‘Anna’ appears again and again in my imagination. She is ethereal but eternal in my thoughts.

 

Diary of Anna in her teenage years, takes me to horrific history of the World War II.

 

Recounting another Anna’s days at a refugee camp in Tytsjerk during World War II, adds vividness to my imagination of wartime Holland. In a desperate attempt to survive, Anna packed her suitcase, took her bicycle and moved out of her birthplace Tiel, in search of a safer place for herself and her family.

 

In melancholic but with an instinct for life, an unknown place became home for Anna and her family. The blue of the sky seemed red, in the cry of the war, with the sight of the fighter planes.

 

And, on the other hand, humanity was flourishing as Churches opened their doors for war refugees. Life takes its own course and time heals.

With time, Anna became a beautiful part of the village which once had accepted her as a refugee.

 

Thinking about the love Anna had received as a war victim, made me wonder about the warmth of the heart of the villagers. But, I can feel the warmth now, as a well- accepted and beloved member of my host family.

 

Anna is eternal and here is another incarnation of her, Susanna Anna Maria Verkerk. Born in Tiel in October 1743, Anna got married to the Dutch director of Bengal Pieter de Brueys (VOC) and went to India. She had a happy family life with her four children and husband in India. Her memory is still alive in the stories of the locales. In my attempt to dig into the history, I found a strange resemblance of Anna with ‘Ahalya’, a character from the Hindu mythology. Ahalya was cursed to be transformed into a stone, due to her suspicious character.

 

‘Anna’ is the character that represents the emotional suffering and suffocation of all migrant people in the world. History has witnessed the tears of these people and history repeats itself! The ethereal ‘Anna’ in every migrant becomes eternal and the journey continues.

 

And the story goes on… I would like to continue more…