7 September 2022, Khalid & Sophie, BNN / VARA, NPO 1, transcript by Cora Westerink (1965)

Introduction by Khalid: “Lotfi El Hamani wrote the book “Generation 9/11″. In it, he shows that growing up at the time of the terrible attacks of 11 September 2001 was a confusing period for many Muslims. Let’s take a look at the long aftermath that you also describe in your book Lofti.”

Video-presentation of Dutch political culture and historic events around 9/11:

Khalid to Lofti: “Yes…Lofti, Welcome.”

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid, responding to the video-presentation: “After that I got two children so it didn’t really improve.”

Khalid to Lofti: “Indeed, it did not work out that way. It does affect me, when I hear it and when I see it again, it always touches me deeply. So…um…yeah well, that’s what it is. […] You write in your book, in the period after 9/11, that it shaped you, but didn’t define you. How exactly do you mean that?”

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid: “I mean I did know who I was. Initially, you react to what is said about you, and as I grew older, I thought, “I will not let what others think or say about me define me.” But anyway, of course that took a certain period of time.”

Khalid to Lofti: “Yes, when you are young, it is always more difficult.”

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid: “Those teenage years are difficult anyway. That is universal. This came on top of it.”

Khalid to Lofti: “Let’s go back to your childhood. You were about 15 when those attacks happened. You lived in Delfshaven, Rotterdam. Take us with you. What kind of a neighbourhood was that?”

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid: “A little history. In the 60s, 70s and 80s, many migrants settled in this neighbourhood. Especially Moroccans and Turks, but also Cape Verdeans and Surinamese. In districts in Delfshaven that were changing rapidly. From the 1980s onwards, things started to go downhill. There was mass unemployment, neighbourhoods became rundown. A huge underclass emerged. Rotterdam always had a very large underclass anyway. But then, in the 90s and 00s, you actually had a lot of men who were unemployed, a lot of people who were just as poor, but also a lot of migrants together. That created a bond, of course. But at the same time it also created a distance from the rest of society. At a certain point, in the wake of 9/11, you see all sorts of social developments converge, and that’s what destroys a district like this.”

Khalid to Lofti: “Speaking of Rotterdam. When you were at school, Ronald Sørensen, founder of the political party “Leefbaar Rotterdam”, was a history teacher. Was he your history teacher?”

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid: “I received substitute lessons from him. Another schoolmate was actually taught by him. But he was already heading for the exit by then because he had founded that political party and did not want to work at that school any more. So it came very close. Besides, the politics of “Liveable Rotterdam” was also physically very close. His house was a few hundred metres away. So Delfshaven was actually the epicentre of populism, of the multicultural drama, as it was called. It all came together at that school.”

Khalid to the public and to Lofti: “We are going to take a look at it, because a series was made about the time when Pim Fortuyn emerged, through the political party “Liveable Rotterdam”. We are about to see a moment that could have come straight out of your life.”

Video-presentation of the Dutch series The Year of Fortuyn, 2022

Fragment in the series. Ronald Sørensen, history teacher opens the schoolboard in his class and discovers that a Hitler moustache has been added to Pim Fortuyn, the frontman of his Political Party “Liveable Rotterdam”. When he asks the children who did this, they all raise their hands. In the evening, a second-generation moroccan schoolboy goes to pick up his Dutch boyfriend. An outspoken, less educated father of the Dutch boyfriend opens the door and calls to his son: “Thijn, Bin Laden is on the doorstep. The Moroccan schoolboy sees that the election poster of Leefbaar Rotterdam is hanging on the window and decides not to wait for his boyfriend to come out. Upset, he cycled away. We hear a fragment of a speech by Pim Fortuyn: “This country has had enough. Moroccan boys, Turkish boys, who do not rob each other, but you and me.”

Khalid to Lofti: “What you aptly describe in your book, Lofti, is what I and many of my contemporaries also had, at the time, is that only then do you begin to be conscious of the fact that you are the other. Was that also the reason for you to write this book? Because that was a common feeling of that generation?”

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid: “Yes, it was a collective experience. Moreover, it was not only an experience here in the Netherlands. It was an experience in the West. It was also an experience in the districts in Antwerp, in Brussels, in Paris and in Marseille. I am a historian, so I am trained to look back. I found out, in conversations with others, that it was indeed a collective experience, but that it was not really written down or imagined. I also felt a motivation to write it down properly. To be some kind of window on the world, for others, for people who do not understand it. So, that is where the idea came from.”

Khalid to Lofti: “And the big difference between the attitude of the first generation, our parents guest workers, who were very subservient, who were very pliable, and the new generation who were very articulate. Maybe you can say something more about that, because you insisted on showing a fragment that said a lot about it.”

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid: “I remember the day when September 11 happened, and everyone who still asks “where were you?”, etc. Well, Al Jazeera was on in my parents’ living room. I was watching it. I think I reacted rather indifferently at first. I was like, “Whatever, of course this is happening in America.” It was like a movie. But the fear in my parents’ eyes, you know? The suitcase they had come to Holland with, maybe they had to get it ready to leave again. While our generation (the second, born here) wanted to take the world by storm, figuratively speaking. We wanted to claim our place, (in our living environment). There you saw the culture schism, the generation gap. That also came together at that 9/11 moment. So there were two battlefields. The battle of the second generation against the rest of society, and the battle against the first generation, our parents. Because we wanted to discover our own path. That was tangible, at that moment.”

