A friend in Amsterdam writes:Â
I went to my [Moroccan] friend’s family’s apartment in Slotervaart and we watched Turkish soap operas dubbed in Arabic. At one point, the characters showed a map of Europe and the Middle East, with various arrows pointing back and forth. I asked her what they were, and she said they were maps of drug trafficking routes from Holland to Istanbul. Then my friend and her sister laid out a plate of sheeps’ stomach while I was in the bathroom and waited to see whether I would eat it. I explained that although it had smelled good before I knew what it was, the thought of eating it made me feel sick, but I felt obligated to eat a tiny bite of it anyway.
Slotervaart is not technically a banlieue (outskirt) of Amsterdam but it is functionally the same as the Paris banlieues. It is where Muslim immigrants live.