I swear I saw this

I'm sitting in the subway and I look up to see a young Chinese man about 24 standing with his back against the pole with his right index finger shoved up his nose. I stare long enough to see how long he might keep it in there and if indeed he will drag anything out. He is neither digging around or hauling anything out. It just seems a place he enjoys his finger to be. Suddenly a Spanish man about 28 enters the train and in his left nostril is a piece of paper, not Kleenex, but rather what looks like photocopy paper. It extends about 1.5 inches beyond his nose orifice. The Chinese man sees him and jumps out of the way looking at him askance as though he is the plague. His jumping does not release his finger from his nose. Suddenly a young Chinese girl strolls up the aisle and the young Chinese man sees her and gets that look on his face that says: Yeah baby you look good. He has forgotten to remove his finger from his nose. She sits down oblivious of him and he continues to check her out like he has a chance in hell.  Suddenly the Chinese man takes another look at the Spanish man and I look too and we both see that he has removed the paper from his nostril. It is only then that the Chinese man removes his finger from his nose with a look of relief on his face as though he were waiting for an invisible signal, the right time, for finger removal from nostril; as though there is a time of day for such a thing.

Paper

I got my divorce papers in the mail yesterday. I am divorced and free. All I feel is sadness in my marrow. My own eyes make me weep.

WAKING UP AND COMING TO

I am coming out of the desert. Last week I woke up and realized it has been over three months since my arrest. That is a quarter of a year ago. It is a probationary span at a new job. It is a lifetime for a child waiting for Christmas. I received a phone call from England yesterday and I was encouraged, with love, to not be so bitter; to move on, to see the individual rather than dragging in the world around me. I am ready to come back to the living and the laughing. I am ready; I hope. I pray.

MY FATHER

About three months ago my brother sent me some photographs of my father that quite clearly showed that he was not long for this world. 

This morning I awoke at 5.36 am with a huge panic. I had a physical encounter in my dream that was not a dream on its own. I know that doesn't makes sense so let me try and explain. I was standing of a cliff overlooking the ocean. I was with my father and another brother C. I had picked up a wooden object that looked like two wooden batons joined together in the middle by a hollow wooden ball that was actually a bell. My father turned to me and told me that if I rung the bell over the ocean I would be able to bring back someone dead that I loved. I shook the bell but was not able to get it to chime as the clapper seemed stuck. My father took the bell from my hands and began to clang it violently. He stood on my left and my brother C was to my right. All three of us faced the ocean. After shaking the bell for three times I was suddenly in my apartment, in my living room, were I reside now, heading for the front door. Suddenly something very invisible clasped my arms, holding them by my side, and began walking me backwards. I was immediately aware that that I was wide awake but unable to break free and this caused panic to swell in me. I could feel my body temperature begin to drop. Fast. I could not get out from the drip and I knew I had to survive as whatever it was was stronger than me. I began to look around for something to grab or to help me defend myself. To my right were knives and I was unable to visually see my phone. I could not reach the knives. So still being steered backwards I sat down in a chair and began to say: Help me. I could barely get it out as my voice would not project and was not loud but rather sounded like a small hoarse voice. I repeated these two words all the while my body temperature was dropping fast. Suddenly I woke up and  I was freezing. My nipples were so hard they hurt, not in sexual arousal but rather from paranormal and cold. I was sleeping under a down blanket and the sheets under me were wet. I opened my eyes, looked at the clock and immediately wondered what time it was in California. 

Earlier yesterday, while writing, I suddenly heard a knock at the window. I live on the fourth floor. It was three knocks. It was so loud that I turned off the sound of my TV and went to all the windows to see if indeed there was someone there. It was frightening. I live on the fourth floor. No one can be at the window knocking. No one was there. I was not asleep. I was at my desk writing. I was not in some daze of sleep. 

At 9 am Freda calls and I tell her of the dream and she says: It's your father. I burst into tears. She talks for awhile but I can't hear a word she is saying as I am tuned in to my father out in California. I tell her I will call back but that I must call to see what is going on. I call a bit after 9 and my other brother S answers the phone. I apologize for waking him and tell him why I am calling. He says dad is fine. Then of course he wants to get into my life which I specifically don't want to do. I tell him to say what he wants to say here on the blog and that I am pouring my heart out here and that he can't possibly get any more information than what is found here. He is miffed I didn't answer an email.  I ask him if that was the same e-mail where I specifically asked not to be contacted. Then of course that words that hung in the air are the ones that somehow say: But what you want is not important. Before we hang up he mentions that he has people to take to the airport. I hang up. I go back to Freda. I tell her about the knocks at the window. I interpret it to mean I am losing my mind. I think I am hearing things. Again she tells me it is my father. Then I remember this:

His comment that he needs to take people to the airport brings it all together why I had the dream. They were all out in California for a visit. My brother's. All of them except M who is in Thailand. Everyone but he and I. My father is fading. He has Alzheimer's and only God knows what he can hear or comprehend anymore. Really, only God knows. 

Then I remember another thing. I have had this sort of dream before . Another time I was working at a virology clinic in New York City. I was close to O who was HIV positive. It was a Friday evening. I was on the inpatient floor. O called me to come see him quickly and I yelled into his room, as I passed by, that I had a date and would come Monday. On Monday O was dead. Early Monday morning, near dawn, I awoke from sleep and the first things that hit me was: O is dead. He woke me up from sleep and said, "goodbye". I also woke up with the chicken pox. They are not nightmare-like or confusing. One wakes from them with a definite immediate answer. 

Later that evening I called back to my father's house and asked the care worker to place the phone next to my father's ear. Once she had done so I told him that he did not need to wait for me to come visit him. I told him I was OK and that he did not need to stay for me. He could go when he wanted. I am done with my father. Now it is time for him to let go.

ANOTHER MORNING AFTER A NIGHT

I told myself I needed to get out of the house so yesterday I went to be a spectator at the annual  NYC Marathon. I got dressed up too just in case. Just in case I was to meet a wonderful person that might take me home and make this pain go away. Christ, just in case. I opened my front door and ONE OF THE NEIGHBOURS, (read my husband's Moroccan friends), was coming out the door as well. I, being much greater than the entire country of Morocco said, "Good morning". This was a "good morning" to the same guy who, (whom? who? Today I don't care), on my arrival to Brooklyn, when my husband failed to come home, I had asked directly if my husband was perhaps not home because he was married to another woman. He denied knowing anything. 

I need to digress for a moment. Here is a case and point where I have been told it is Qu'ranically permissible to lie. It is stated that it is permissible to lie to and about spouses if it is done to keep the union together. Let me give an example. If I know X about you and I know that if your spouse found out about it it would cause the marriage to be ruined, it is my duty to not tell you. Let's face it, I know the intention behind this, it's the same as do I really need to tell you that the dress you are wearing is as ugly as sin? No, because it will hurt your feelings and what point will be served? So the intention is a good one. A very good one. Here is the problem with it. Lie to me if you know my husband is going to a bar with his friends rather than to church on Sunday. Lie to me if you know my husband has a secret account somewhere were he is squirreling away money to. You don't lie if you know the spouse is doing something that becomes a deal breaker if the other one knows. Deal breakers are things that cannot be worked out and forgiven. 

Let me see would I have married my husband if I had known the following about him beforehand? That he was married already? That he had an additional small child than the one I already knew about? That this child was conceived while he was married to his second wife? That his second divorce came only one month before he and I married? Would I have married him? Maybe I would have. You see if you give me all of the facts up front then I make a decision based upon those facts. 

