The world turned upside down

Last week I sent the Dutch manuscript for The Cargo to my publisher, Palmslag.

The Cargo, like The Batavian, my first book, is set in the years before the Corona pandemic.

It is too early to say if and when we will return to a normal world as we knew it. It can only be expected that many things will change. Hopefully for the better, although I am not so certain. Freedom, civil rights, privacy and health are all at risk.

Unlimited travel, dirt cheap subsidized air traffic, round trips to the Seychelles, Peru or Thailand will also feel the consequences of this crisis. Far worse is the situation of countless people, who lose their income and run into great trouble.

I know a poor family in Ghana. Due to the lockdown, which also applies there, they can hardly leave the house, and the six of them are in a small house. A day laborer cannot make money to feed his family in such a situation. They were a little ashamed to ask if I could help out financially. You can do little else, can you?

Jamestown, Accra, Ghana

What bothers me as an author? Personally, of course, the same as everyone in the Netherlands: less freedom of movement, hardly seeing your children, family and friends, not going to the movies or the museum. And the tiny chance that you will get the virus too.

But if you've written a manuscript set in this day and age, you need to take extra care. Such as Two Fathoms Down, some of which takes place on a yacht, partly in the Wadden Sea, and partly on the English east coast. I do not yet know whether what I wrote will ever be possible again. So the manuscript may very well have to be revised once the future becomes clear.

Another idea, which was still in an embryonic stage, was a story about social disruption after a different kind of disaster (not an epidemic). Well, we are now experiencing that ourselves, so I no longer have to come up with fiction about it ...

An author's concerns are negligible compared to those of families with small children living in a tiny Council flat. This, in turn, cannot be compared to what happens in refugee camps in Greece, to poor residents of the United States and poverty-stricken day laborers in developing countries - India, Africa, Latin America.

They are the real losers of this crisis.

SOS Moria

A month ago, no one predicted the magnitude of the virus epidemic that is now gripping the world. I wrote about breaking the silence around Idlib in Syria, and about Greece, which has been turned into the European dumping ground for unwanted refugees.

We are now seeing a consequence of the European aversion to refugees: a potential source of contamination has been created that is unparalleled. As everyone in Europe is being urged to self-isolate and practice social distancing, tens of thousands of people locked up in Greek refugee camps waiting for an epidemic that will endanger not only them, but us as well.

Social distancing in Camp Moria? Forget it.

A horrifying example is Camp Moria on the isle of Lesbos, where 20,000 people are penned like cattle instead of the 3,000 for which the camp is intended. Yesterday I learned of SOS Moria, an initiative of thousands of doctors, who are urging Europe's rulers to evacuate Moria and other camps, get them out of there and give them a safe refuge:

Join these doctors and sign the SOS Moria appeal

Something needs to be done urgently, yet Europe still chooses to look the other way, hiding behind EUR 2 or 3 billion in emergency aid already given to Greece to solve the European problem.

The refugee drama plays a leading role in my novel De Batavier (The Batavian). As an author and as a person, I cannot and will not stay silent about European heartlessness and xenophobia. 

Something - must - be - done.