Can one be truly cosmopolitan? Is there really such a thing as an international culture? Again as I had done so often in Malaysia, I thought of V.S. Naipaul. I thought of Philip Jeyaratnam. And I though of myself, my own life. Am I a man of international culture? Or simply a man of several cultures, drifting in and out of them, influenced by upbringing, by travel, by reading, and doomed or blessed — depending on my mood — to be culturally self-conscious. Just as Singaporeans, for lack of a more specific identification, often call themselves “Asians,” I am a “European”. But I would never wish to be regarded as international. International belongs to no specific culture, it is a low common denominator of modern styles, brand names, slogans on t-shirts. Airport art is international. It describes nothing, belongs nowhere.

My parents were from different countries. I was educated in Holland but write in my mother’s language. and I have lived one third of my life in Asia. Other people’s loyalties, therefore, have always fascinated me. I have always wanted to know what it feels like to be entirely and unselfconciously at home in one country. The idea fills me with envy, but also with horror; the feeling of being confined by closed borders strikes me as the ultimate nightmare.