I have digressed enough. I watched the marathon pass me by. I came back upstairs, turned on the television to watch the finish, and saw that it was a Moroccan in first place, and felt so angry I began yelling at the picture on the screen. Then suddenly, miraculously, he was overtaken, and eventually beat out, by a Spaniard and I felt elated. And then I burst into tears. I don't remember the rest of the day. I cried so hard and long I feel dehydrated today. The skin on my fingers hurts my hands feel so dry. I have a headache and my eyes are puffy. I woke from sleep with a big fat sense of dread and despair. I woke up wanting to die. My favourite jazz radio station seems to be playing some sort of weird top 100 of cacophonous tunes. It feels like some sort of soundtrack to the madness I am engulfed by. It's raining and overcast. My bed looks like an invitation to die. Everything I own seems like it could care less about me. The episodes, on tape, that I have of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot annoy me, and I feel mad urges to slap the pompousness right out of Poirot. I insert myself into each episode and tell him off. Get a life Poirot. Everyone was living until you showed up, you shite. I don't think I can live through another day. When I open my refrigerator and look inside I think it looks like a nice place to store cadavers. I feel like going outside - it's a perfect day for it-- and spitting on known Muslims. I feel so hurt for me. I hate everyone with children as they seems to be breeding more people to hurt me. I want my father to die so that I have one less thing to worry about. I wish a heart attack upon myself, quick and swift, so I don't have to think about starting a new job. I listen to Fats Waller complain about his companion having feet too large and I wonder why my problems can't be this petty. I wonder how he had the audacity to feel pride in such lyrics. I realize I have never had a Korean lover and think this may solve my problems if I can just find one. I think about teachers I have known and wonder why they didn't see this coming, after all, why call yourself a teacher? 

What is the point of recovery and working through this pain if, all that beckons me on the other side, is a dense profound hatred for humanity? I don't feel good today. 

Today, I can't see tomorrow.

BEING IN COURT

Freda keeps telling me that I need to pay attention to Kubler-Ross' stages of grief. She says that my marriage is like that. That I am mourning the death of something and someone that died. I know this is true but it doesn't make the pain less. 

Yesterday I had to go to court to make my appearance before the judge and let him know I was following my court ordered stipulated requirements. As I was waiting to be called upon I kept trying to interpret the faces of the DA's side to determine if I was going back to jail or not. I have done nothing to be sent back to jail. My own attorney laughs at me every time I use the word 'felony'. He keeps reminding me that I am not a criminal. On the night my husband had me arrested, the police officers, after my asking what was going to happen to me, had a good riotous laugh by responding that I was going to go to jail for a very long time. Everyone seems to know or think I have done nothing but I am consumed with the notion that anytime I can be sent to jail. I feel nervous all the time. I sat there, in court, waiting to be called upon and I couldn't stop the feeling that I had done something which my husband could use against me. I suddenly had the feeling I had called him up and cursed him out - I don't have his number. I remember going by his home, knocking on the door and punching him harder, even stabbing him -- even though I have no idea where he is. I was sure that I had done something to violate the order of protection and that he, in his absolutely focused agenda of getting a green card, would claim he was still threatened by me and the courts being what they are, would have no choice other than to rearrest me. 

For those in AA this is known as 'drunk dreams'. These are dreams that a newly sober person has in the first years of sobriety. They wake up from dreams sure they had gotten drunk and broken their counted days of sobriety. That is how I feel when I go to court. I am awake but I am sure that somehow I have done this thing that will have me admonished again. I am sure that I have done things to my husband that I somehow can't remember...

I spend many hours of no particular day thinking about what he has done. I think about it in terms of how he behaved as a Muslim man to me, his wife. He made me pay for everything. He allowed me to spend money when he knew he was going to leave. By the situation that he has put me into now, he has caused me to be fired from my job, severely interfered with my ability to make money, and because of the arrest, I can not, even if I wanted to, leave the NYC area until this court issue is over. I can not return to Buffalo, I can not go live with a family member, I can not go to Georgia to be with a friend. Here is the truth, if I loose my job, don't get another (though I have but have not begun yet), get evicted from my home, I am still required to show up in court as required no matter what is happening to me in my personal life.

That fact alone is so insidious and sinister to me that my husband deserves his ass kicked all over again by a small mob of strangers. If I knew I wanted a green card from you, and had married you for false reasons, I would keep my manipulation to a minimum. What I mean is I would not let you spend your money on me. If you gave me things I would say: No. Keep your money. The fact that I lost my job and that he has not seen to my well being absolutely convinces me that his intentions from the start were foul. He kept the keys to our apartment and mailbox and to my car. He goes into the mailbox, comes into the apartment and I am sure he kept the keys to my car so that, if need be, he would have a place to sleep. (I think he also kept them because he believes it is a big important thing to me and I will somehow feel off kilter). If I cared I would leave money anonymously for you in the mailbox or under your door to make sure you had food. There is nothing. Every time he goes into the mailbox it is to remove what he is looking for. Every time he enters the apartment it is in attempt to determine what I am up to or to get things he wants. He never leaves anything. It is all about his needs. I have finally gotten the locks changed. I had to wait until the lease was up because legally, I was told, I could not change the locks while his name was on the lease. 

When I think of the intimate and personal things I shared with him, not only in faith and trust, but in a heartfelt attempt to grow closer to my husband, my skin crawls. I will never share myself again like that. For the first time in my life I don't trust anyone. He raped me of my innocence. He stole from me my sense of ease in this world. He took from me my belief that I didn't have to hide things from people. I have visions in my head now, that the first person who asks me for the time of day is the first person I will strike out towards, like a cobra, like an animal, like my husband did, to me.

And now to say what I don't want to admit. I am in a stage of grief. I fluctuate of course, but I am in the throes of these stages. I know this because while I sat in court, I anxiously glanced at the door each time it opened. Each time I saw a male figure my mind, for just an instant, saw my husband, and for just that instant I was sure he was there to take me home, to say he was sorry, to scoop me away from this judicial diphtheria. To take me in his arms and make my hurt go away. It is not him. He will never come. I keep forgetting. He is dead.

This stage, to my deepest grief, is called denial.

SISTERS

As I near fifty I find myself with sisters. I am the youngest of four older brothers and there was never a moment that I thought I was missing a sister, a female confidante. 

Now I feel as though the arms of my sisters will keep me alive. I seek out female voices and experience, mothering, and wisdom. Perhaps deliciously I find solace in knowing that in some way I have a small army of people, based solely on gender, that are on 'my side' through all of this. I need women in my life and I feel as though perhaps I have been asleep somehow for not having needed or noticed sisters before. For the first time in my life, sisters make sense to me and I find myself eyeballing men with utter confusion; sometimes, with eyeballs raised to heaven, rocking back and forth.

Freda, whom I have known all my life often feels like a lung, the one that takes in oxygen when me, the other . She calls me almost daily to make sure I am alive. She has struggled right along side me as I gasp for air, and flail about. I find myself sulking or white knuckling the days when she tells me she will be away from the phone for a few days. 

I am most likely going to state the obvious, to all except me, but I think what they are providing is in some ways similar to a craving.  My instinct tell me that the answer to my problem is not another man. Further, I am sure that our physical similarities guarantee something. I am not sure what at the moment. But I feel sure that the abuse I have felt is known by other women. The snippets of wisdom come in many forms. It is D that invites me to her home and drives aimlessly around New Jersey and then walks me through a botanical garden. It is M that sends me an email that contains her feelings concerning the loss of her own husband years before that is exactly the same way I feel about the loss of my husband today. She equates the loss of her husband as a type of death of self.  In the e-mail she adds another bit of information that somehow startles me. She writes: don't do things for men-- don't help them. Thinking of my own brothers I want to immediately dismiss this advice but then I ponder and realize that I did nothing but help my husband and that does not a relationship make. She was not saying, if he drops his hat don't pick it up, but rather: don't help him do big fat gigantic things that he should be doing for himself. 

