She is 14, heavily veiled and bespectacled, with a voice that can be heard in the farthest corners of The Hague. She wants to be a surgeon but first she wins the preliminary round of the school competition for young poets at Winternachten. What anger there is in that person. What maturity sounds from her cry for recognition. Elzahra Elkawafi: remember that name. Together with Syrian refugee Sumai Yahya and Xiu Bin van Lier, she is a finalist for the Young Campert Prize, which will be awarded on Sunday 21 January during the Writers' Festival, the official closing of Winternachten. (An audience prize eventually won by Syrian refugee Sumai Yahya, who scored just a bit more decibels of applause from the audience).
The Hague Poets Guild, which prepared the participants in this competition with workshops and training sessions, can be proud. There is quite some talent among the pupils of the Edith Stein College in The Hague. They are all children with a background in a far-off foreign country. Sometimes they came here as refugees, sometimes as children of wealthy expats, but always with a dream of making something of life.
As good as Houellebecq
How different it is with the main character of the latest German hit Elbows. Author Fatma Aydemir is making history as her book turns a number of things upside down. The main character is a girl with Turkish roots in a working-class Berlin neighbourhood who commits a crime en passant. David van Reybroeck, already no slouch himself, called Ellebogen a masterpiece, at least as important as John Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Michel Houellebecq's Platform. That's a mountain of praise to which, of course, you can say absolutely nothing, as a debutant writer. Aydemir, who has something of the coolness of her main character in her appearance, stated that her book was meant to be a slap in the reader's face. A mission that succeeded, for better and for worse. The number of hatemails from readers detesting her human image seems to be huge.
The last night of the Winternachten Festival this time was all about anger. Could of course have been due to my personal journey through the programme, but something tells me it was not. After all, the theme 'We, the people' contains quite a bit of anger. Anger at the system, anger at the world, the bosses, or the other. Or Europe.
No predictable promotional talk
Programme coordinator Shervin Nekuee is firmly committed to what has always been the core of Winternachten. Which is: invite writers, and don't let the conversation be about their latest book. Instead, talk about a subject close to their heart. In this way, the 27-year-old festival never degenerates into a succession of predictable promotional talks. On the contrary: the meetings with writers always lead to more conversations in the corridors and especially on the central square of the Theater aan het Spui. That foyer, rather unsuccessful for a normal theatre, provides the perfect market square-like environment especially during a festival like this. THE architect had clearly counted on full theatres every night, something that is only guaranteed during occasions like Winternachten.
But there is more. Festival director Ton van de Langkruis has a mission to spread the power of words to all corners of the city, and in fact the whole world. For instance, there is now a Winternachten festival in Malaysia, but you can also watch poetic local residents in those neighbourhoods where Pete Hoekstra, the controversial US ambassador of no-go areas and politician burnings, should take a look: Escamp and Schilderswijk.
Storyteller tradition
On Saturday afternoon, I attended an event at the Schilderswijk library that was moving in all its simplicity. There, 19-year-old Schilderswijker Hizir Cengiz was allowed to read from his work as a very young but already award-winning essayist. He told how he became estranged from his playmates in his own neighbourhood. His pursuit of a new narrative tradition clashed with their penchant for resistance and criminality.
Next to him was Ibrahim Eroglu, the poetry teacher, also from the Schilderswijk neighbourhood, who produces not only sharp, politically charged collections of poems, but also books of jokes. He comes from a lineage of writers and performers, was born in one of Turkey's poorest areas and can now take pride in his many awards, and his daughter, who, as a singer, could have started at the Hague Conservatory in no time. Instead, she chose to study Cultural Anthropology and now works at the Schilderswijk Library. She presented the afternoon and sang, unaccompanied, some beautiful songs.
The Saturday evening ended with an impressive programme of music and poetry. It was specially compiled for the occasion from an existing concert by the band Stefka, fresh input from musician Amer Shanati and the occasional collection of poems 'Ik hier, jij daar' by poets Anne Vegter and Ghayat Almadhoun. It was not a happy picture that Vegter painted of life in the Vinex-Netherlands, especially as it was interspersed with the anger and despair of the refugee, soberly expressed by Almadhoun, an expert by experience. All this aptly portrayed by Gerda Dendooven's live drawings. Who deserves mention anyway. She was busy throughout the festival providing the music with drawn video clips. In all its simplicity, an ironclad formula.
And then there is always Rodaan
Was it all serious doom and gloom, these days in The Hague? You'd almost say so, but I have also rarely experienced and festival that was as strong in content as Winternachten 2018. And should it all get too gloomy, there is always Rodaan Al Galidi. Is normally a single poem by the poet enough, now we got three. And each one more ironic, more bewilderingly cheerful than the other. There is a lot of anger underneath, but Al Galidi manages to turn that anger into something we can all laugh at. Without losing sight of seriousness. That is what poetry is capable of.
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