I wasn’t a witness to the accident, but the sight of the Bijlmermeer, a sea of fire after a crippled 474 ploughed into the Groeneveen apartments, vivid on the BBC news that evening, remained in unsettling dreams for weeks after. October 4th 1992 - a night never to be forgotten.
The phrase ‘9/11 moment’ hadn’t yet been coined, but here in the Netherlands the impact was just as great. It took weeks to recover the remains of the victims, and longer to understand why a cargo plane longer than a football field had crashed in a densely populated area, how dangerous the cargo was, and what effect it was having on the local people.
The news agenda moves on. It was some time later that I found myself on the metro, skimming above the trees on concrete stilts, heading for somewhere near Gaasperdam. To a job interview at, I think, Oracle.
I have no memory of the interview. Only the train careening round a corner to reveal a gap between the apartment blocks like a missing tooth and a still-smoking pile of debris. In the middle, a JCB, dwarfed by the scale of its task. Memories of October 4th flooded back, scenes from a Hieronymus Bosch painting. While the city burns, strange flying machines crowd the livid sky.
I have no right to call myself traumatised by any of this. There were those present on the night who know what real trauma is (the story of Pa Sem speaks for itself). Turning up at the annual commemoration - laying flowers at The Tree That Saw Everything - is one way to show solidarity, and make peace with the memories. But for some of us the thought remains: what could I have done? Would I have had the courage?
Nearly thirty years later, I found myself writing a novel. A ‘what if’ story, looking back to the ‘80s and the ‘90s, about a fluffy-headed kid who thinks he remembers events from the future.
How? No idea. It’s all a mystery to him, but as life unfolds, he’s drawn to Amsterdam like a moth to a flame — a flame in the form of a kind, serious woman from the other side of the world who, he feels certain, he’s meant to spend his life with. The story gravitates to the student flats of the Amsterdam suburbs where, he’s sure, he’ll find her — studious and economics-focussed and not at all expecting some crazy English guy to drop by with a wild story. “You don’t know me, but…”
But as his search progressed, from one page to another, the summer of 1992 turned to Autumn, and it became obvious that looming events would be there — strange dream-like memories of a plane crash mixed with hell-fire scenes from Bosch’s luminous paintings — and, knowing who he was, he wouldn’t be able to ignore them.
He had no choice, and neither did I. We had to go to the Bijlmer.
Extract from Future Echoes
(Stephen has succeeded in tracking down his long-anticipated Kartika in 1990’s Amsterdam, but his Bosch-esqe memories of some sort of fire in the Bijlmermeer have crystallized into a horrifying certainty. He knows what’s going to happen. At the last minute, they race to the area, warning random strangers and setting off the fire alarms.)
The accusing ring of the alarm echoed around the square. She checked her watch apprehensively. “Stephen, it’s after half-past six.”
Her eyes locked on his, scanning for the truth. “You said something about 18:22. What’s going on?” She was right. The time he’d mentioned had already passed. He couldn’t account for it.
18:22. That was the time he remembered. They’d mentioned it on the news — he could almost see the ticker tape. “That had to be the time it happened.” He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to remember. “That must have been why they mentioned it, surely…” His stream of consciousness trailed off to nothing as they heard another sound above that of the fire alarm. Sirens.
“It’s the police!” A raised-voice reaction. “What have you done, Stephen?”
Her eyes pierced his, distraught, desperate and cornered. “My God. How could I have been so stupid as to go along with all this? What do you think is going to happen? They’ll know we did this. We’ll be arrested. They’ll send me home in disgrace!”
An accusing tone now, her voice becoming hoarse. “What are my parents going to think when they find out I got involved with some crazy man who made me do something like this?”
“But—.” It was futile. Any attempt to speak was drowned out.
“You fantasist!” she screamed at him, beating his chest with her fists, “you’ve ruined my life with your stupid fairy stories!” He could only stand there and take it.
After that, he could never say which happened first. She pulled back suddenly, and looked up, awestruck. He saw the hard edge of the shadow, accelerating along the grey concrete path towards the building, a hypnotic movement.
A shroud of darkness fell over them, and he too turned to look upwards, surprised by the whine of jet engines straining helplessly against the inevitable. In the instant it took to understand what was happening, he found himself staring at the fuselage of a lumbering aircraft, closer than he should ever have seen it, one wing sweeping down, grey and blue, just meters above them.
Maybe he shouted, “get down!” but if he did, it was lost beneath the screaming of the engines. Maybe she shouted something too, just at the moment of impact, but there was nothing to hear. The noise reached a strange crescendo, a sonic maximum where all sound was no sound, silence balancing in the air, as the plane concertinaed into the building.
A flash of white.
He snapped his eyes shut.
Then nothing.
I'd never heard of this incident before, so thank you for adding it to my awareness. The infinity of human histories is humbling and fascinating to me. Only by sharing stories and anecdotes with one another can we even begin to gain some sense of it.