I run this 'don't help them' concept by Freda and she adamantly agrees and I am shocked. She seems to know this secret of sisterhood that I had not. She goes on to say that once she helped her husband of 33 years and that never again would she go down that road. I am perplexed that one can love and be together for so many years and yet hold this point of view. It is a new concept to me and one that I feel I had better remember and learn wisely from. It feels like if I don't learn this jewel I will somehow morph into something that resembles Amy Winehouse on my insides: withered, frightened, and desperate.

I mustn't forget the three sister, older than myself, that I unburdened myself to when I thought I would implode. M, D and G. They have known me since my mid 20's and I had not seen them in years. An afternoon with them resulted in 100 lbs being lifted from my shoulders. It also resulted in a job. That fact has humbled me in a profound way. It makes me feel responsible to those that share the planet with me in a whole new way. It makes me think of mentorship and kindness as a fundamental responsibility of all people living in this world.

I am blessed. I am lucky. I am guided from outside myself. I have found some sisters of mercy.

THIS MORNING

I woke up this morning angry again. Yesterday I was fine, but today I want to flail out and hurt someone. I tried to move my bed and I couldn't do it alone. I needed help, and the one person I was supposed to be able to call upon has abandoned me. I am on the top floor of a fourth floor walk-up, living next door to my husband's best friend's who, having placed an order of protection against me, I can not even speak to. Right now I feel no pride in my religion. Right now I see Muslims and all I see is red. There, I said it. 

When I converted I expected to be embraced and loved. I expected to be inundated and surrounded by upright, straight people, who would extend their hand when needed. What I got was people who too often interpreted various surahs in the Qu'ran to be reasons they could use another person. How can you argue with a person who truly believes that lying to you is permissible because the Qu'ran told them so? So here I sit, a Muslim, with no one to play with. 

Muslims refer to each other, in greeting, as 'sister' and 'brother'. The notion is that we are Muslim and therefore related and responsible to one another. If only that were true and actually put into practice I would be living in a perfect world. I am angry and I am hurt. 

Last night I wet the bed. I was dreaming that I had to pee, and was unable to. A female figure in the dream kept telling me I could release my bladder if I only used the toilet that the queen used. I went into the queen's bathroom and was able to urinate freely. That is when I awoke to find myself in a full fledged puddle. I woke as though my brain were in a haze. I felt barely able to bring myself to. It was as if something else were mixed in my brain causing it confusion and an inability to navigate. Another dream that I had, after returning to sleep, was being sick in bed. Another person was in the other room tidying, and I was sure it was my husband B. This man came to me in bed and I turned to kiss him affectionately only to see that it was not B but in fact an old friend Patrick. I was shocked. My shock stemmed from the fact that I was sure that it was my husband that was caring for me. It startled me to see that my husband was nowhere and in his place was a friend. It is obvious to me the meaning of this dream, and it is obvious to me why I awoke with rage and hurt. 

Betrayal is a heartbreaking entity. My husband betrayed me. I now know that he never loved me. Of all the men I have known he is the first that I am sure I will never speak to again. I do not say that because I am angry and refuse this but rather because in order to come together again, after a breakup, one needs to come clean and admit one's wrongdoing to self and other. In my heart and bones I know he will never do this. I have not only lost a husband I have lost a friend.

Is it true that I will never have another friend in the future? Is it so that all those that love me deeply and unconditionally are those that I have known since childhood?

I called C up on Sunday after having not spoken to him in 6 years. The last time we saw one another was in a Vermont courtroom and I had been granted a five year order of protection against him. He asked the judge if he could at least write to me, and I refused this small request. I do not regret this as I needed that additional emotional space at that time. When I called C Sunday, the first words he uttered were, 'how are you' and, 'If you need anything, just call'.  As a friend should be, we picked up were we left off. He is now married. He is happy. He verbally placed me where he knows I belong for him: as someone he has known for thirty years, as someone who stretches back to that time when he met his first wife, now deceased, Maud, my childhood friend. I am thankful that I found again an old friend at the same time I loose a husband and what should have been an eternal friend. I am able to at least plug one leak in my heart.

Life is bittersweet.

EDWARD SAID: MY COMMENTS

If I could be an intellectual with 1/8 the ability of Edward Said I would a shining thing. Really I posted those videos for two reasons. The first being that I wanted to share Mr. Said with those that might not know of his work. I have mentioned his name to a gazillion Muslims and Arabs and no one seems to know who he is which leads me to the second reason I wanted to share him. 

One of the biggest and perhaps most important teachings of the Qu'ran is that of scholarship. I spoke about this in my first blog posting but I want to elaborate and stress again this point. I also want to define what the literary canon is all about. First let me define the literary canon for those that don't have the time or inclination to read a bunch of books on the subject. The very simplistic definition of literary canon is the understanding that one thing can not be written unless this other things was written. That nothing exists without the other. For example Stephen King could not exist without the works of Edgar Allen Poe, and Poe could not have come about without the works of Washington Irving or Hawthorne. Now the next examples I give I am sure will upset a few folks but come along for the ride, and quote me right because you actually read my words. 

The Qu'ran could not have been written without the Old Testament and The Old Testament could not have been written without The Torah and The Torah couldn't have been written without The Iliad. 

Edward Said could not have written Orientalism without all of the before mentioned books because all of those above mentioned books are all examples of self exploration. One set being self exploration of self at our best and the second being self exploration as only humans can do. Looking for answers where there are no pat ones. That is what humans do. We write books, like Poe, (or Irving, or Hawthorne, or put your favourite author here),  in the language (read: the only way we have at our disposal), in an attempt to learn and figure out the meaning of life. Not your life but the life each of us is trying to lead and discover. All art is an attempt to discover the meaning of life. That is why all literature, for a Muslim, is important to read. Because the authors of those other books are the other people you share this world with. And those other people God loves too. He created them in the same way he created you. And since you are not the only one with something to say, it is a religious obligation to hear as much as you can about what God's other chil'rin is thinking.

What do you think the point is in having a zillion other people on this planet, other than you, is? Can you convert them all? I doubt it. If all you do is converse with God and ignore me (or some other person you deem worthy of ignoring) then in my book you have ignored some so fundamental that I would guess that you can't see the nose on your own face. If God created us, me, you, and you ignore me, aren't you basically telling God you aren't too crazy about one of his creations yet you ooh and ah over a sunset. Isn't that convenient...

I am excited about learning. I am excited about Edward Said. I am not suggesting that you run out and try and get what it is that Said was trying to say. I am suggesting that you run out and try and understand anything that you don't understand. Edward Said, though he never mentions the Qu'ran in these videos is following the very teachings of the Qu'ran and is therefore to be respected on principle alone.

Finally, for all of you who got through the videos, but still had no idea what he was talking about and perhaps wished that the book came with pictures... I want to inform you that much if not most of the artwork that was shown in the documentary is on permanent exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Go explore the world around you. That is the best way to know God.

EDWARD SAID: ORIENTALISM IN lV PARTS

OMAR

Anyone who knows me knows I am mental about Omar Sharif. I can spot him three counties over. Once, while driving down Main Street in Brattleboro, Vermont, I noticed a movie poster for Monsieur Ibrahim and being that I had not heard of any movies from him in years my heart skipped a beat. I saw that the light had turned red, so I jumped out of my car to get a closer look. It was him looking better than ever. I was in that theatre, that night, with eyes glued to screen. I was in love all over again.

The fact that he is in his seventies now has not diminished his appeal for me in the slightest. In fact, I would have to say that as he ages his attraction grows.  The first time I saw him onscreen was when I was taken, as a child, to see Funny Girl. He played the character Nicky Arnstein. When I look at that film now he looks completely unsuitable for Babs but only because when I see it now I think to myself: A woman like that (Fanny Brice) would never have been able to love Omar. (If it not obvious to the reader, that was a bit of the cat in me that just got let out of the bag. He's mine Babs. Take your paws off him).

