of a bakery shattered. A small group of shoppers who had stopped to watch quickly scattered.
I had hung back, absorbed by the spectacle, trying to steady my breathing. Then someone pushed me impatiently from behind. I turned and saw a girl in a balaclava. She handed me a rock. “This is no time for sight-seeing,” she remonstrated.
I ran forward until I was abreast with Mauritz and hurled the rock. It fell short of the ME.
“Like this!” shouted Mauritz. He drew his whole body back in an arc, his arm stretched out behind him, and threw the rock overhand, putting all of his weight into the motion. The rock flew through the air and smacked into the side of a van. I tried again and this time my cobblestone, too, flew through the air and found its target. It bounced with a sickening thud into an ME’s riot shield. The man stumbled backwards under the force of the blow. A wave of sudden exhilaration swept over me. Mauritz whooped and hugged me. He kissed me through the cloth of his keffiyeh.
Then the ME line charged. They began running towards us with purpose and intent. Mauritz gripped my arm. “Run!” he shouted. I turned and ran, following him as closely as I could.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a hooded squatter stumble. The ME were on him in a heartbeat, tripping him up, then beating him savagely with their truncheons. He cowered in the street, holding his arms over his head to ward off the blows.
I ran as fast as I could, the insistent rhythm of heavy ME boots resounding on the stones not far behind. Mauritz ducked and weaved ahead of me. Several squatters, fleeter of foot, keffiyehs and scarves flying in their wake, sped past me. Mauritz gestured and ducked into an alley. I slipped in after him where I immediately crashed through a pile of garbage bags. Mauritz was at the end of the alley, bent forward with his hands on his knees, panting. A moment later the line of ME flashed past, pursuing other prey. I was hugely relieved.
“We have to get out of this area,” said Mauritz. “We need to get to the Prinsengracht.” He mentioned the name of a fortified squat a few blocks away and we started off, still breathing heavily.
As we moved out of the shelter of the alleyway into the adjoining street, an ME van came speeding past. It braked hard, then screeched into a U-turn, the smell of burnt tyre rising up from the tar. They had spotted us, our keffiyehs identifying us as street rioters. The van made for us at speed, siren wailing.
I willed my legs to carry me over the flagstones of the kerb. My lungs were burning, blood pounding through the veins of my body like a transfusion of acid. Mauritz upended a rubbish bin in the path of the van and it swerved dangerously, giving us a momentary advantage. As we turned the corner, the squat came into view. I could make out a group of squatters atop the barricade bridging the street. This was an improvised wall of broken masonry and beams. They reached down and pulled us up on top of the barricade. The ME van screeched to a halt at the end of the opening of the street from which we had just escaped. Then, shockingly, there was an explosion. First came a loud cracking sound and then a petrol bomb exploded on the roof of the van. Blue-green flames engulfed the vehicle and a haze of heat and fumes distorted our view. The geometric proportions of a bridge over the canal swam crazily as if in a reflecting pool.
The ME personnel spilled out of the van and regrouped under a tree. A policeman began spraying the burning vehicle with a fire extinguisher.
Mauritz and I took refuge in the Prinsengracht. The squatters there offered us beers and reported back to us what had happened that morning. At Herengracht 51 the ME had been met with a barrage of projectiles – bricks, old furniture, builders’ rubble, roof tiles and Molotov cocktails. Unable to breach the doors, they had pulled back. Units like ours had meanwhile fanned out into the city, creating confrontations, distracting the ME from the area immediately around Herengracht 51. Most of the activists had moved on to Stationsplein, the vast square in front of the station, where trams departed for the city centre. The ME, meanwhile, were regrouping across the water on the Prins Hendrikkade, biding their time, probably revising their strategy before clearing the square.
After a while Mauritz and I left the squat through a door that led onto an alley behind the Prinsengracht and we made our way through the streets to Stationsplein. There were some three hundred squatters gathered in front of the station chanting derision at an even larger number of ME in formation on the opposite side of the canal. Some squatters continued to throw stones but the distance was too great. They fell short, splashing into the dark water of the canal.
In the melee on the square the atmosphere was tense. Some response by the ME was expected. On the outer edges of the square life continued as normal. It was a bizarre hiatus. People were eating stroopwafels at outdoor café tables and a herring stall was doing some brisk business with wax cones of fried potato chips brimming with mayonnaise or peanut sauce.
