In the middle of our interview, Hoseb Assadour asks me what the consequences might be if Europe closes its borders. “If you build walls all over the place to keep everybody out, where are you going to go if there’s a war? Who’s going to help you? Do you ever think about that?”
No, I tell him, it’s true, I don’t. European refugees – the thought seems surreal. But Assadour has witnessed the surreal. “Who ever would have thought Aleppo would be destroyed and millions of Syrians would have to flee the country? I’ll tell you: nobody,” he says emphatically.
Hoseb Assadour is a 22-year-old Syrian of Armenian Christian origin. We speak for the first time by phone in September 2016. By then, he’s been in the Netherlands a year and a half. He tells me in Dutch that he gave a speech at a meeting of the youth arm of the political party Democrats 66 (D66). “You know,” he adds, “Mr. Pechtold’s party.”
He’s the first person to volunteer to help with De Correspondent’s New to the Netherlands project, in which members interview newly-settled refugees once a month about their new lives. I can hardly believe he’s been in the country such a short time. He speaks Dutch with practically no accent and laughs heartily when I explain that “Yes, I’ve heard of D66.”
Immediately I think: Hoseb Assadour. I need to remember that name. He’ll be a good person to interview, since he’s gotten to know the Netherlands intimately in a short time yet still views us with a fresh eye.
So, with the House of Representatives election coming up, I arrange a meeting. I want to know what Assadour thinks of our politicians and the subjects that keep coming up in the debates: Dutch identity, Islam, and the question of who has a right to live in the Netherlands.
Assadour wants to do something for the Dutch
We meet in a café in the southern city of Maastricht and talk for three and a half hours. Assadour tells me he came to the Netherlands in January 2015. In February 2016, he got a room in Maastricht, where his parents, older sister, and younger brother live. He’s just finished his mandatory integration course and hopes to start studying to be a dental hygienist at a vocational college in September. Meanwhile, he’s looking for a job so he can support himself.
Assadour (center) at the University of Aleppo. Photo: Hoseb Assadour
Assadour with former Dutch Representative Ger Koopmans. Photo: Hoseb Assadour
Assadour with the mayor of Maastricht. Photo: Hoseb Assadour
He participates fully in Maastricht social life, and that includes more than just running around town in a bee suit last Carnival. Last December, he and some other refugees made a video for the Maastricht Human Rights Prize competition, in which they talked about the dreams they had before fleeing.
Assadour wanted to be a cardiologist, but he doesn’t say much about that. His team came in third, and it bugs him. “I was really sad,” he says. “I’m the type that wants to be the best. I’m the best or I’m nothing.” They won €250, which they donated to a children’s cancer charity; that made up for a lot. “So I did get to do something for Dutch society,” he says.
That wasn’t all. Thanks to the competition, the rector of Maastricht University noticed Assadour and invited him to speak at the university’s anniversary celebration. In February, Assadour told a capacity crowd at Theater aan het Vrijthof that the Dutch should be thankful for what they have. In refugee camps, he said, people have to go looking for water and bread every day.
The German president, Joachim Gauck, spoke after Assadour, and Princess Beatrix, the Netherlands’ former queen, was in the audience. Assadour shows me a picture of himself talking to Gauck’s partner, journalist Daniela Schadt. Soon after that, he says, Beatrix addressed him in English. When she heard him speak Dutch, she said, “Oh, your Dutch is so good.” He was walking on air for days.
Assadour shows me more pictures of himself meeting high-ranking people from the province of Limburg. He spoke with Maastricht mayor Annemarie Penn-te Strake and spent a day with the MP Ger Koopmans of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party. “It was a great experience,” Assadour says. “It gave me an even better understanding of how politics works.”
Assadour talks to journalist Daniela Schadt, partner of German president Joachim Gauck, and Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands. Photo by Hoseb Assadour
He plans to join a political party
Assadour loves politics. He got interested when he became an interpreter for Armenians and Arabic speakers soon after his arrival in the Netherlands and learned about Dutch bureaucracy. “With the city and social services,” he says, “I was always wondering: why do things have to be so complicated?”