My earliest memories, the ones that I would deem as romantic, all go back to Arabia. I can remember seeing Arabic calligraphy in a book as a child, and thinking to myself, that it was the most beautiful handwriting I have ever seen. When Omar showed up on the screen I became forever transfixed with: accents, olive skin, crooked teeth that provoke charm, eyes that are dark, deep and seem always on the verge of tears. These are all traits that I can find physically attractive if arranged in just the right composition. I am going to admit something here that I have never admitted before. I am fixated on these traits. I think fixated is the right word because if truth be told, if you gave me Paul Newman, or some other blond, blue eyed type, it would have the same effect upon me as watching paint dry - I don't give it a second look. 

When I was thirteen it was Telly Savalas and Yul Brenner (I know, he's Russian), who graced my teen heart throb walls. Muammar Al-Gaddafi was secretly pined for (it's the hat, the brow, the bold features). I was mad for them. David Cassidy, Bobby Goldsboro... all those guys looked anemic to me; they looked unsubstantial. 

Here is the hard part. Does being fixated on a particular look make me racist? Isn't the eroticism of a people a form of racism? I don't know. I am scared someone will tell me it is. Are my feelings any different from the man that asserts: I like a woman with nice legs or a woman that declares I don't like hairy men? Let me go further. It is not just the physical look that must be just so it is also something that carries forth in spirit. A friend once told me that he preferred dark skinned women and could never imagine himself with a white women. His reasoning behind this feeling was that he derived a certain amount of comfort looking into a face that he could feel the earth in. When he said this I immediately knew what he meant. It was not a colour he was referring to -- soil being brown-- he meant it to mean that the earth is a thing that lasts, it goes on forever, it has been here forever. The earth is our mother and the earth can be trusted. He was saying that when he looked into the face of a brown one he felt comforted; a level of built-in immediate trust. And so it is when I look upon the face of Omar. I feel as though I am looking at family.

The first men in my life were my brothers. It was not my father as he was gone before I had memory. It was my brothers that were present. All of us, my siblings and I, are bi-racial. It is my brothers that look like they come from the tribe of Omar, Muammar, and Telly. Does my attraction stem from this connection -  that I am drawn to men that resemble the first men in my life? I don't know. 

My husband is Moroccan. He had these features but the spirit was absent. In the YouTube interview, below, Omar makes an interesting comment. He points out that he is incapable of being with a woman that he does not love. That statement actually makes me happy as I feel the same way about men. If I don't love you... so many things are never switched on inside me. You are not real to me unless I love you. Omar, now that he is older, realizes that he could never be with a woman unless she was Egyptian, like himself. He goes on to say that the importance of this is that he and another Egyptian woman would share the same love for the same food, similar humour, language, culture, etc. The mention of this breaks my heart for obvious reasons -- it means he would never think of me as a potential mate; kidding aside, it upsets me too because I have to wonder if I should give up this attraction I have for a group (let's face it -- Northern Africans/Middle Easterners), that I really don't stand a chance with. Is culture so great that people from different lands can't really connect? 

In retrospect I would have to say that my husband was a mystery but I think he was a mystery because he was a hidden manipulative person, not because he was Moroccan. I will also say that it was me that bent over backwards trying to understand his culture. He never made any attempt to understand Americans. He went by what he saw on the surface or had read in the paper before he arrived on our shores.

What Omar states is what Omar feels about his own life having made it to his seventies. He feels what he feels because it is what works for him and he is entitled to have things his way.  I am not ashamed to say that what I find attractive is that which is different from me. I am drawn to everything that I do not know. Have you ever heard Arabic love songs translated into English? These songs are unbelievably romantic. Once you have heard Cheb Mami your ears will never be satisfied again listening to Bob Dylan. The complexity of Arab music is dazzling to the ears. Oum Kalthoum would often, in her concerts, sing one line from a song over and over for hours just because her audiences derived feverish pleasure from hearing a particular lyric or line over and over again. America does not have an equivalent to Oum Kalthoum. It is the imagery that materializes when one utters Sharif or Kalthoum -- something earthen and familiar comes to mind and spreads a smile across one's lips. 

The Band's Visit, a wonderful quirky film about an Egyptian band that gets stranded in Israel, shows a scene where the female lead recounts her childhood in the theatres of Israel watching Sharif and hearing Kalthoun. The look on her face is one of delight and fondness. She has the exact same look on her face as I do when I think of Omar; as though I have a little sweet secret that I am able to savour whenever I wish just by thinking of him. I will always love Omar. Watch him blush when he hears the voice of the female caller who calls in to gush. It is priceless. His charms drips. Enjoy him. 

My awkward end is to let you know a little known fact about Omar. While attending school in the UK and captain of a soccer team, he became friends with none other than the late Edward Said.

See you soon

MULATTO BILDUNGSROMAN: AN ESSAY OF RACE, IDENTITY AND CULTURE PART ll

(Continued...)

At the end of the viewing he told me that he liked me and that he would rent the apartment to me. I do not want the apartment because I do not want to give my money or have anything to do with a person who views me as a mongrel. A mongrel is a dog. I had to go home and look the word up because I couldn't believe that I had been referred to as a dog and I had hopes that perhaps there was another definition, less insulting, that he had intended. Alas, as pretty as you please, he had used a word that can not be construed as anything but an insult. I also think he 'liked' me because I was silent and smiled ever so vaguely  when he called me a mongrel. I was a good Negro which means a Negro who is acceptable to whites. A good Negro is one who doesn't get bent out of shape when insulted. This line of questioning is par for the course with those of us of mixed heritage. Lawrence Hill devotes and entire chapter to this line of questioning. The chapter is called: The Question. In the often humorous book, Talking About Difference: Encounters in Culture,language and Identity, writers from Canada of mixed heritage write about this theme too.  Lawrence Hill has an essay in this book titled: Zebra: Growing Up Black and White in Canada. In this essay Mr. Hill is more likable to me. He mentions that when he is asked The Question he refuses to answer not because he is ashamed but rather because it is always demanded of him to answer. It seems our not-so-easy-to-define makeup and appearance drives some people to distraction. having read so many stories on the subject, some riotously funny, I have learned two things. One, I am not paranoid: it really is happening, and two, I have learned some snappy comebacks for the next time I am asked The Question.

I have never asked anyone what race or ethnicity they are. This is not because i am better than those who do; it is because I can not think of one way to use the information to further the relationship and gain a friend. Thus I render the question rude on top of useless. I also never ask someone what they do for a living because I assume no one, except Tina Turner, is working at a job that they would stay with if given the chance to be independently wealthy. I am however aware that this question can produce useful information  but for the most part, how and when it is asked is a good indication of how you are perceived. I do however ask about culture, if, and only when, I am invited to do so - which is to say, when it is made abundantly clear by the speaker that they wish to talk about their ethnicity and culture. Even then, I never assume that this disclosure is my opportunity to become an investigative reporter. I am careful to formulate my questions so as not to psychologically rape the individual or make them feel like I have felt when grilled which is to say like I am subjecting them to the inquisition.

There is a story I tell about coming back to America and living in The Fillmore District in San Francisco which at that time was like saying Harlem. People immediately associated Fillmore with Blacks. But unlike Harlem, which is historically Black, The Fillmore is now all white, and before it was black, it was Asian. The story is about my 'getting rid' of a Macy's shopping bag filled with marijuana lids for a guy who asked me if I thought I could get rid of them. I had no experience with slang or African American vernacular and I took his words literally. I do not smoke pot then or now but I was always, at that time, asked if I had any pot. I saw this as an opportunity to make friends and to finally have the item I was always asked for. Unlike cigarettes, I observed that pot smokers passed joints around. It was a shared thing and users tended to be friendly by my estimation. So there was nothing in my experience with pot to make me understand or believe that it was something that was purchased. It was grown, like potatoes or rhubarb, and therefore I assumed that like too many tomatoes on the vine, it was given away instead of seen going to waste. 

