The year was 1977. The date was September 22.
At the time I had just started my first photography studio at Keizerstraat 24 in Utrecht, in a small carriage house next to the building where I had once worked as an assistant photographer.
For weeks I had been trying to collect a modest debt from a client who was living in a squatted garage workshop. I must have visited him at least ten times to retrieve the princely sum of fifteen guilders. Eventually my patience ran out. In the office part of the building stood several heavy wooden desks. I pointed to one of them and suggested that I might take it as collateral.
That seemed acceptable.
How I managed to transport that massive desk on a bicycle to my studio two streets away says something about the practical bicycle skills the Dutch have cultivated over the centuries.
Once back in my studio I opened one of the drawers. At the very back I discovered a small pouch containing eight carbine bullets. Judging by their condition they almost certainly dated from the Second World War. The copper casings were covered in green oxidation.
I decided to hand them over to the police.
The nearest police station was not exactly around the corner, so the matter remained unresolved until the day I went to collect Chinese take-out from a restaurant located directly across the street from one.
Being practical when the opportunity presents itself, I first placed my order at the restaurant and used the waiting time to cross the street and hand over the bullets.
I placed them on the counter.
One officer immediately threw himself flat on the floor as if I had walked in carrying a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse. Another, somewhat older officer remained relatively calm despite visible tension. He removed his cap, turned it upside down, carefully slid the bullets into it, and carried them away as though transporting nitroglycerin.
The officer who had meanwhile climbed back to his feet asked whether I was a member of the Rote Armee Fraktion.
This was a question I could deny with complete honesty.
Unfortunately, I was not believed.
Had I listened to the radio that day I might have understood the reaction. Only a few hours earlier members of the Rote Armee Fraktion had been involved in a gunfight with the police on Croeselaan, not far from the very police station where I had decided to perform my civic duty.
I was not arrested, but I was not allowed to leave either.
An officer called the anti-terror unit in Zeist. About ninety minutes later they arrived wearing bulletproof vests, carrying machine guns and dressed in camouflage outfits that looked distinctly out of place in a quiet Dutch street.
I was placed in a white van surrounded by these heavily armed men. When we reached the street where I lived I saw that it had already been sealed off at both ends by additional units.
The anti-terror team advanced down the street like something from a military training film. One man moved forward a few meters while sweeping his rifle around, another covered him.
In this manner, and without a single shot being fired, we eventually reached the building where I rented an attic room.
I assumed the worst was behind me.
It was not.
The building still had to be taken floor by floor in a way that strongly resembled the scenes in which Navy SEALs storm houses occupied by high-ranking terrorists.
At the very top my girlfriend lifted the attic hatch slightly and put her head through the opening.
In a perfectly refined accent she asked what the gentlemen were doing there.
At once the anti-terror officers transformed into models of politeness. Helmets came off. Apologies were murmured. And Operation Chinese Take-Out quietly came to an end.
After all, anyone with a girlfriend who spoke with such a refined accent could hardly be a member of the Rote Armee Fraktion.
In those days things were still that simple.
The Chinese food, by now completely cold, was fetched by a helpful officer. It turned into a surprisingly pleasant afternoon. One of the men admitted that he had found the entire affair rather exciting, since it had been his first anti-terror operation.
The story might have ended there.
But a year later I discovered that I still appeared on a list of possible RAF members. Since life was already complicated enough at the time, I mentioned this detail to my psychiatrist.
He listened silently for a long time and then told me something I have never forgotten.
“My brother,” he said quietly, “was also on that list for quite a while. Eventually he got so tired of it that he simply joined the RAF.”
He leaned back and smiled.
“If you can’t beat them, join them.”
Normally I never visit my general practitioner without making an appointment first. On this occasion I walked straight into his office, ignored the patients waiting ahead of me, pushed open the consulting-room door and said:
“You referred me to a psychiatrist who is crazier than I am.”
“That,” my doctor replied cautiously, “is actually a well-known symptom. Many patients believe their therapist is crazier than they are.”
“Yes,” I said. “But perhaps you could call him and ask whether it is possible to join the Rote Armee Fraktion through him.”
I slammed the door and left.
The following week I was quietly assigned a different psychiatrist.
Curiously enough, that RAF annotation later proved useful. When I applied for a visa to the United States in 1980, the RAF, miracle of miracles, appeared there on a list of right-wing extremists.
The officials at the consulate were deeply suspicious of that socialist country called the Netherlands, which stubbornly refused to host their nuclear missiles.
Without hesitation an American bureaucrat stamped INDEFINITELY into my visa.
Ordinary citizens usually received tourist visas for three to six weeks.