Two minutes
Friday, October 10th, 2008 
You often only notice that you are different if you are aware of your surroundings makes. Sometimes it's annoying, at other times very enlightening. As a child of two Indian parents, I noticed that my family was different, I strikingly uncles and aunts had my one grandfather almost every year in Indonesia, and my grandmother gateau africain, roti koekoes, kue lapis and bacon cake left drag for parties. Yet, even though I was sometimes abused (for something I was not the way), I had girlfriends Dutch, spoke Dutch at home and in school holidays and all Dutch quarter. I did not know how else I fit into this picture.
This was reinforced by tales of World War II. At school was the Second World War as to Jews, hiding, concentration camps and German, but my family talked about Japan, Burma railway, internment camps and life outside the camp. Coincidentally my great-grandfather was a tall Prussian and my grandfather's middle name was Adolf. The animosity of German I could not place. Moreover, the Netherlands and Indonesia were quite far apart, were Germans and Japanese do not have a famine, I had never heard my grandparents. Contradictions that made me feel like I lived in two worlds, not knowing what they were or how they were dealing with each other.
One of my grandfather wanted me to tell anything about it. My other grandparents, I once asked whether the war was the same school as that of them, why it was called World War II when the war was the only one who had lived in Indonesia and why it was called a world war as only a war between Japan and Indonesia had been. In reply I received a scowl which, combined with a sigh, I said something like, "You clever child, you understand there is nothing of." After that defensive reaction, I tried to find their own answers. How many books on World War I in Europe have read I can not remember, but none I found an answer to this pressing question: how was it that my grandparents and my teachers had full conviction about the same war, but their stories so were different?
Only in high school, after reading Jeroen Brouwers' Sunken Red, I dared again to a question about it, this time in my history teacher. Sitting at her desk with her elbows on the table, she sighed, raised her hands, her head in there pockets, rubbed her face and then told me that it was a war that had taken place in several areas. The war had begun in Europe. Germany and Japan were allies become enemies because common in Europe and a world war had already raged. Therefore, the entire period, called the Second World War.
There it was. The answer. In less than two minutes, my years of completed puzzle and I understood how the war stories of my family were connected with those of the Netherlands.
Published in Magazine Archipelago, autumn 2008.
R. Eimers says:
October 17th, 2008
1:27 p.m.
Very incompetent of your teacher, so maybe that's why she sighed.
That of the common enemy I can not understand! Japan was not trying to just Dutch territory to conquer, but to the entire Indonesian archipelago to add to their empire. So even though there is only Hottentots lived.
What is worse is that she has not told you what happened after Japan was defeated! This shows her complete incompetence especially on a war which is largely true Dutchman carefully concealed.
Grandma Helen says:
October 17th, 2008
6:29 p.m.
Yes, what a story, I like 100% Dutch but always between Indian people wanted to know how it was and half Indian ... my Mother was so dismissive, I did not understand her, I took my kids (father Indo) dark and fun, and they ? found them white! with a strong emphasis on the l ... weird ... but the person I thought were old wounds, the time of babu babu here and there it was over, I personally would rather ... ordinary Indo, the humble sweet Indos much love Grandma Helen
Kirsten says:
April 12th, 2009
5:49 p.m.
@ R. Eimers: I mean the common enemy to the west, or rather, America.