-

44

One day Abdulwahid and I rode our bikes into town. Abdulwahid did not really ride, he zigzagged back and forth over the bicycle path. But he himself thought he was a pretty good cyclist.

When you move to the Netherlands, something changes in your life: cycling becomes more natural than walking. Ask a Hollander how far it is to the station, and he’ll say, “Ten minutes by bike.” But how far it is on foot—this, he has to think about. Most asylum seekers started learning to ride a bike within a couple of months, even before they learned to speak Dutch. There were three ways for an asylum seeker to get their hands on a bicycle: 1. Steal. 2. Buy. 3. Fish out of the canal. I did not believe number 3 either, until I saw it with my own eyes. An Armenian asylum seeker went fishing with a large U-shaped metal hook attached to a rope. I thought for sure he was one of the ones who had gone crazy from waiting, but there he was, bike-fishing in the canal with his homemade fishing rod. The first one he hauled in was rusty and muddy, so he threw it back and kept fishing until he caught a new bike. I also caught my first bike that day. It was a woman’s model, which I still to this day prefer to a man’s bike, because you don’t have to lift up your right leg like a dog peeing against a tree.

Asylum seekers learned to ride a bike on the ASC forecourt. The slowest learner by far was Fatima, because of her weight: if you helped her onto her bike from the right side, she’d fall over to the left, and if you helped her on from the left side, she’d fall over to the right, and the time a sturdy Chechen and I decided to help her onto the bicycle from both sides, it cost me three ribs.

In second place for slow learning was Parishad, an Afghan woman in her mid-fifties. Because of her headscarf and billowing Islamic dress, she totally forgot she was on a bike at all. Before she sat down on the saddle, she would take a deep breath, recite a few holy verses so that Allah would not abandon her, and as soon as she said “now” (the only Dutch word she knew, and this she had only learned in order to learn to ride a bike) we would push her off. Right away she’d start screaming “Allah Akhbar!” as though she was not on a bicycle in the Netherlands, but on a tank in Afghanistan. Her attempts to ride always ended dramatically, because either her headscarf blew off her head, or one of her many skirts flapped up, which she then tried to push back down with both hands, forgetting about the handlebars entirely.

In third place was Zainab, who wanted to learn to ride a bike so she could do her daily shopping at the Turkish market, where the meat was halal. Her problem was that she was terribly unsure of herself, and despite our constant instructions to look ahead, she always forgot where she was. We would point forward, to illustrate that “ahead” was not under her feet, but the minute she started moving she shrieked as if the saddle were a wild animal that might bite her, the handlebars a snake winding its way around her hands, and the pedals two scorpions. When the bicycle fell over, she would hop off it and watch from a safe distance as the wheels spun.

But the most difficult case of all was Abdulwahid. Abdulwahid loved horseback riding and could also ride camels and donkeys. If the dinosaurs had not become extinct, he would have ridden them too. He could drive a truck, a tank, or a bus, so you would think riding a bicycle would be a breeze. He learned quicker than the three ladies, but his problem was that he didn’t really ride, he swerved.

So the Dutch people who passed us that day became irritated, because we rode very slowly, and if Abdulwahid had soaked his tires in white paint, the line he left behind would resemble a cardiogram. Sometimes they would shout, “Hey, watch out!” or just give us dirty looks, although they could just as well have had a little chuckle about the Yemeni man trying to become a Hollander.

When a young couple passed us, and the woman had to swerve so much to avoid Abdulwahid that she almost ended up on the sidewalk, she cursed loudly.

Godverdomme!” She cycled on. Abdulwahid started pedaling furiously, and set off in pursuit.

“Where are you going?” I called to him.

“She’s angry,” he called back in Arabic, and I could feel trouble brewing. The couple was unaware that Abdulwahid was cycling after them. They stopped at a house and went inside. Abdulwahid stopped, too, and knocked on the door. A woman opened it. Her expression said she would rather watch ten horror films than stand face-to-face with this panting, strangely-dressed man on her doorstep.

“I seeing girls boys seeing also them here coming. Girls says then me and my bike, girls says …” Abdulwahid wanted to repeat her swear word, but he had forgotten it, and asked me in Arabic what it was. At the sound of Arabic, the woman recoiled even more, as though there were an al-Qaida terrorist on her front porch.

“Godverdomme,” I said.

“Yes, gatwerdoomie.” Just then, the young couple appeared at the door. Now, six fearful eyes gazed at Abdulwahid, and then a gray-haired man also appeared. The four Hollanders stared at us without any idea what we were doing on their doorstep, and Abdulwahid stood there repeating himself in his unintelligible Asylumseekerese. Inside the house, a dog barked, two cats eyed us nervously from behind the living room window, and if I’m not exaggerating, a parrot shrieked. Neighbors peered out from windows and doors.

“Sorry, but what do you want?” the woman asked.

“We were just wondering if you had any old bikes for the asylum seekers at the ASC,” I said, and Abdulwahid nodded, because he thought I asked the woman why the girl had cursed at us.

“No, we don’t have any old bicycles. Not in the shed, either. Nowhere.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, as I made to turn and leave with Abdulwahid.

“Could you not come to the door anymore?” the woman said. Her voice sounded cautious and irritated at the same time.

“We won’t be back again, ma’am,” I said, and led Abdulwahid by the arm to our bicycles.

“Did you tell her the young one was rude to us?”

“Yes.”

“Did she apologize?”

“The woman said that girl was in a hurry, because her grandmother is lying upstairs on her deathbed. She was cycling so fast because her granny could die at any moment.” When Abdulwahid heard this, he turned and called out to the foursome, who were still standing in the doorway, “Sorry girls, sorry boys, sorry parents, sorry dogs, sorry cats, good life granny upstair.”

We set off on our bicycles, and I tried to keep the tempo going, in case they had called the police.

“Not so fast. They didn’t call the police,” Abdulwahid said, “because grandma upstairs is dying.” We swerved our way back to the ASC.