“Finish your beetroot and potato soup!” Max put his head down. Despite being adults, here in hiding they were kids again. After finishing their food, Max and David cleaned up - their usual daily task. The follow up routine further meant playing their monopoly board game - this “boardom” saving them from monotony.
Max devoured books cover to cover probably the tastiest thing to digest in his life right now. They had to sit things out after all. Their reality was a war fuelled by games, arguments, and physical workouts. Their fleeting escapes came from metaphors, symbols found in books and dreams. Dreams of a better day to come and freedom once more - from slavery to redemption. Still, they were happy that the daily routine had continued after last week’s narrow escape that frightening evening...
…Max looked at the frost on the window, staring out into the dark, cold reality outside. Hopefully, one day he’d be able to simply wander around the countryside again... Partially due to his wish to be free again, he had accepted to go work out in the east when he was called up. After a heavy argument, his twin brother David eventually beat Max to the ground, ensuring he didn’t leave. Probably saving his life.
Max slowly dozed into his food coma. Dozing off, Derk ran in with a face deathly scared: “Pigs are coming!” he shouted. The twins looked at each other for a split-second - in unbelief and dread. Adrenaline kicked in. They had often practiced the routine of going into hiding. In one of their exercises Max had angrily told off David for not having put all his clothes behind the fake wall. But this was not a drill.
Max ran upstairs to open the hideout and to make sure all was in place. He took his encyclopaedia with him. He did not want to be bored after all! David grabbed his hand activated dynamo torch and then decided to reach under the table to grab his star. It was as if he was proud of it and did not want to lose his identity. They had trained this too many times in case of emergency. After all, they had only recently moved places with help of the resistance. Luckily, their local business contacts knew them well enough to want to be helpful. They did not want to move again - they had seen how difficult it was to hide the British pilot who had been brought in by the resistance. Each move increased the chances of being caught in the cat and mouse game.
Also, this farm was the best situated in the village. It was set back from the countryside, through a long driveway. This ensured that anything dark and evil, disturbing the night would be noticed. They entered their cupboard - a world made of flimsy plywood that was supposed to keep them safe. Prior to closing the door behind them, they looked one more time at the cloth opposite that daringly said:
“Blessed shall you be when you come in,
and blessed shall you be when you go out”.
After not hearing anything for a while, they started wondering: Was this hiding real or was it just another exercise? Derk looked frightened when he ran in!
It was dead silent for another minute until they heard - what sounded like a truck - fast approaching through the farmlands. Gravel sounds. A car door slamming open. Lots of dogs barking, probably held back by a group of the Dutch SS. Staccato agitated discussions outside. The front door opened creaking: “Good evening – can we help?” farmer Wasser said meekly. “We have a warrant, and we have reason to believe you are hiding someone here.” Farmer Wasser said “It is just me and our sons” the policemen “Oh really?! We got a tip-off earlier today that you were hiding some people here – we also understand your son has disappeared and never handed himself in for forced labour?”
Before Wasser was able to answer, the SS walked into the house “Please let us through - we will be doing our inspection now.”
Max heard the policemen barging into the house. For a while, they loudly rummaged around and emptied the kitchen cupboards. After 10 minutes of turning downstairs upside down, they walked into their bedroom – hearing the breath of the policemen and a German Sheppard barking. Then another person came in breathing heavily. Max felt David’s perspiration. Hoping he would not make a sound. Or all the others. Wim hopefully would not give away anything... They were scared. To death. Thoughts raced through their heads. They had successfully been in hiding for so long already! Surely, they would not be caught with the allied forces so close?!
Whatever would happen, they would kill the lowland SS soldier if they caught them with their guns! The policeman rummaged through the laundry some more. He heard him take a bite of an apple that lay around the attic as if he owned the place. The apple trees did produce plenty - but still.
An hour later they left. False alarm as far as the police was concerned. Though they knew their son had not enlisted and had disappeared. This meant they would stay suspicious of farmer Wasser.
A week later they were told little Wim had been interrogated like a common thief. Did he know where his brother was? Had his father hidden people like they had been told? Luckily he had not betrayed any of them.
After the SS left an eerie silence returned to the farm. David and Max finally had a chance to move again. Finally, they decided to whisper. Another hour later they slowly left the cupboard. One by one the others also left their hiding places. The entire Wasser family had been taken to the police apparently. Luckily, they still had food in the house. A few days later the resistance would find them hiding in the house without support.
Eventually, Wasser and family returned to the farm. And freedom was regained. This didn’t mean literal freedom. Dreaming of freedom at least for now. What would that even be? Exotic locations? In the meantime they could only live day by day.
