As a teenager, I was swept into a world that most people only glimpse in the margins of late-night news or the footnotes of family gossip. My grandmother’s new husband had a son—let’s call him the youngest black sheep—who seemed to have been born with a surplus of vision and a deficit of supervision at eighteen.
I was fifteen, untethered, and perfectly positioned for adventure or disaster, depending on your perspective.

I remembered him from my Amsterdam days, when I was allowed to play with his sister’s vast Barbie collection. He was the one who wrote “You are the devil” in my poesie album, complete with a devilish doodle.
So imagine my surprise when, years later, he took me under his wing and welcomed me into his gang of merry men.
On my first night, I was loaded into the back seat of a big-engine car and whisked away on a tour through the city. People drifted in and out of the car, each one treating my uncle with a curious mix of deference and awe. Some handed things over, others received mysterious packages, but the details were always obscured—transactions conducted in a language of nods and glances.

After what felt like endless rounds, we stopped at a garage before crowning the night with a shoarma, greasy enough to lubricate a getaway car. It took me a few years and a few more experiences to realize that the guys hopping in and out of the car were the same ones who joined us at the Roxy or that strange discotheque in Volendam.
The garage was a chop shop, their treasure trove, and I was an unwitting participant in a world where the rules were written in engine oil and adrenaline.

Of course, things evolved. Eventually, a late-night police raid had me kindly asked if they could look under my mattress. That was my cue to find a new place to live. Sure, I liked the Rolexes, the Cartier rings, my Speedy bag, and I didn’t ask too many questions about where they came from. But a visit from the boys in blue was a bit too on the nose, even for me.

Many incidents and accidents from that time still flicker in my mind, but one question lingers above them all: who are the real bad men? Is it the head of a diamond empire, robbers, thieves, or politicians?
It’s a question that’s only grown more absurd with age. Take De Beers, for example—a company with Dutch colonial roots that built its fortune in South Africa, transforming a patch of land into a global monopoly.

Their history is a masterclass in market manipulation, colonial exploitation, and the kind of ethical flexibility that would make a street thief blush. Yet, somehow, their executives are the ones in tailored suits, shaking hands with presidents and sponsoring art galas, while the small-time crooks get their faces plastered on wanted posters.

It’s almost comical—the head of De Beers, a man whose company’s legacy is built on blood diamonds and monopoly power, wagging his finger at a bunch of car thieves and calling them “bad men.” The hypocrisy is so thick you’d need a crowbar just to break it open.

But what really separates a “good” thief from a “good” businessman or politician? The urge is the same: money and power.
The thief is born in a hotbed of crime, relying on brain, brawn, and stealth, coping with the chaos through alcohol or whatever substances are at hand.
The businessman or politician is born into education and privilege, their sociopathy polished by etiquette classes and prescription pharmaceuticals.
The thief’s harm is immediate and personal; it affects your car (radio at that time), your watch, and your sense of safety.
The businessman’s harm is abstract and systemic, a polluted river, a gutted pension fund, a war waged by proxy.

Society draws its lines not based on the scale of harm but on the visibility and sophistication of the act. The thief is condemned because he lacks the veneer of legitimacy. The businessman is celebrated because he wears a suit and calls his theft “innovation.” The politician writes the laws that make it all legal.

Looking back, I can’t help but feel a strange nostalgia for those chopshop nights. At least there, the rules were clear. No violence, no snitching, no stealing from families. There was a kind of honesty in the dishonesty—a recognition that what we were doing was crooked, but at least we weren’t pretending otherwise.

So next time you see a diamond sparkling in a shop window, remember: its shine is just the ghost light of colonial theft, polished by hands you’ll never see. Meanwhile, the real “bad men” are dining in Michelin-starred restaurants, their consciences as clean as their annual reports.

As for me, I’ll take the memory of a shoarma-stained night in Amsterdam over a boardroom any day. At least in the chop shop, you knew exactly who you were dealing with.

May Harmony find you,

Irena Phaedra

P.S. The Clash, like many artists, observed and predicted.

Police and thieves in the street, oh yeah
Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition
Police and thieves in the street, oh yeah
Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition

From genesis to revelation
The next generation will be, hear me
From genesis to revelation
The next generation will be, hear me

And all the crimes come in day by day
No one stops it in any way
All the peace maker turn war officers
Hear what I say