Two_Blankets_Three

One person I will not forget, but certainly won’t miss, is Sayid from Mosul, Iraq. The asylum seekers suspected Sayid of spying on us and telling everything he knew to the director of the ASC, to Social Services, and to the IND. I knew for sure the Dutch people did not ask him to, but rather, he did so of his own free will, because this was just the way he was. He was simply a blabbermouth. Sayid was in his twenties, with his hair combed up in front. He spoke Dutch and English in addition to Arabic. In those days I didn’t know yet what the internet was, but now I can assure you that Sayid was the Google of the ASC. He knew everything, wanted to know everything, and was prepared to pass everything on. Whether this was his way of getting attention, or whether his soul was poisoned, I don’t know. You can only comprehend Sayid if you’re an Iraqi, because in Iraq there are a lot of people like him, well trained by Saddam Hussein. I’m sorry, but I have to tell you a joke now that explains the new Iraqi spirit, which Saddam Hussein created between 1968 and 2003 to pit Iraqis against one another, and to begrudge each other everything: Two Iraqis are given the death sentence. They ask the first Iraqi what his last wish is. He says, “I want to see my mother before I die.” Then they ask the second Iraqi what his last wish is, and he says, “That he does not see his mother.” If you understand this joke, then you’re halfway to understanding Iraq’s problems.

If you didn’t know him well, you’d think Sayid was a good guy. He got along with all the asylum seekers, with all nationalities. Being open, but also being a crafty sycophant, made it look like he fit in. The Dutch people, too, were always overly friendly to him, and there was an air of special treatment. It was for this very reason that the asylum seekers assumed he was spying on them.

Residents often saw Sayid leaving the director’s office, a place off-limits to any other asylum seeker. He would often chat with the Social Services staffers, but so did other asylum seekers who spoke good English or Dutch. At first there was some doubt as to Sayid’s connection with the Hollanders, but after Serdar decided to sew his lips together, that doubt evaporated, and everyone’s suspicions were confirmed.

Serdar, a Kurdish asylum seeker, had been in the ASC for thirteen years when he decided to sew his lips shut. He definitely had help doing it, but only a few people knew that it was his friend Arshad. Serdar himself was obviously in no position to say who it was. The situation was tricky for the staff at the ASC, because when Social Services called in the Foreigners’ Police, and they went to Serdar’s room, they were surprised to see a woman there who had been brought into the ASC posing as a visitor. Their hands were tied, because the woman was a journalist. She showed them a slip of paper Serdar had given her. On it was written, in Serdar’s handwriting and in Dutch, that he had sewn his lips together so he would die of hunger, because that was better than waiting any longer than the thirteen years he had already spent in the procedure. The journalist was removed from the ASC, but there was already a television crew waiting at the gate. So Serdar’s story trickled into the media, and there was nothing Social Services, the IND, or the Foreigners’ Police could do about it. Serdar had organized it well.

That day, I heard Sayid say he couldn’t possibly have sewn his lips together himself, but on the day it happened, Arshad had been looking for a small needle to mend a shirt. So less than an hour later, Arshad was summoned to Social Services, and later we heard he’d been punished: his W-document was confiscated and his pocket money withheld for a month.

I’ll never forget Serdar’s sewn-up mouth. It looked gruesome, and the children in the ASC thought so, too. At first they got close to him and stared in amazement, but when his lips started to swell and his face took on a strange look, they avoided the orange wing, for fear of bumping into him. If they saw Serdar coming, they would run away or dive into the nearest room.

Dorine Janssen, Serdar’s contact person from Social Services, visited his room regularly in an attempt to open a dialogue with him. And although Serdar spoke good Dutch, Dorine asked one of the other Kurds to translate what she said into Kurdish, and asked me to translate into Arabic, which he also spoke fluently.

“I don’t think it’s wise to keep your lips sewn shut,” Dorine said in her pleasant, compassionate voice. Her face seemed to mirror the pain his lips must have been in. Serdar wrote something in Arabic on a scrap of paper and gave it to me, so that I could read aloud. I let my eyes fall upon the paper, but didn’t want Dorine to see my reaction, so I did not look up right away. She asked me what it said.

“For thirteen years you people have sewed my lips together in this place, and that was never a problem. Now I’ve done it myself, and you don’t want me to. Why?” Then Serdar added to the note that he would only allow them to remove the stitches if the IND would act on his asylum request, and that if they did so forcibly, his Dutch friends outside the ASC would contact the media. He pulled out a newspaper from the drawer under his bed and handed it to Dorine. In it was an article with a photograph of his maimed face. Dorine looked at the photo, and with a serious expression she got up and left.

Shortly thereafter, instead of someone from Social Services, a woman from the medical clinic started coming by. She always brought a scale with her, to weigh him. She was perplexed by the fact that Serdar did not lose any weight, even though he was unable to eat. When she asked him about it, he did not reply by note, and from that moment on, he refused to get on the scale. Soon enough, Sayid started spreading a rumor among the asylum seekers that he’d seen one of the Kurdish men buy little straws through which Serdar was able to drink soup. Sayid was careful about the way he spread this gossip, because he had seen first-hand how violent Serdar could be if you riled him.

A few days later, a man with a necktie and briefcase—he was from the IND—came, together with an interpreter, to have a word with Serdar via written notes. The interview, which lasted for more than two hours, took place in his room, because Serdar refused to go anywhere else. After that visit from the IND, Serdar finally agreed to go to a hospital, but he wouldn’t tell anyone why. At about four o’clock an ambulance drove up, and to our surprise, Serdar had all his belongings with him. Later, we heard that after the thread was removed from his lips, he was moved to another ASC. We never saw him again. His good friend Arshad told me that Serdar only agreed to be taken to the hospital after the man from the IND told him that he’d been given humanitarian asylum.