Ode to Aicha | “She was a strong, courageous and resilient woman.”

This text was translated using AI and may contain errors. If you have suggestions or comments, please contact us at info.ode@amsterdammuseum.nl.

My mother Aicha was 14 years old when she was married off. That she was getting married, and to whom, she did not learn until the day itself. When she was just 27, she traveled with six children to a foreign country, following her husband. But once she arrived in Holland, she found an empty house. Her husband had left her and taken all her possessions. In June 2022, she died while on vacation in Morocco, at the age of 74. After a lifetime of working full-time in cleaning and nursing homes, while learning Dutch and raising her children on her own, she left us not only a house of our own but also savings. Even after she died, she still wanted to take care of us. That was typical of my mother.  

Seeing where I came from, where I am now is almost unimaginable. But it also makes me passionately committed to the Inclusion and Anti-Discrimination portfolio as an alderman of this wonderful city. We never just fit into one box, as Sinan Çankaya writes in “My myriad identities. We are, when given space to be fully ourselves, a sum of different identities as human beings. And factors such as poverty, illiterate parents, limited freedom, unsafe living conditions and debt - these are all circumstances that have a great impact on the opportunities one has in life.  

As I was growing up, my mother gave me hope. She told us stories about our family history, made dishes of the place where she grew up and shared Moroccan rituals with us. That's how we learned who she was and where she came from, and where our roots lay. But I also learned to buffalo. I had to work extremely hard because of my background, much harder than many other students. First in high school, then in college, with countless side jobs to keep myself afloat. Until I burned out. Like my mother, I had demanded too much of myself.  

To get to my feet, I had to detach. Detachment from the community I had grown up in, with strict rules and limited opportunities for young women. To detach from my family, my background and my roots. Only then could I become myself and connect with something new. And I found that freedom, once I lived independently in my room, in Amsterdam.  

Amsterdam was for me, as it has been for so many people for centuries, the city where you can break away from what you know to find who you are. Where you can break free not only from the roles others force you into, but also from your own prejudices and assumptions. But freedom without connection quickly turns into alienation; after all, we only exist in relation to others. The freedom I found in Amsterdam consisted not only of what I could disconnect from. The magic of being free in Amsterdam consisted precisely of the people with whom I could connect. I needed others in order to be myself. 

The flip side was that I pushed my background away. I wanted to belong, not to be different, to be Dutch. I wanted to be free, free from rules, from obstacles, from that which made me different from the white Dutch people around me. It took me a long time to realize that I was running away from myself, that I could not be myself if I did not accept a part of me. I discovered that freedom also means self-acceptance. My freedom lay in the realization that as a person I can love both my Dutch and Moroccan and Islamic culture, that I do not have to choose, that the different and sometimes contradictory parts of the two cultures go together and do not have to clash.  

Once I got to that point, I was also able to reconnect with my family, especially my mother. She immediately embraced me again. I want to honor her as a strong, courageous and resilient woman. Someone who made a long and arduous journey to the Netherlands, a new country, a new language and a new culture. She defied difficulties, overcame feelings of loss and homesickness. She has lived up to her name and built a new life in an unfamiliar country. Sacrificed her familiar and safe life so that her children could build a new life in the Netherlands. She worked hard and gave a lot to us, but also to Dutch society. She paved the way for me and my brother and sisters. She is my great example. She taught me to believe in my own dreams and to follow my path. Because of my mother, I am the woman I am today. And for that I am eternally grateful to her. She is my heroine and always in my heart.  

Touria Meliani

Councilwoman Inclusion and Anti-Discrimination Policy.