He immersed himself in the subject – and in Dutch asylum policy, whose finer points he wanted to know about because of his own refugee status. He studied the political parties’ positions and watched all the general debates from the preceding cabinet period.
Now he wants to join a party, but he’s not sure which one. Besides speaking at the D66 gathering, he’s attended a meeting of the CDA’s youth wing. While both parties hold positions that appeal to Assadour, a third, the Labor Party (PvdA), has the advantage of having the most “ethnic minorities” in its ranks. “No,” he corrects himself. “You can’t say that anymore. I mean ‘Dutch people from different backgrounds.’”
He’s read all the party platforms and thinks he knows better than the average Dutch person what each party stands for. He’s also viewed old episodes of the current affairs show Pauw & Witteman and has been watching the pre-election talk show Pauw & Jinek every night. He never misses the news-satire show Zondag met Lubach ( famous for the “Netherlands second” meme ), either. “Lubach is such an amazing guy,” he says.
Assadour doesn’t understand the Dutch cynicism toward politicians
He often notices that Dutch people don’t trust politicians. “Young people, especially, don’t read the party platforms, because they say the parties never do what they say they will. But the Netherlands is ruled by coalitions that have to make compromises. So why get angry if politicians don’t do everything they promise?”
“The Netherlands is ruled by coalitions that have to compromise. So why get angry when politicians don’t do everything they promise?
The host of a recent election debate at Amsterdam’s Carré theater came under fire for hardly allowing candidates to speak. But Assadour says he enjoyed the show. “Politicians can’t explain their entire vision for the country in a debate anyway. If the voters want to know that, they’ll have to read the party platform. But you can see how a politician reacts, how they debate. And that’s important, too.”
It’s been a revelation for Assadour that politicians here are so approachable at election time, mingling with the people, handing out leaflets. When he hears Dutch people being cynical about politics, he often tells them, “Come on, we didn’t have all this stuff in Syria. Show a little gratitude.”
Assadour appeared on the radio show Het geluid van 2016 (“The Sound of 2016”) in December of that year. Photo by Hoseb Assadour
Syrians don’t come here for fun
Something else Assadour would like Dutch people to understand is that refugees don’t come here for the fun of it. People say, “They’re testosterone bombs,” he explains. Or “They come here to chill out.” When he hears that kind of thing, his response is, “Stop telling lies.”
He didn’t want to leave Syria. They might not have had the freedom people have in the Netherlands, but his heart was there. Assadour’s family only left when the streets smelled of blood.
Assadour’s family only left Syria when the streets smelled of blood
Assadour’s great-grandparents fled eastern Turkey during the Armenian genocide in 1915. His family made a good life in Aleppo. His father ran a taxi firm and a real estate agency. Assadour had wanted to be a cardiologist since watching operations on National Geographic as a child. As Christian Armenians, he and his family were able to be themselves. It wasn’t until civil war broke out in 2011 that ethnic tensions arose.
In 2013, the war hit home in the form of an explosion at the university where Assadour was studying medicine. Eighty people died. His sister narrowly escaped. And in early 2014, a bomb hit outside a store his mother was visiting. “I didn’t think I’d ever see her again,” he says with tears in his eyes. She called to say she was alive. But another bomb went off outside their apartment that same day. It was clear they had to leave.
Assadour wants to study medicine, but he has to work
In June 2014, he and his mother and sister traveled via Lebanon to Turkey. They went to Greece on a human smuggler’s boat. From there, his mother and sister flew to the Netherlands on false passports. They’d heard it was a good place to go; that was all they knew. Assadour wasn’t able to follow until six months later; the police kept stopping him at the Athens airport.
In the Netherlands, he lived at three refugee centers. He wanted to learn Dutch as soon as possible but was told he couldn’t without a residence permit. He was out of sorts for months, until he got hold of some used textbooks on Facebook and started teaching himself. “It became like a contest between me and this government that wasn’t letting me learn Dutch,” he says. “I wanted to show I could do it without any help.”
“It became like a contest between me and this government that wasn’t letting me learn Dutch. I wanted to show I could do it without any help.
In September 2015, his father and younger brother came to the Netherlands under the family reunification scheme. By then, Assadour knew enough Dutch to serve as their guide at the application center in the Dutch town of Ter Apel. Last year, he completed the required integration course, for which people are allotted three years, in just eight months.
