Karl Marx’s Revolutionary Brussels

by Steven Hermans

I walk the cold deserted streets of Brussels on the 1st of November. The sun rises in front of me over a thousand chimneys, quickly spreading light and shadow over the sidewalks. It gives the red-tiled rooftops the colours the night took away. I squint my eyes and pull up my shoulders, and put my hands a bit deeper still in my coat pockets. It's Monday morning but the streets are empty; November 1st is All Saints Day, the day when Catholics remember the dead. I am in Elsene, a suburb of Brussels, where newly arrived Eurocrats and long-time African immigrants live side by ...