“Where does the past begin? There we are sitting at Eva Vriend’s temporary writing desk, from the light keeper’s house we look straight into history. We have a view of Schokland, but the island of the Schokkers in the Zuiderzee no longer exists. The island with its marshy land, the island of the Diender family, the island of Anna.
Once all Schokkers had to leave this special place, too much poverty, too many floods, the fate of the Schokkers was decided. We see the reality of that time slowly come to life on the paper, as if everything that lies behind us is still waiting to happen. Friend never loses sight of us, we seem to write down every word with her.”
Impossible dilemma
“The stories of the tall, proud but modest Anna make us curious. Who were the Schokkers? Were they the refugees of that time? It is special how we are slowly drawn into the impossible dilemma of more than 100 years ago, a dilemma that is far away of the refugee problems that we are struggling with today.
We learn that it was only in the nineteenth century that we started to link our identity to our origins, to our native land. The place where you come from was hardly important before. We suddenly see many more places than just the birth register to hang our identity on. Once halfway through the book we smell the tar, the fish, the tree bark with which the fishing nets were rubbed against the hard salt of the sea water. We feel the chilly wind and we hear the lapping of the Zuiderzee, not yet inhibited by any barrier, free from the mainland, free from outside interference.”
