"Most people are scared of death but I wanted to get more familiar with it, so I became a hospice caretaker. Buddhists say that you need to prepare for death from the moment you are born..
"All my life, I felt somewhat incomplete. When you hold a love for someone, but you can never express that love, it's killing you inside. So with dementia, she allowed me to get close, take care of her, and even bathe her. For the very first time, she allowed me to love her.''
Dirk: "We met in church at the neighborhood Christmas dinner."
Soukaina: "I had no idea it was a chruch. It said very big halal on the flyer, so my mom and I decided to go there."
He had a crush on me then, but I always held off. My ex-husband was an alcoholic. We were married for fourteen years. While I took care of the children and ran a clothing company, the money I earned he spent on alcohol. I ended the marriage when I found out he was cheating on me.
''I never saw it coming. It was mainly emotional abuse. Sometimes, he threatened her, saying he would ruin her, but we always thought he meant financially..
When I moved here, I was sixteen years old. I was all alone, and I didn’t speak a word of Dutch. I was lucky enough to be an attractive person. I was social, and it was easy for me to talk to people. That was my wealth.
That’s why I was confident enough to walk into..
''I'm always down for random spontaneous things, so when a camera crew approached me at the airport in Japan and asked if they could interview me, I said yes. They were collecting human stories from the airport for a TV show. After the interv.. #amsterdam
Terwijl politici, economen, journalisten en wethouders gisteren in gesprek gingen met elkaar over de staat van de stad, verschenen de Humans of Amsterdam op het grote scherm achter hen. #humansofamsterdam#destaatvandestad
"As a kid, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather. He had a little sewing workshop but everybody in Istanbul knew him. I was six when he taught me easy sewing techniques on a small piece of fabric. After a while, he taught me how to sew buttons on a blouse.. #humansofamsterdam
''Please don't ask me for my age. I couldn't tell you. I'm terrible with data. The only year I can remember vividly is 1980. That was the year I met Piet. I went to a friend's house for a drink, and there he was, sitting with a drink in his hand.. #Amsterdam#humansofamsterdam
‘’Julia studies medicine in Warsaw and I study music composition here at the conservatory. We have been doing this long-distance-kind-of-relationship for a while now.. #humansofamsterdam