Strangers in Amsterdam — Part 2

Exactly two years ago, I met my oldest ever friend to date. The name and details of this star have been changed for privacy purposes. However, the memory is deeply etched in my mind forever.

I remember how I felt as I first walked to the bus stop and later as I waited, sat next to her. She reached for my gloves when they fell and handed them to me, a cute smile etched on her wrinkled face. It was early February, the coldest month of the year. The beautifully trimmed lawn glistened with frost, and the air was crisp and cold -3 degrees. I was shivering, feeling super chilly. I noticed she was in a long gray jacket, not wearing any gloves. I was amazed to see her all by herself, timid in some ways, but stronger and mightier with age. Clearly, the latter is just a number.

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“It’s koud,” she smiled and laughed heartily at me as I gloved up and tried to brace my body against the harsh wind.

“Wat is jouw naam?”

“Astrid. Mijn naam is Astrid,” she said adorably.

“Mijn naam is Apurva.” I showed her my travel card to help her better.

“Apurfaa?” she said, her wrinkles stretching with her voice. The skin around her lips moved as she read my name with ease and smiled. A kind one.

“How old are you?” I asked in amazement. I normally don’t intrude so much, but I couldn’t help it.

“I am 92. I am old and wise,” she said, laughing cheerfully. “Very wise.”

“Oh wow! I am 29.”

“Oh, prima!”

I observed her face closely, the wrinkled lips smudged with red lipgloss that opened to a smile encasing a false tooth set. Her thick hair was fashionably groomed and trimmed into a short bob that covered her head uniformly. The smile was really infectious.

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“You look happy. What is the secret to your happiness?”

“I am healthy. I am alive. I have money. I have friends. I have a family. I don’t look happy. I am happy,” she said in a kind but bold voice. Her English was perfect.

“So happy to see you. You really made my day today.”

“So I did something good?” she inquired kindly.

“You have no idea.”

After a moment of silence, I added, “I am coming from my therapist.”

She looked at me intently, a knowing look on her face. She said nothing, but I could swear I saw a small nod of understanding.

“Are you working?”

Bam! She asked me an innocent, totally harmless question. But it was a trigger. Please, no. I will be truthful but answer safely without telling the whole story that I hadn’t accepted myself back then.

“I used to. Now I am studying here.”

“Do you live alone?”

“I am married. I live with my husband.”

Some more smiling. Looking around for the bus which was the reason we were here, we continued to talk.

“What is your lievelingseten (favorite food)?” I had translated the phrase using Google Translate and showed her my phone, because mijn Nederlands is niet zo goed back then.

“I eat everything. But I never skip salads. I eat salads every single day,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Have you always lived here?”

“I have lived here all my life. For 92 years. In Zilver Windstraat.”

“I live in Zilver Windstraat too.”

“What’s the huis number?”

“I live in 118.”

“We are in 20!”

“Wow. We are buren (neighbours).” She looked really happy now.

“Everyone is taking their own car these days. Only one person in each car,” she said, pointing at the vehicles passing by as we waited patiently for our bus, grimacing and shaking her head in disagreement.

“Do you live alone?” Once again, my curiosity got the better of me.

“My second husband died five years ago…” She spoke for a second into the distance, then looked at me briefly, smiling. “It happens, you know…” with a shrug and half-smile.

“I am going to visit a friend who is ill,” she continued. She was clutching her cover filled with clinking glasses. She proudly showed me her glass jar collection, filled with onion plants growing at various heights. She mentioned she couldn’t move her left arm much, though that wouldn’t stop her from being strong and getting things done. A trait I admire so much in the native Dutch. They are not made of sugar.

Each time a pair of headlights appeared around the corner, she got excited in the hope of finally getting into the bus. Then, in a matter of nanoseconds, she said, “Nee…” as the lights extended into a delivery van or, worse, a truck.

She laughed at a small Canta car waiting timidly by the road, its indicator on.

“Klein? (small)”

“Klein…”

“Ik spreek een beetje Nederlands.”

I showed her the Dutch lessons on my phone. She read a few of them and said, “Heel goed!” She had excellent eyesight and could read from my poorly backlit, almost-dying iPhone.

“Why don’t you drive a car yourself? You can get around anywhere so easily!”

“Nee, my children will not allow it.”

She kept murmuring bits of Dutch here and there, and I, like a small child pretending to understand, responded with a confident, typical, and lazy… “Jaaaaa…”

The bus was late as usual. Typical Dutch public transportation.

“I will start walking,” I signalled to her that I might leave now, half-heartedly.

“I will wait for the bus,” she said hopefully, glancing left every time to the corner of the road.

My patience was not the same. “I will call a taxi for us and ask the driver to drop you on the way.”

“Oh, that is not fair. You will pay for it. Oh no…!”

“Nee, geen probleem! It is totally fine. Where do you want to go?”

“Ziekenhuis Amstelland.” Then, after a pause, she added, “You should come home for a coffee one day.”

“I would have visited anyway. I don’t need any favor returned.” I added, kindly.

She probably only heard the word visited. That registered as a yes, and she beamed happily.

I called an Uber. Hafez would arrive in two minutes. That was quick.

In no time, we scrambled into the old KIA. The driver greeted us in Dutch. Astrid took charge and converses fluently with Hafez, a kind man from South Africa. He proceeded to drive us toward her stop, barely 5 minutes away.

By mistake, Astrid poked her finger into the glass screen separating the driver from the passengers. It was so invisibly clean that she hadn’t noticed it. She chuckled to herself for a while. The glass now bore a small fingerprint mark.

“Nooo…” Ans wailed, looking lost and a bit down when Hafez took a wrong turn at the roundabout.

“No, it’s okay… You can tell him where you want to go. He will drop you there.”

Hafez quickly corrected his route and dropped Astrid off exactly where she wanted to go.

As she was getting out of the car, she looked at me and said, “Dank je wel. Coffee is waiting for you,” with a wink and a twinkle in her eyes. She turned and walked away.

Hafez continued driving toward my destination.

“Is she your family?” he asked, peering through the rearview mirror.

“No, I just met her at the bus stop half an hour ago.”

“You did a really kind thing there.”

I rushed to the nearest café after finishing my errand. I had to jot down this incident before it faded from my ever-busy, memory-laden mind.

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Coffee is waiting for you…

She didn’t look old — not one bit. So precious. She still had the fire of youth burning inside her, fighting within her. She made me feel hopeful.

As she wakes up every morning to another beautiful day in her life, I wondered what kept her going so positively.

Does she see each day as a blessing or another hurdle to pass? She probably knows her loved ones are waiting for her. That she will meet them when her time comes. But until then, she must go on…

I couldn’t stop the flow of words as I furiously scribbled into my Remarkable, all while holding and pushing my almost-filled bladder to a dangerous extent.

While the incident replayed itself on a loop in my mind, one question bothered me the most.

Was her hair brown or blonde?

I couldn’t recall anymore.

PS: I wanted to simply meet her again after a few months. And I did. This time, with my husband and some flowers. We rang the bell downstairs, hoping against hope that she would remember me. She answered, took the lift, and promptly came down to meet us, her face lighting up when she saw me. Dressed smartly, she took the flowers and went back up, inviting us over another time.

That was a year and a half ago. I tried multiple times to ring her bell again, but there was no answer. We really hope she is still happy and cheerful, wherever she is.