I love myself for this experience.

I gave the pot away and never collected a dime. When people offered me money I declined in the same way I would decline taking payment for goodies my garden might yield. I think this is a funny story but every time I tell it to strangers I am always asked the same thing:

Where are you from? 

This question would be normal if it weren't for the next question which is always:

What are you?

It should simply be a funny story but it seems to upset quite a few people. One person went so far as to grill me about the details of my family members and friends - his questions - he was a student and a policeman, where aimed at uncovering the drug-addicted or incarcerated people he was sure I was related to. When he found none, he simply shook his head in disbelief. He never spoke to me when passing but rather shook his head each time he saw me. For him it was irrational to his sensibilities to encounter a person of colour who did not have a keen understanding of drug use. He was sure I was lying. I had told him a story that failed to confirm and conform to his idea of who I was based solely on race. These two questions which are persistently asked of me, with the telling of the story, suggest a few things to me.

First, to be asked where I am from is to imply that my story is foreign in nature. It makes the assumption that my story has never happened to anyone who looks like me or talks like me in New York City, San Francisco, and Hartsdale, New York; all places that I have told this story. Or I might assume that all of the people I have told are pot smokers and have never met a non pot smoker and are astonished that such a person exists. Perhaps it is true that I am indeed the only non smoker in these cities. maybe my story is not funny at all and in reality  and in reality all my listeners are non smokers and are horrified that in their midst is a drug dealer. I have told this story in Crompond, New York too, to riotous effect even, but the listeners were smoking pot and because I have often heard that smokers get something called 'the giggles' as a side-effect to smoking marijuana I can not trust the authenticity of their laughter.

When 'where are you from?' is followed by 'what are you?', I realize that there is something about my story that jars the listeners' perceptions of who I am and where they think I am from. There is something about my telling of the story that makes the listener ask two questions that do not seem like questions of natural progression. I might ask how the story teller got out of the situation - a deeply religious adult I was living with stepped in, told the young man to get lost or she would call the police. She, in turn, saw my naivete as proof positive that God works in mysterious ways and through idiots and children. Her laughter was hard and long. Or, I might ask if the teller was forced to retrace their steps and collect the money for the marijuana. I also might ask if I ever saw the young man again. No. These two questions asked together with the telling of that story suggest to me that when people hear my story they assume it is not the story or experience of a person who looks like me. I have gained a considerable amount of weight with each telling of that story but no one ever asks me what weight I was when this event happened. You may see this example on the page and you might say to yourself what would her weight have to do with the story but I ask, what does my racial makeup have to do with the story? These two questions tell me that something about my story and me has upset and caused confusion within the order of things of the listener. The questions are asked to reformulate and make certain what was assumed about me just by looking. And the only thing we can tell about another person just by looking is on the surface: obvious physical handicap, deformity, size and skin colour. We can not tell race from looking but we sure can assume it. 

When I wear a Star of David in New York City every Hassidic within sight assumes I am Sephardic. I am often assumed to be a Moor. I am Spanish when conversations are begun in Spanish and ended when I am discovered as having inadvertently passed. When I lived on the outskirts of Little Italy in The Bronx I was often asked if I was Sicilian.

I do not mind being asked if I am these various identities. I enjoy it in fact because it makes me feel that I truly am connected to mankind as i should be. But when I answer 'no' to all of the above and I'm immediately asked to reveal what I am by a complete stranger I realize that the person with questions now needs to reassess what they assumed so as to not make the same mistake again. The reactions I get are similar to those individuals who suddenly discover that they have been unwittingly involved romantically with a trans-sexual. They feel tricked and want to know how they could have been so fooled, for to fall in love with the wrong gender is to be avoided and so it is with race.

Much more recently I am at a party with D. She is the daughter of a well known person and I would guess that inadvertently makes her famous and sought after too. We are sitting together on a day bed in the late evening chatting. We know one another because I am employed by her mother. I like her, and I assume that d=so far she likes me. In all ways she is polite and well intentioned. Suddenly a hand extends to her, interrupting our conversation. My hand is shaken only when D kindly turns towards me and introduces  me to the body attached to the handshake. A firm one I might add. So firm that it feels aggressive. I hold myself back from rubbing it in feigned soreness. The hand shaker acknowledges me and immediately returns wholeheartedly to D. I am left to listen or disappear. I am sure I can sense that D is slightly amused and embarrassed by the hand shaker's aggression. She, the hand shaker, is clutching a glass of wine with a mitt that is as huge as my grandmother Germaine's I wonder if she is from New Brunswick. I am struck by this woman's focus. She is on a mission and its sole point is to make herself known to D. I am no one to her. But I am weary of going away when not wanted. I wait until something is said that will afford me the opportunity to join in. 

The woman, who surely comes from somewhere near New Brunswick, finally reveals that her job has recently exposed her to an upsurge of clients that are into drugs and far more desperate than she has seen in all her years as a social helper. She also reveals that she is from Northern Maine which gives me fleeting smugness -- a stones throw from New Brunswick -- we're probably related with mitts like that. But right now she is as busy as a fart in a mitt trying to seduce D. 

It is then that she includes me in the conversation with eye contact. I interpret the inclusion at this point to mean that she believes me to be knowledgeable on the subject of desperation and drugs. I can't hide my face; I imagine it pinched; about to fold in on itself. She reveals quite sincerely that in all her years she had not known such problems exist to this extent. She wonders aloud if she is naive. I tell her that I believe most of the world is desperate and immediately I think of the term 'economic segregation'. I make a mental note to think more about that term at a later time. D nods her head in agreement with me which prompts the interloper to begin wondering who I am. She wants immediately to know what I do for a living. I smile like Pirate Jenny and tell her I work for D's mother. This is what she says:

Her: I didn't know that.

Me: I can't imagine you would. We have only just met.

Her: But this is a small town. That's the sort of thing I would know about.

Me; I can't imagine why. I don't know anything about you.

Her: How did you get to Vermont?

I glance at D and she kindly steps in to answer:

D: New York, Canada, Massachusetts, Vermont.

Her: What part of Canada?

Me: Prince Edward Island.

Her husband arrives: He is introduced all around. He has caught the part about Prince Edward Island. 

Her Husband: Why did you come to Vermont? What are you doing here?

D's husband arrives.

D's Husband: You don't have to answer that question.

Me: Are you two the Vermont police? I don't know what to say...

She and husband looked confused. The room empties and I feel as though we single-handedly pooped on the party. I have to remind myself constantly that anyone who approaches me with a "What are you doing here?" question is trying to ruin my enjoyment at the same damned party. "What are you doing here?" is not the sort of question that one asks to be friendly or inclusive. It is asked when one is startled and cannot understand the relationship placed before them. It is asked of me often as a desperate attempt to understand how I, a person of colour, snuck past their noses and became lodged in their community without their knowledge or approval. How else can you explain her surprise that she did not know about my employment? I cringe at the thoughts I am led to involving the importance others place on having known or not known of my engagement with D's mother. You see, D's mother is 92: Do people now have less respect for her for having hired me? Do they see my engagement as a reflection of her mental state? Will they now keep a wary eye out for her well being lest I bring desperation and drugs to her? It is me that suffers the outward scrutiny and I am weary and feel often less and less inclined towards politeness. I walk a precarious line here for this is also my job and responsibility. i am thankful that my care and her family are worldly and aware. 