Then there was a sudden sharp retort, like a Chinese cracker-jack, only amplified. A flock of pigeons that had been feeding on the dropped detritus on the square took flight and wheeled above us. There were several more retorts. A teargas canister landed between me and Mauritz. We both jumped back. A pall of gas spread over the square. I pulled my keffiyeh over my face, but still found myself choking on the acrid fumes. Most of the squatters tried to flee in the direction of the station, but by now the grilles were coming down over the entrances. People pushed and shoved against each other, trying to escape the gas. The clients at the cafés towards the eastern edges of the square got up and fled and the herring stall was up-ended. Mauritz pulled at me and I followed him, head down, towards the Damrak, the main shopping street. There we sheltered behind a stationary tram. On the square there was mayhem. The ME, running, beating their batons on their shields, had now crossed the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, supported this time by helmeted police on motorbikes. They circled the disintegrating crowd of squatters, effectively preventing their escape, although I did see two or three take to the dark waters and swim away to the opposite bank, their coats slowing their progress.
The ME began to fan out. Truncheons rose and fell viciously. Squatters crouched on their haunches and tried to protect their heads with their arms.
The tram was not going to afford us protection for long so Mauritz and I took off down the Damrak. Then Mauritz twisted his foot in the tram rail and went down. Immediately the ME bore down on him, their batons rising and falling in a demented fury of violence. I heard my name being called. It was Cas on his bicycle. “Jump on!” he called. I knew I had only a second to make a decision. As Cas came alongside me I swung my body onto the carrier of his bike, a move I had long perfected. The bicycle swayed with my sudden weight, but Cas righted it and pedalled furiously. I held onto him. I could feel his muscles tensing under his coat. Even though I was gripped by fear, the irony was not lost on me: that the ME had delivered me, if only temporarily, and in the most inauspicious circumstances, to the glories of Cas’s body.
Cas flung his bike down on the Spui. He was buckled over, choking with exertion. I thought he was going to throw up. I drew him over to the café tables opposite the Athenaeum bookshop and fetched him some iced water from the bar. Meanwhile I was worried about Mauritz.
“Let’s wait,” said Cas when he had recovered his breath, “until the ME have gone. They’ll have arrested him anyway. There’s nothing you can do for him right now.”
We came down from the headiness of the day with two Duvels each and several intoxicating jenevers. Even this far away from Stationsplein there was a tinge of teargas on the air. After a while conversation petered out and I fell into a drunk contemplation of Cas’s beauty. Then, with a guilty start, I remembered Mauritz. I decided I’d go back to the Singel and see what news there was of the events outside the station and what I might do to find him. Leaving Cas on his third beer, I walked the short distance on foot.
I found Bart drinking coffee at the kitchen table and listening to news reports on Radio Stad. He confirmed what Cas had said – those who had not escaped had been rounded up and were being charged with public violence at the Marnixstraat police station. The movement’s lawyers were arranging bail. Only those identified as leadership would be held overnight and possibly brought up on more serious charges. I should not worry, Bart said reassuringly. They would let Mauritz go.
I went up to my room. I was dizzy from the teargas, the lingering effects of the Duvel and the chaos of the day. I lay down on my bed, a sequence of disconnected images running through my head. Finally I fell into a shallow sleep in which the image of the geometric proportions of a bridge over the canal swimming in the haze of the petrol bomb as if in a reflecting pool haunted me.
Then somebody was shaking me by the shoulder. Mauritz kissed me awake and grinned. “We showed them,” he said. I hugged him, but he groaned in pain. He had a black eye. I carefully unbuttoned his shirt and then peeled the T-shirt from his shoulders. He took off his own trousers, whimpering softly as he did so. He stood in the pale glow of the overhead light, his alabaster torso absorbing light, turning to mustard. There was a series of angry welts across his back and buttocks and a bruise, already blue, spreading across his flank. I poured a set of jenevers and we toasted the day. Then I pulled Mauritz down to me on the bed and laid him on his stomach. I leaned over him and kissed the back of his neck and the bruises on his broad white shoulders. He sighed. His body was acrid and his hair smelt of teargas. I ran my tongue as delicately as possible over his welts, feeling their roughness, their invasion of his smooth skin. He shuddered at my touch.