Though paused along the track, the Eurostar train to St. Pancras arrived on time and we disembark. It seems to have been a full long weekend away in Amsterdam for musicians and young families. We had joined the train at Rotterdam after our grandson David’s 9th birthday and the best Dutch birthday cake ever, homemade by David and his mother. On the platform, those of us who are older, the grand-parent tribe, and the wandering poets are quickly passed by the young musicians and even the families struggling with all their stuff to gather and bundle up. By the time we reach the last turn into the exit there is hardly anyone with us as we pass the four customs officers standing together. They seem to be hanging out, just chatting, but as I look at them – and they don’t meet my eyes – I realize they have been looking at us all. First I wonder what on earth do they think we are carrying, and then I realize they are also looking at whom we might be carrying.

Slavery – indentured servitude – is still alive and well in Britain and Europe. The German far right politician Jörg Dornau employs political prisoners from the uprising against Aleksandr Lukashenko’s political re election in 2020. Dornau owns an onion farm in Belarus where around 30 prisoners work, many of whom, like Nicole who told the story, had been jailed on political grounds and for “liking” old social media posts from 2021. The prisoners sorted onions for roughly £4 a day on what Nicole described as a strictly voluntary basis. And the onions tasted good. They are the lucky ones. But the customs officers waiting to see the passengers leave the Eurostar train were watching for those not so lucky.

Emerging into the station proper we pick up breakfast essentials before heading to the taxi rank. This evening the queue is not too long and we shuffle forward at a steady pace. Naturally everyone is tired, looking at their phones and not speaking. But suddenly there are quick soft running footsteps, and a child’s voice shouting “I ain’t’ done nothink.” More running footsteps, a longer stride and a uniformed youth catches up with the child, who is clutching a brown paper shopping bag and still yelling. “Let me go, I ain’t’ done nothing.” Faces lift from the phones and those in the taxi queue look as the young officer catches the barely clothed child wearing shorts and a very oversized t-shirt. Now there are more footsteps, heavier as in regulation police boots, and six uniformed security policemen, all under the age of thirty catch up with their young partner who is barely holding onto the child still crying out, “Let me go I ain’t done nothing.” Then suddenly the air goes silent and it is over. Taxis come to the curb, the line moves forward, and as we wait three patrol cars with lights flashing and sirens ringing come to a screeching halt beside us. I marvel at all the adrenaline rushing through at least nine men holding one child. And the silencing of the voice that echoes Oliver Twist in 1837 – led on by The Artful Dodger, used and abandoned by Fagin.  What really has changed in almost 200 years? Not so much. Hardship finds us along many paths.

On the autumn Sunday afternoon in Utrecht we visit a carnival. It has popped up outside of a Jumbo shopping center and is an easy distraction for small children, and some who are no longer so little. We’re cruising, grandson David passes the candy floss as he leads me to this fishing hall, that shooting range, all the time with his eye out for the bungee jumping trampoline that looks terrifying – to a Granny. Suddenly there is his best friend from down their street. The boys are thrilled to see each other, the bungee jump forgotten for the moment while the mothers chat together. The afternoon ends with a closing-time visit to the big public library which is institutional but welcoming and impressive. I am – as Grannies do – sitting, resting and waiting outside when the mother of David’s friend approaches me. Bea has sent her over.  “Mum’s a nurse, ask her.” “May I ask you something?” “Yes of course.”

She is from Ukraine and has three children, two boys and one girl. Her husband has left her and they are now divorcing. The afternoon carnival is a cheap distraction for them together. Her long hair is matted, her clothes look to have come off of the floor and her sneakers are – for want of a better word – inadequate. The children are hovering, watchful, a little distant, protecting her as best they can. They are nervous of her speaking with a strange woman, even from their friend’s family. The mother had a little accident on her bike and her thumb hurts. Is it broken? Should she go to the hospital? But that means a four hour wait in the emergency room and she has three small children. In her state the slightest upset blows into a potential disaster. Softly I ask if I can touch her hand and she nods. I take her hand in mine and begin to gently feel here and there, bend the hand and fingers this way and that. Quickly I know that it is not broken. There is a little warmth suggesting the thumb is strained. I continue to hold her hand, for with the act of touching and receiving her, she begins to calm. I tell her about arnica gel. Seeing their mother relaxing, the children creep closer to us as we retrace our steps to the pharmacy. Which is – naturally – at 5.30 on a Sunday afternoon – now closed. But the young mother is looking better, more purposeful and with a little smile. The children cluster closer still around her as we said goodbye. The eldest boy shakes my hand, the two little ones smile and wave. They are grateful that someone had listened and received their mother. This little Ukrainian family have been in the Netherlands since before the war began.  Maybe they knew what was coming or maybe they just got lucky. Now it makes no difference. They are adrift and broken in a foreign country. Hardship finds us along many paths.

The conflict – pick any red dot on the map – in the Middle East – has pushed the Ukrainian War off of the page and the screen. Cold mud and snipers are not as photogenic as nighttime rockets and buildings ablaze. Rubble and body bags are more prolific in any of the states at war in the Middle East than in the Ukrainian villages on fire. This war has a published start date of October 7 but that cannot have been the beginning. Israeli solders are schooled that attack is the best form of defense, but all of those red dots – in Gaza, in Lebanon and beyond – do not appear as the work of a country defending itself. Back, back we go into history, Europeans and their pens, pencils and rulers, drawing lines across the desert, pointing fingers and saying ‘That will do.’ 

This has been A Letter From A. Broad. Written and read for you by Muriel Murch  

And always supported by murchstudio.com