If anyone has ever given you a bicycle, you haven't forgotten it. Even if the bike is long gone, you still have a memory of the person who gave it to you--especially if you were very young when you were so gifted.
That memory can be a very powerful force--enough, it turns out, to reunite you, a quarter-century later, with the person who gave you the "freedom machine."
The power of that memory is intensified if you are a small child in a foreign country where you and your parent are just learning to speak the language--and your homeland is in ruins.
When Mevan Babakar was five years old, she and her mother left war-torn Iraq on an odyssey that took them through Turkey, Azerbaijan and Russia before they arrived in the Netherlands. A man befriended them while they lived at a refugee center in the city of Zolle. "My mum said the greatest thing he did was listen when nobody really treated you like a human," she recalls of the kind stranger.
After Babakar and her family moved out of the center, the man visited them and presented them with bicycles. "I will never forget how joyous I felt," she explains. "It's not about my bike, it's about my self-worth."
Eventually, she and her mother settled in London, where her father joined them. They lost touch with the man. (If you are young, remember that we are talking about a time before Facebook or most other social media.) But, of course, she did not forget him.
Recently, she took a trip to re-trace her family's journey. One stop took her to Zolle, where she hoped to find the man and thank him for his kindness. After a series of dead-ends, she posted an old photo of her with the man on Twitter. Arjen van der Zee, a volunteer journalist in the city, spotted it and recognized the man as a former co-worker in the center.
He took her to a town about an hour away, just on the other side of the Dutch border with Germany. The man--who wanted to be identified only by his first name, Egbert, believed his gesture "wasn't all that much to make a fuss about," but was "grateful that it brought us together again."
He's 72 years old now and is happy that his wish for Mevan Babakar came true. "He was proud that I'd become a strong and brave woman."
I like to think that getting a bicycle had something to do with it.
That memory can be a very powerful force--enough, it turns out, to reunite you, a quarter-century later, with the person who gave you the "freedom machine."
The power of that memory is intensified if you are a small child in a foreign country where you and your parent are just learning to speak the language--and your homeland is in ruins.
When Mevan Babakar was five years old, she and her mother left war-torn Iraq on an odyssey that took them through Turkey, Azerbaijan and Russia before they arrived in the Netherlands. A man befriended them while they lived at a refugee center in the city of Zolle. "My mum said the greatest thing he did was listen when nobody really treated you like a human," she recalls of the kind stranger.
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| Mevan Babakar as a child refugee in the Netherlands |
After Babakar and her family moved out of the center, the man visited them and presented them with bicycles. "I will never forget how joyous I felt," she explains. "It's not about my bike, it's about my self-worth."
Eventually, she and her mother settled in London, where her father joined them. They lost touch with the man. (If you are young, remember that we are talking about a time before Facebook or most other social media.) But, of course, she did not forget him.
Recently, she took a trip to re-trace her family's journey. One stop took her to Zolle, where she hoped to find the man and thank him for his kindness. After a series of dead-ends, she posted an old photo of her with the man on Twitter. Arjen van der Zee, a volunteer journalist in the city, spotted it and recognized the man as a former co-worker in the center.
He took her to a town about an hour away, just on the other side of the Dutch border with Germany. The man--who wanted to be identified only by his first name, Egbert, believed his gesture "wasn't all that much to make a fuss about," but was "grateful that it brought us together again."
He's 72 years old now and is happy that his wish for Mevan Babakar came true. "He was proud that I'd become a strong and brave woman."
I like to think that getting a bicycle had something to do with it.