Beyond my own observation or experiences there is a family member in their midst who, like me, is mixed. She is loved and not hidden. But she detests coming to this small town. I suspect that when she goes out with her family she is stared at. I would bet my eye teeth on it. For this well known family is readily spotted around town, and her being the only one of colour in the group, would be stared at. When one is well known everyone believes they know you to a certain extent. We all like to think that we know our celebrities. We also like to believe that they are just like us. But what if we discover that they are not just like us when we learn of the colour in their midst's that is not explained or excused, but merely allowed to be? If you are unable to contain your curiosity, and you were on a familiar basis with this family, you might go over and say hello in the hopes of an introduction. The person of colour will be lingered over a moment longer than all the rest. That moment will be so brief it will be indiscernible to all but the brown ones. In the flash one will be told by the outsider that they don't belong. The look is always accusatory in some fashion and the person of colour knows that look all too well. It's a look that can cause coloured folk to feel beat to snot.

In the few short years since I've read, Native Son, I have had the opportunity, because of my various experiences, to rethink Richard Wright, and to, at times, high-five his literary creation of Bigger Thomas in all his rage-full glory. I understand both Wright and Bigger more than I want to. Sadly, I think Bigger was not hard for Wright to conjure up. I've heard that Wright was a sad, angry man. Anecdotally, my friend Gray, while in Paris, described Wright as, "An angry black man looking for a fight with any poor white schmo that stumbled past his table". Wright wanted some guts for garters and Gray was one of those white schmoes who were eaten alive. 

Ces't domage. Ces't la vie.

In the literary canon I can find the silence of black male characters that often translates tot he silence that living black men feel in this society. But I, as woman, feel it too. Bigger Thomas is white society's nightmare. The huge murderous black man out to rape white women. But I can't help but feel that the interrogation that is presented to me without any sort of foreplay or introduction is not dissimilar from enslaved women not having control over their reproductive rights. I shall answer the questions posed to me because I am feminine. I am weak. Both feel intrusive, like rape: the female made controllable, made submissive, the male controllable only through emasculation and silence.

It is maddening to be violated. It causes me to feel full of rage and indignation. And at these times I wish I had the literary freedom of Bigger- the freedom to just be an imaginary character upon a page, with no real consequences to be had, for I too, for just a moment, might enjoy letting loose if for only one page.

I heard the author Djanet Spears, while visiting Toronto, answer a question posed to her by stating: "Being black is not a monolith". I thought this profound and O so true. Yes, my skin is brown and I think that most people who are not brown believe this means I can speak for all other brown people. I think it no less corrosive for blacks to think we are all alike  than for whites to think this. I think once we begin the mind expansion of who we are, and all that we entail, everyone else will follow. We must be our own navigators.

 

MULATTO BILDUNGSROMAN: AN ESSAY OF RACE, IDENTITY AND CULTURE

 
I was wee when the Hudson still froze. We, my siblings and I, were bundled brown skin trudging across to The Bronx. Here, in Inwood, my family is not noticed; we are just a few amongst many. Anyone attempting difference is quickly reminded of the commonality of poverty; odds are we are wearing a neighbour's hand-me-down.

I've known Anne forever; I have no sense that there might have been a time when we have not been confidants. Green Gables was a dilapidated run down farm house in the middle of the woods when I was wee. Freda and I held hands and fancied ourselves kindred spirits as we traipsed through those woods wondering aloud if indeed we were walking the same steps as Anne and Diana once had. Freda made me kindred when I learned that she was a she in the midst of all boys: a configuration of family not unlike my own. Forty years later we still hold hands when we meet at airports or during a stroll out onto a pier.

I grew up in Spuyten Duyvil, and was raised on Prince Edward Island; from the spitting devil to Anne's land: I am both. I am black, I am white; no more one than the other. I am Canadian, I am American; I'm 'from away' on both sides of this 49th parallel. I am not a tourist in either place but I am made a foreigner wherever I go. I am often asked for my papers of identity - sometimes I am stripped searched before I am let go to carry on with what might have occupied me before the inquisition. Make no mistake: it is an inquisition in the truest sense of the word for the inquisitor's sole purpose is to gather information from me that will quench their odd thirst. The agenda seems always to be the same, and always I am discarded like the torn nylons of a whore at the end of a long night.

I recently read an essay titled, Orphans, Twins and L.M. Montgomery. It was written by one Elizabeth Waterston. I, like Genet, upon finishing Sartre's St. Genet, feel discovered and found out; laid bare by her words. Waterston writes: "...Millions who have grown up loving the story of the orphan Anne Shirley have found that it helped them move through some of the traumas of adolescence." This is a truth for me. Anne has always been with me and it was she that I have turned to while waiting for body and mind to synchronize. She was the one that sent words of courage and placed them lightly and sometimes ferociously upon my tongue. She gave me chutzpah and credence of self. Anne is with me when I have no words of my own; she sees me through the turbulence of my life.  She is so real to me that perhaps it is me that is the imaginary one.

In my room, as a child, is a white sewing machine, the sort that one needs to reach into, like the womb of a woman giving life through caesarean. This night I am washed, soft, and ready for bed. I scramble to the top of the machine to inspect myself in the mirror which hangs above it. At this age my reflection is a playmate; a friend to wiggle and twist with; someone who looks like me; who seems happy to do what I do. Mirrors are marvelous. When I was wee I spent all available time in front of the mirror. I was looking for things not seen. I searched my eyes for my soul. I longed to see the other side of myself. I wore my mother's lingerie, and socked fuller her brassiere in attempt to see myself older. I was Fay Wray wrestling with Kong. I was a glamorous smoker, a belly dancer, and a stripper. I was a magnificent mulatto strutting with myself.

There did come a time that my reflection became confusing. I so wish to know if this experience is had by all, or if indeed, this is what makes the mulatto a tragic figure in the imaginations of those not of mixed parentage. My reflection eventually became perplexing for it did not mirror my assumption of self; I thought I looked exactly like marion, ma mere. 

Ma mere, had waist length blond hair. I had spent many hours in the shower on the reverse side of a curtain shielded from prying eyes with a bottle of White Rain moulding my hair into the various do's of the day -- my mother's style being just one. I am Diana Ross with a starched flip, I have pigtails and when I am sure no one is looking I don the do of Barbie - the one I am forbidden to want or speak of, the doll that Marion is sure will lead me down the road to touching myself or thrusting my soon to be budding breasts into the faces of strange men. I long for Barbie's life. I can't wait to thrust and touch. I do not look like Marion in an obvious way and it is this truth that aligns me with Anne for it is then that I begin to fancy myself surely an orphan.

Through Anne I learned to love myself. Anne was at my side as I came to terms with my curly hair not being foot length and blond like ma mere's, the woman once known as Marion.

There are all sorts of orphan's I suppose; I don't know what sort I am for both my parents are alive. When I was wee marion was known as Jeanne; she changed her name when I was sturdy and grown. In department stores Jeanne often lost sight of me, and like many children I was taken in by clerks who soothed my brow and fed me treats while ma mere's name was broadcast over a PA system. What if she had changed her name while rummaging for fabrics?

In Pokemouche Freda hears what I hear: She hears Jeanne's own cousin say that Marion once, when approached by this cousin, denied to the cousin that it was she. Some of us want to be orphans; others yearn for eternal anonymity. I could have been lost to her forever; I should have been taken home by the clerks whom were so much better at soothing my brow and feeding me treats.

O, all it is,

is just another reason to hold one's head high;

never matter,

O never mind.

