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 HE EXCITEMENT OF THE RESIDENTS OF THE EMERGENCY HOUSING ON Rotterdam’s waterfront was palpable, and as a 6-year-old I was totally caught up in it. The king was coming! A real live king, not just a make-believe, fairy-tale king.
King Leopold of Belgium would arrive on his royal yacht at the Wilhelmina Kade, where our rundown tenement stood like a blot amid the warehouses that surrounded it. He would come there, see our deplorable plight, and wave his wand to magically transport us from our filth and squalor to a land of bliss and beauty. At least, so I thought.
To us, the cast-offs of society, it was immaterial that he was just passing through on his way to the »
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