sex, art, and politics

writinggirl2writingwoman:

this photo is not me (click on the photo to go the flickr photostream where it is posted), but a reasonable approximation of how i dress and what i look like when i leave my home.

today i was harrassed, not once, but twice.

every morning i walk 3 blocks from the bus stop to my office (obviously i also make this walk in reverse every afternoon). i work in the heart of my city’s downtown, and one block from three different shelters. the parking situation in our city is such that i am actually only walking about 1/2 block more than anyone from my office who drives into work and has to park in a city lot. it’s not a bad walk, and generally i see at least a couple other professionals out at the same time that i am walking. i also get off the bus just before it turns into its central station, so there is a lot of bus traffic, and it is a major exit off the freeway as well. today was a little different because i was going in at 7:30 instead of 8 or 8:30, and because there is some construction at the block where my office is so traffic is sometimes heavier than usual and sometimes lighter than usual as people have begun to find alternative routes.

so, this morning i noticed a couple of guys - white, appeared to be about middle age, appeared to be working men who had come from the bus depot as well - across the street from me. there was almost no traffic at all once i got past the bus station. the men started to call across the street to me “hey arab!”, “hey arab!”… “you don’t speak english?”… “hey arab!” and they started to fake an arab-like accent and kept yelling… for TWO blocks. they stopped when we got to the corner just before i cut thru a small parking structure to get to my office. i think they stopped because at that corner there were some construction men, witnesses.

i got to the office fine, with no further trouble.

while walking i ignored them completely. once i got past the construction though and i couldn’t hear them anymore and couldn’t see them, that actually made me more nervous because i didn’t know if they had crossed the street to my side, if they were behind me just waiting to get away from the construction workers to continue their game. but i also wasn’t willing to turn around and appear panicky looking. i just held my head high and kept moving. while i was walking i asked myself why i wasn’t afraid, shouldn’t i be more worried? i was making dhikr (praying). and i was thinking that they sure would get a surprise if they tried to come up on me thinking i wasn’t the sort to beat them down.

it wasn’t until i was in the office that i started to shake and realized how afraid i was. i suppose it was survival mode. you can’t show your fear and you have to be ready to stand your ground.

today was a half day and i planned to go to the mosque for Friday prayers. i got the bus over to the mosque only to realize that i had known that mosque wasn’t going to be open because they were holding prayers in the building next to the new mosque they are working on. the new mosque isn’t convenient for me to get to, so i was planning to go to another mosque but had completely forgotten and followed my usual pattern. after calling a couple of friends to see if they were still close enough to pick me up on the way to new mosque and not reaching anyone, i decided i would just have to get back on the bus and still had time to make it to the other smaller mosque i had originally intended to visit.

as i was walking to the bus stop, a guy who was stopped at the light yelled out his window at me.

he yelled “my brother is over there killing you all!”

sure, he was in a car and gonna take off as soon as the light turned, but it sure sounded/s threatening to me.

i took it to mean that his brother is in the military and either in Afghanistan or Iraq and killing “my kind”, and that this man didn’t feel i had any right to be “here” but should be over “there” being killed by his brother. whatever, it was clear that he wanted me to feel bad, guilty, afraid, to know that i am expendable, killable. there was a lot of traffic around him and it was a warm day, most people had their windows down. i didn’t even look at him, just kept looking and walking straight ahead.

twice in one day was too much. i think i held my composure pretty well. i called a friend and asked if he could give me a ride to the mosque but he said he was just packing his kids in to go and it was all full. i laughed it off, said no problem, told him i’d come to the wrong place. he asked me if i was really okay, said he heard something in my voice. i said i was fine but he said “what’s going on, what happened”… we’ve known each other for so many years that i can’t fool him. so i told him the truth and he said i’d done the right thing to call him and i should always call him first when something happens, that no matter where i was or what time it was he’d come get me or send someone to get me. right then the bus arrived, so he was asking if he should drop the kids and his wife at the mosque and come over anyway, but i said no, i was fine to get on the bus and i’d just go home. which is what i did.

i’m just saying, anyone who thinks that people aren’t still “that way”, that people won’t say and do nasty things even in public, you are wrong. and if you witness this kind of thing happen and you stay silent, you are saying it’s okay. maybe you don’t know what to say or do at the time, but i hope you think about it and decide what you would say or do the next time. and maybe when you hear coworkers or friends or family say stupid things that create a culture of acceptance around hating on Arabs, Muslims, women and others, maybe you’ll say something to them.

because this stuff does not happen in a vaccuum. it isn’t “one bad apple”. it isn’t just a joke and i don’t have a sense of humor. it is my LIFE, my safety, my security that i feel i can go to work, go to the mosque, go to the grocery store, whatever, without feeling like i could be attacked at any time. my life depends on people making it clear that my life counts and that i don’t deserve to be insulted, followed, questionned, harrassed or threatened in any way. my life depends on people paying attention to the fact that this stuff is happening, in this supposedly free country where we supposedly value “diversity”, and saying “that won’t happen on my watch”.