It is not easy for me to be bi-racial - my configuration seems to exhaust everyone else. I have often been asked if I feel like the light skinned Negro character, Sara Jane Johnson, depicted in Douglas Sirk's film, Imitation of Life. So often have I been asked about this film that curiosity finally caused me to go out and rent it. I'm not sure what I expected but I was rather appalled that anyone who claimed to have known me would ever get the idea that I was anything like that film. I had expected to view a film that perhaps depicted some of the feelings or experiences that I have had. It was upsetting to think that others thought of me as a confused, lost and miserable woman who felt ostracized by life and the burden of my skin colour. To think that others thought I had no niche, and therefore floundered, was disconcerting.

I have encountered skepticism throughout my life from individuals who can not fathom some of my varied and sometimes bizarre encounters. But it has given me great solace to learn that others who identify themselves as bi-racial have had similar encounters.

In Lise Funderburg's remarkable book, Black, White, Other, she asked all of the participants for her book to name any and all people they could think of who might be bi-racial; everyone was  able to mention, Imitation of Life. I interpret this to mean that I am not alone in having had that film thrust upon me for it was always in the context of the 'tragic mulatto'.  I have yet to meet any person of mixed heritage who views themselves as tragic. It is only those who do not live in our skins that can not understand the concept and therefore deem it as some sort of tragedy.

I must talk about this film for a moment for I think many misinterpret this film and what it is truly about. The only aspect I wish to address in, Imitation of Life, is its depiction of a character who desperately tries to pass for white. Sara Jane's mother is darker than her daughter but there is no indication that Sara's father is white. The film begins when Sara Jane is about nine or so, and she and her mother move in with a white woman. This woman's daughter is about the same age as Sara jane. Sara Jane's mother is soft-spoken, well-spoken, and extremely kind, yet nothing that she does is acceptable or tolerated by Sara Jane. Sara Jane's sole goal in this film is to get as far away from her mother's skin colour, and to be known, and accepted as a white woman. This film asks one to assume much, the biggest assumption being that those of us who can pass are doing so because we wish to be white; a theory which I disagree with.  I posit that white theories that imagine blacks wishing to be white are theories based upon the belief that power and whiteness will always be inextricable. I believe that passing for another race is more a desire to have the same privileges and opportunities of that race than having anything to do with wanting to change one's race. I am not dismissing internalized racism, but rather excluding it; for the moment I do not think it relevant.

In any case, Imitation of Life, is not a film about me, nor can I read into it any feature of being bi-racial. Yet, over and over, I am asked if this film depicts my experiences. I struggle to understand what it is about this film that makes some make this leap for me. The leap that skin colour is somehow connected to being bi-racial. I always come back to one conclusion: Jim Crow.

To be able to 'pass' is to suggest that Jim Crow fails in its attempts to keep each side separate. It further suggests that the white society that created the institution is losing the ground of power. The bi-racial is visual representation of that ground being lostr - whites witnessing their eventual demise of power. The irony in all of this is that the power had by those that created the Jim Crow system is the same power that created the 'passer' and the bi-racial. Black women under slavery did not have control over when and how they might reproduce offspring. This irony, I wonder if, is internalized racism for whites, for how does one emotionally part with one's own children, sending them to such a plight as slavery? I can't believe that internalized racism is a dilemma for African American's only. Further, I believe that the "What are you? questions that are leveled at me are a direct holdover from Jim Crow: Blacks having to carry papers which whites could scrutinize at any time. 

Jim Crow was constructed by a white society that needed to ensure that blacks could never become white no matter how white one might appear. This became the 'One Drop Rule', a rule that is fostered, and in effect to this day very day. So what is the connection between the mulatto and one that might make additional opportunities in passing? If one can pass, it is assumed that one is light-skinned enough to do so. If one is bi-racial it is assumed that one is lighter than the parent that is the black one -- on the road to passing perhaps. Passing for the one that can, as I said before, is done to attain the privileges and opportunities of the race that has the privilege, in this case and at this time, white society. So what might this all mean to a white society that constructed Jim Crow? In a simplistic explanation we might assume that Jim Crow keeps one side with the goodies and the other without the goodies, one up one down. But what of you can no longer tell by looking what side one is on? I think this produces a fear in whites. Passers have the potential of infiltration; for achieving opportunities. Once the line is made vague and indistinguishable, power becomes vague and indistinguishable.

In, Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker gives the following dialogue to the character Adam: "... I remembered when we first arrived in America. His excitement to be, finally, 'safe' and back home. And his shock at being constantly harassed because he was black. No, no he used to correct me. They behave this way not because i am black but because they are white". I am always reminded of this passage when I am stopped, and asked to explain myself. I have to always remind myself that I am not being asked  this nonsense or being treated this way because I am black but rather because they are white and have created a legacy that they, separate from my being, are physically working out; are ridding themselves of their internalized racism. It is Althea Prince, whom in her essay, Stop Calling Us Slaves, nudges me, and reminds me that I am not a descendant of slaves. I am a descendant of Africans -- free ones to boot.

I encountered a whole range of emotions while reading lawrence Hill's, Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. I dived into the book with high expectations and finished with the belief that I had stumbled upon a living 'tragic mulatto'. I admire anyone for laying bare their guts, through words, for the entire world to see, but I felt sorry for Mr. Hill. I wanted to befriend him and hold him near for he seems so lost. It needs to be said too that I have held the belief and perhaps the fantasy that life in Canada is a finer life for those of us that run the hue spectrum of tawny. Lawrence Hill demolished that thought. But I ask myself  why? What made his book so very different from Lise Funderburg's? Both books incorporate the format of interview alongside autobiography of author. Both keep the subject's limited to individuals with one parent being black and the other being white. So how did so profoundly different books emerge? How did mulatto's below the 49th parallel emerge with so much gusto and those north of the border seem so isolated; going through life without a road map?

I think some of the clues are that Funderburg interviewed sixty-five subjects and Hill thirty -four. To a certain extent this tells me that there are fewer bi-racials to be found perhaps in Canada. What struck me the most however about Hill's book though was how insecure and out of place he felt in his own skin. Mr. Hill recounts a story about changing his barber, who he had gone to for years, because the barber was not black and Mr. Hill therefore felt he was being disloyal to his blackness. I can't relate to this on any level. Almost all of his interviewees seemed angry, preoccupied with the colour of their skin, and the texture of their hair. Mr. Hill made me feel thankful that here in America we had many more years of practice at being bi-racial and had moved beyond those types of concerns.

My perspective is not better, merely different. I have never felt certain that I knew what a person felt like who was not bi-racial. It is because of the questions that I am often compelled to answer, that I make the leap, and assume, that not being bi-racial is perhaps something to be considered differently; I had thought we were all the same, though I have never felt compelled to intrude into the lives of others in ways that I have often been expected to tolerate.

I am sitting on Sutter Street, on my stoop, in The Fillmore District a million miles from Rustico. I am lonely. Lonely and feeling flyaway, like a Tibetan prayer flag; all too susceptible to things blown in on a whim. Prone to being carried away to places I do not wish to go. I am quiet inside. I pray that my confessions are carried on winds to ears that listen. I miss Freda. Everything is sexualized here: my clothes and hair, the colour of my skin, the way that I speak. Everything draws me to the attention of others. I am amused at times but mostly I feel an urge to cover myself. One dresses for others here; never for utilitarian means. 

had I ever worn something down to here, or up to there I'd have been taken to task by a whole community. Here is am taken to task for looking so retarded -- dressing, as I am told, like sloppy white people. I am at that age where they might succeed with my emotional demise, for they seem always to thrust a dent or two into my psyche.