Khalid to the public and to Lofti: ” We look at fragments of Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King.” A second generation Hasan Minhaj hears from a first generation, his father: “These things happen, and these things will continue to happen. This is the price you have to pay to be here.”

Khalid to Lofti: “That is intense, is it not?”

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid: “Yes, that was the first generation, wasn’t it? Indeed humble and somewhat grateful and keeping themselves small, being invisible, while of course…we were born here and grew up here. The streets of Rotterdam are my streets, you know? I didn’t want to apologise at all for the actions of other lunatics. So that was quite confronting.”

Khalid to Lofti: “Still, at first I had that feeling you describe, the anger, when people asked you: “How is it possible that those kinds of attacks are carried out?” At some point you get tired of that. Later I did start thinking. All the people who come up to you and give you a hand because they want to understand, what about that? They are not actually your opponents. They are people who want to understand the complexity of that world. What exactly is going on? I have become more moderate in my outlook, instead of getting stuck in anger. Do you notice that in that generation as well?”

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid: “Whether that anger has subsided?”

Khalid to Lofti: “Yes, does understanding grows with it, (to replace anger)?”

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid: “Well, at first it was an impossible position. It was also a period of confusion, because in your teenage years you are also searching for your identity. You didn’t know anything yet, you had no answers. So yes, you were bombarded with questions.”

Khalid to Lofti: “All adolescents are searching for their identity, aren’t they?

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid: “Yes, they are, but normally you are the one with the questions. But in the second generation, as a teenager you were bombarded with questions. Theological questions, etc. I thought to myself, “I don’t know!” Then, of course, you just react instinctively. Let me say first of all. I don’t feel like a victim. I have never felt like a victim either. When people emphasised: “Watch out, they’re dangerous.” Then I thought, “yeah, that’s cool, I’m dangerous.” You know? So I started behaving according to their ideas, to how they thought about us. That just became a toxic interaction. It reinforced each other. That made the 00s a particularly hysterical time, after all.”

Dj, another table guest: “Can I ask you something? Did you really notice a day after the 9/11 attacks, a difference in your daily life, how you were treated?”

Lotfi El Hamani to the DJ: “Well, I remember taking the tram to school. You noticed that the atmosphere had changed. It was also the time of… You have to imagine. There was no social media so you had the newspapers. You saw those front pages with the attacks. Bin Laden as a suspect, and so on. Yeah, it affects people.”

Khalid to the DJ and to Lofti: “You have to imagine that people you have known for a long time suddenly start asking you, even though you have grown up together, what is going on. You suddenly became “the other”. They were uncomfortable questions about something that had happened and was happening very far away. People very far away doing crazy things. That they suddenly start thinking that I should think something of them.”

Khalid to Lofti: “For me personally, Lofti, the death of Theo van Gogh was a very important turning point because…He said the most rabid things, not only about Islam. But he was someone who I counted as a force in society who was not against, who had concerns, together with the other. That’s how I felt, because I worked with him a lot. He was the first to say yes when I invited him to a manifestation in Paradiso that I organised after 9/11. Theo van Gogh was the first to see: “I’m in, because I think we’re going to solve this together in this society. But I must be able to say what I am worried about.” […] I can still remember. when he was murdered, I woke up and heard the news. I thought, if we are going to lose that kind of power then we are lost. Fortunately, it eventually subsided. But the murder of Theo, that was a really frightening moment. Much more than 9/11.

Lotfi El Hamani to Khalid: “It was an accumulation of incidents. Also, the murder of Fortuyn, although not by a Muslim. But it was a moment that had to be fought against the spirit of the times. Many people had the idea: “That multicultural society, that was nothing, that is nothing, and that will never be anything.” You have to grow up in such a society, you know? It does something to your self-image, to your self-confidence. There is discrimination in employment, racism in society. Because in itself, of course, the Netherlands is no different than any other country in the world. That is why I wrote this book. To show how oppressive that period was. Not just for me. I think it’s a very sober reflection on twenty years, since 9/11.” […] To still show where we come from. That is actually a bit my hobbyhorse too. Society has moved on, hasn’t it? I mean, where we are now is much less violent than it was then. What bothers me is that politicians have actually stuck in that groove. They can’t get out. That works both ways. On the one hand, the right-wing parties who, for cynical reasons, keep shouting that it will never work. OK, you can take that. But I also find the left side uncomfortable. The other day Jesse Klaver on Jinek’s talk show said: “Yes, migrants have built this country. Then I think to myself, “Yes, that’s well meant, but those are not the best arguments.” A migrant may be just as motivated or lazy as any other Dutch person. You don’t have to become mayor of Rotterdam, chamber president or star footballer to count on a normal level of civilisation. So we once agreed: “you come to the Netherlands, with or without a residence permit. These are your rights and obligations. Congratulations and make something of your life.”

Khalid to Lofti: “And that’s what you have to make do with. Lofti, thank you for this beautiful book.”