Now he’s studying to achieve C1 proficiency in Dutch, necessary for university admission. The idea was to finish his medical studies, but his contact person at the city said he had to get a job as soon as possible. In that case, he said, he preferred to take one that would help him improve his Dutch. The official was unmoved. “Fine,” Assadour thought. “Let’s be realistic and do what’s doable.”
His first job interview is coming up, with the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, and he hopes to start his vocational studies in September with help from a student loan. Assadour is resigned to becoming a dental hygienist. “That way I can help refugees with their dental health, which is usually bad because of the war.”
He hopes the Dutch can quit excluding people
In Aleppo, he never expected to see his Armenian great-grandparents’ history repeat itself. Now he’s got a warning for the Dutch: watch out or things could get out of hand here, too.
Of course, he knows that the Netherlands is no Syria, not by a long shot – but why do you hear so much about differences between people? He’s particularly struck by the Islamophobia and the hostility toward refugees. It makes sense that newcomers are expected to adapt to life in the Netherlands, he says. But if they’re going to do that, then can’t the Dutch stop talking about how different they are?
Assadour’s father and brother arrive in the Netherlands. Photo: Hoseb Assadour
Assadour (left) and his family celebrate Carnival. Photo: Hoseb Assadour
“In general, Syrians adapt well,” Assadour says. “And I know so many Dutch people from Turkish and Moroccan backgrounds who work really hard and are totally integrated. But I hear a lot of people saying other cultures don’t participate. Right-wing parties are constantly portraying Muslims, in particular, in a bad light. They point to the whole Muslim community without making a distinction.”
“Can’t the Dutch stop talking about how different refugees are?
The message he hears from the PVV party is: If you’re against Islam, vote for us. “What kind of crap is that?” he says. “Isn’t everyone allowed to practice religion in their own way? Or not at all, if they so choose?” He’s something of a lapsed Christian himself. But he says he thinks Muslims should get more respect in the Netherlands. He notices that those who observe Ramadan, wear headscarves, or abstain from alcohol are constantly called on to explain why.
On the TV show PowNews, refugees talked about drinking beer and vodka during Carnival. The reporter remarked, “You’re pretty well integrated, then.” That’s what Assadour’s talking about. “In the rightwing Netherlands, the benchmark is: if you’re a lapsed Muslim, if you take off your headscarf and drink, you’re one of us. Let everyone live how they want. Religious people can be perfectly well integrated.”
He hopes tensions don’t escalate in the Netherlands
Assadour objects to refrains like “Refugees are stealing our houses and jobs.” He points out that the first Rutte cabinet forced Dutch housing associations to sell off three-quarters of their rental units. “That’s why there’s a shortage of social housing in the Netherlands. But refugees get the blame. And the VVD [the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy] goes along with it, when they should be accurately informing the public.”
The housing shortage here is a direct result of government policy. But refugees get the blame.
And where jobs are concerned, his Armenian-Syrian brother-in-law works for the VDL Nedcar automotive factory in the Limburg town of Born. “It’s hard work. He’s building cars eight hours a day. He doesn’t have many Dutch coworkers. And who are the people volunteering with the parks department and at retirement homes and thrift stores? Quite a few of them are refugees.”
Assadour hears too many lies about social issues in the Netherlands, he says. People need to tell the truth about refugees. He knows Syrians who’ve just arrived and are already teaching Arabic at the university level. “Why do I almost never hear those success stories?” he says. Only if these narratives get told along with the rest will the Dutch be able to make an informed decision on whether to allow more or fewer refugees into the country.
Of course, Assadour is grateful to the Netherlands for the help he’s receiving. Dutch tax money is keeping him safe and giving him a chance to get on with his life. But he hopes the current social tensions don’t escalate. “Why did things get out of hand in Syria?” he says. “Because people wouldn’t leave each other alone and other countries started interfering. Leave everybody alone and things will be fine.”
—This report is part of the New to the Netherlands initiative, made possible by support from the Dioraphte Foundation. Translated from Dutch by Liz Gorin and Erica Moore
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