I spend time in front of the mirror again only now I practice to be anything other than what I am. All that I am is wrong and needs to be retranslated. I must work on my speech, my accent. My reflection is only as deep as what others might be allowed to see. I must find a cigarette to smoke that does not draw attention and that I can inhale without feeling sick from the flavour. I draw the line at menthol - no way am I going to smoke menthol's -- inhaling the Swiss Alps -- I might as well quit. Anne suggests that I do things with flair; she says: don't let the troops get you down. Someone I admire, a mentor, smokes Sherman's so I take up this brand later learning that the great Garbo smoked this brand too.

How do I describe what it is like to pull out a box of Sherman's as a teenager, in a primarily black attended school bathroom filled with Kool smokers? I might as well have pulled out my breast for a lick. No understanding or curiosity here. No, "Can I get one off ya?" I am glanced at askew as though my breast has taken to travel on its own. I have left the real black girls speechless, and they, in unison, and in single file, leave me to the empty stalls of a high school bathroom; alone with the drip of ancient sinks. They have defines me: I am a high-yellow-half-bred-bitch-white-cigarette-smoking-thinks-she's-better-than-everyone-else. I still do not understand this compulsion to define others to my way of thinking. I don't know what this fear of difference means to some. I say to myself: Garbo smoked Sherman's: what do they know? And like Garbo I will become metamorphic and change from awkward foreigner to the woman the world stops breathing for when sighted. Thus I am welcomed back to America.

In America when I am young and slim; tanned and exotic, everyone wants to be close. Black men desire me because I am high yellow. White men because i am not too dark; they say I am exotic. What they don't say is that I am still dark enough for them to leave my feelings and concerns out of the equation. I am reduced to a thing to place another thing into; a receptacle. I am no longer a person that has any meaning beyond her genitals. This pisses me off. When I exert my wanderlust and my tree climbing abilities I am abruptly taken to task, I am asked, "Why do you act so white?"

What would Anne do? Anne would open her box of Sherman's and find gumption. She would light it and let the scope of imagination fill the air. Yes, this too shall pass.

There is something about my appearance that upsets some people. I am not sure if upset is the right word to be using here. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say something about me unnerves. Too, something about me makes people feel free to degrade.

The other day, while looking at an apartment to rent, I was once again asked to divulge my racial identity. If truth be told, I find this question boring, extremely impolite, never asked for any good reason and a good indication that the requesting party is a bigot. This is what happened: After laying it out and being asked to repeat it because he needed to get it straight he informed me that I was a mongrel and that he was not a racist. This is what I thought: If I tell him he is a racist or if I had told him that my ethnicity was none of his damned business I would be prevented from seeing the apartment. He would also, more than likely, have considered me a hostile person. I judged him to be in his seventies, and that told me that he most likely grew up seeing signs of segregation and that he probably though he was liberated. My upbringing instilled in me a respect for my elders so I said nothing to this man.

(To Be Continued...)

WELCOME TO THE TOWN OF MOIRA

I am old enough now to wonder about how things mutate. How do eternal stories come about? How do things get remembered and how do they become forgotten? I began this blog because I suddenly found myself married, moving to another city, in jail, divorcing and fired from a job all within months. Right now I am beyond feeling anything because the only thing worse that might happen is a plane purposefully coming towards my apartment building while I am enjoying the latest episode of EastEnders. Things can't get any worse. That being said I am finding things rather amusing at this point; as I got the joke God intended.

I am Moira. The photo above left is a sign post from a small town in The Adirondacks. The spelling is the same as my name but the pronunciation is different. My name is pronounced MOY RA and the town is known as MOR RYE AH. It doesn't really matter because most of you, if you met me, would say something like: Do you have a nickname?

I converted to Islam in 2005 because the teachings, pure and simple, of Islam, spoke to me. I then went out into the world and met nothing but mean-spirited people claiming to be Muslim. I met people who prayed 5 times a day and lied and cheated. I met people who could quote the Qu'ran backwards and forwards but who were intolerant of anything and everyone who did not practice Islam they way they deemed to be the only way to practice the religion. Basically I became overwhelemd by what I had gotten involved with. Then I remembered a concept that I had while writing a paper  for school years ago on the subject of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: That the narcissism of our religious beliefs brings out the worst in us. More specifically, religions (ALL religions) are good; it is the people who practice them that are bollixed. The problem with me is that once you become educated and broadminded it becomes practically impossible to go backwards and become narrow minded. 

In Toronto, Canada, once a year, there is a conference, Reviving the Islamic Spirit, that brings together some of the greatest thinkers and scholars on the subject of Islam. It is there that I met and listened to Tariq Ramadan. For me, as you will have to decide for yourself, he is the epitome of what Islam is and should be about. The religion claims to be a religion for all ages, all times, and for all people. The religion itself begs its followers to read and question and learn, yet the illiteracy rate for Muslims is well over 50% and amongst Muslim women that rate soars to around the 90% mark. That makes the religion and those that follow it a type of oxymoron. 

What I mean is: If the religion asks that you apply good scholarship to your own religion and you can't, (or worse yet, refuse), then you are following the religion simply because it was taught to you, or it was something you learned by rote. That is bad scholarship. If you ask the average Muslim why he believes what he believes s/he will respond because "It is the word of God". It may very well be but it is also because the majority of Muslims were born Muslim and they learned what they know without questioning it. My premise is that one must understand why one knows what one knows, study it, scrutinize it, and once you understand it and still choose to believe it then and only then can you say with authority and certainty: I am a Muslim. 

I am an American. I converted to Islam. Conversion does not mean forgetting who I am. To paraphrase Mr. Tariq Ramadan in a lecture he gave in Toronto (2006): My life is my school. I must draw from it and apply the lessons I have learned to show empathy and compassion. Too many think that conversion means leaving oneself behind. Islam means to submit not change who I am. Too many have asked me if I was a wanton woman before I converted. No. I was not.  Americans have much we can bring to this religion the biggest that I can see thus far is tolerance. (As time goes on I will do a blog on what Americans really mean by tolerance).

Those that can read, and might be Muslim, might say that what I am doing it badmouthing the religion and that that makes me a sweet candidate for jihad, but I ask you to hold on to your kufi, (or hijab), for one minute and read a bit further. Good scholarship requires one to question and read further. Only those that don't know what they grasp fear loosing it and think of it as something that can be taken away. You can no more take from me my religion that you can the air I breathe. Religious groups that get offended by cartoons, depictions in movies and a host of other ridiculous things miss the point. Religion is in the heart, it is what I do, not what you do. All the things that you do, be it good or bad, should not have an impact upon my behaviour.

For my next post I shall remove my hijab so that you can see I really do have something in common with you. I remove it also to prove a point. All those abayas and hijabs you see women wearing are the cultural manifestations of that particular country. As an American I think I look insincere wearing an abaya as I have my own definition of modesty and it is no less modest than an abaya. Each culture has its set of signals that play out in the course of everyday life. For example, I have a friend from Jordan who came to America and went to a disco with a bunch of other Jordanian men. These men grouped themselves together, pack-like on the dance floor to watch the people dance, a custom that would be normal in Jordan. Their intention was to be a part of the dancing and to hopefully get a chance to dance with a few woman. From their perspective they were involving themselves with the party. He relayed this story to me later and asked me why the Americans seemed to edge away from his group, he even went so far as to feel that perhaps the American men became almost aggressive and protective of the women on the dance floor. From our perspective we can easily see that to an American his group translated into a pack of perverts ogling in an inappropriate way, the dancing women. These are cultural signals that are not so easily picked up but they go both ways. Modesty to an American is perhaps a skirt below the knee and no cleavage showing. It is a light application of makeup and turning off the 'flirt' mechanism so that every man in the room, except the daft one, knows you are not interested. Do not translate my words to suggest that I am a woman that thinks the woman in the mini doesn't deserve your respect; think that and you will be gravely wrong. Mind you there are many definitions of modesty, I am simply trying to evoke a rather simplistic one. See you all soon...