A few weeks later. It was dark again. Normality had returned. Lighting eight candles in the attic, one by one had been a reminder who they were, where they came from and why they were in hiding. They had seen this all develop. The recession. The populism. The signs. The stars. This was nothing new. The flames they lit were good reminders from the ancient past.
Dreaming with Freedom of Movement
Fast-forward Indonesia 1948 – a baboo1 was helping the toddlers getting dressed. David had just instructed the other baboo to polish the candles for next week’s festivities. This Hanukkah would certainly be different then their past war years: No snow this time around! All their friends from around Djakarta would come. David was finishing his long letter to his sister. She had miraculously survived and moved to the Holy Land: “One day,” he promised, “I will come and visit you!” In the background, his newly wed wife Sara was cooking nasi goreng with sambal oelek. He’d grown fond of this spicy food making for a good change of the meagre meals in recent years’ captivity.
Escaping Holland’s bitter experiences, David had not forgotten his roots. His very own star in his bedside drawer was a reminder of his lack of freedom of movement and terror. Each time he looked at the star, it reminded him to make use of his freedom movement. The new Ford had been a sweet blessing in that sense. David’ cabin fever, accumulated over four years, was enough for two decades. As Sara walked in from the other room, he said “Let’s go on another adventure into the rice fields tomorrow!” she nodded agreeably. She now loved to make the most of life - having lost her loved ones in recent years…
He saw the other “belanda”2 - his neighbour - walk by. His neighbour’s rubber factories had enabled his own freedom. It was odd how their paths had crossed David thought to himself. Here all were European, also in the local Japanese camps. He and his friends had had a war that wasn’t very different. They had had their own fair share of torture.
He could only imagine how it would have been here in the war. The post war freedom polarisation with the local population was still relatively peaceful which meant they looked for war substitutes. They had met at the local bridge games that had become very animated. Back in the war, their games had been for distraction purposes and to mitigate their lack of freedom; here these games were a luxury. Surrounded by a tropical abundance they themselves were now the outsiders, locking themselves in on their verandas in a lush and green rainforest. The context had changed; the symbol stayed the same.
Seeing his neighbour walk by, he looked back in his mind’s eye to the last game they played: At David’s turn, he signalled through his low card what he had. They glanced across the bridge cloth with stern poker faces. Their own different, individual, historical contexts and experiences were not discussed whilst playing bridge. Their card differences matched up nicely - they completed one another. They understood. Sometimes in silence, similarity becomes evident.
Being held hostage by our Language, Metaphors and Symbols
The borders of my language are the borders of my world Wittgenstein.
Normally, we simplify by reduction. However, metaphors and symbols can strangely simplify things by creating something else. For instance, we can create a new /non common metaphor through a sentence like: “brains are mirrors enabling us to show ourselves and things around us” comparing brains to mirrors. This new metaphor takes more brainpower to understand initially than a comparison saying” “a brain reflects objects similarly to a mirror reflecting objects”. On the other hand, commonly used metaphors are easier to understand because you have familiarised yourself with the connection and perspective already. This way they somehow seem to make sense intuitively. Understanding metaphors is not as easy and natural for every person. Being able to separate the literal from the figurative is essential. After all, a metaphor transfers one element and explains it by taking only a few common characteristics. This makes them difficult to understand for some - for instance autistic people. Interestingly, a metaphor creates a reality/statement that can be strictly fake/wrong in its literal sense though they might be truthful figuratively to some extent. Like in the previous example brains are not actually mirrors. Nevertheless, brains can conjure up images or objects in our mind like a mirror does. As such, metaphors are powerful rhetorical tools to simplify. In this manner they can also be used to confuse or to drive home a point that sounds more cogent/correct than it really is. It is in this context that metaphors are sometimes misused to play on our emotions and a false sense of logic.
Our language and our social context impact us - common metaphors do as well. They create common assumptions and misunderstandings. As such the language we use impacts our thinking and behaviour: for instance, whether words are feminine or masculine, or verbs are expressed in a passive or actively tense impacts our memory and how we would describe objects. As such experiences are transferred across generations.
According to Wittgenstein, our world view is limited to the bounds of the words and language available to us. Words mean different things in different contexts. Therefore, our ability to describe reality is limited. To leave aside, is therefore the best approach to appreciate what reality represents.
However, meaning is determined by the context we have grown up in. Like chess pieces only represent the meaning on the chess board and none off it. Nietzsche’s views of this context, of our cultural misuse of metaphors is more cynical. He describes how these dichotomies are transferred and ingrained by our culture which impact us to change our behaviour at large. Clearly all these metaphors and language play a role that cause our predispositions and prejudices to be misused. Metaphors can similarly be misused for instance by making something sound simpler than it really is. The power of symbols, and metaphors is also its kryptonite.
Malay for help
Malay White person