Fatima was only two years young, and today she was out to see the world. She skipped alongside her father, singing "Mama's coming home tonight, Mama's bearing me gifts alright". In seconds, a man wearing faded jeans, and a shirt too old to look clean leaned out the side of a moving bus, snapped his fingers and yelled "Araby, Araby, Araby". That was their cue, and her father halted her to a stop before the bus got too close to annihilating them. He pulled out a few bills and exchanged them for a ride. As Fatima stepped onto the floor of the old Mitsubishi-excuse of a public transport vehicle, a young boy around her age caught her attention. Perched up on his tired mother's lap, he was wearing a well-fitted, clean suit. He looked like a sample of importance, off to some special event. His eyes twinkled a little, like it was his first day out into the big world too. He smiled and clapped his hands singing "Mama's coming home tonight, Mama's bearing me gifts alright". But Fatima didn't see any of that. Instead she tugged on her father's sleeve and whispered, "Baba! Look." Pointing at his suit and chuckling, "Haramy Sagheer!" (Young thief)
Her baba turned around to dedicate his attention to the source of his little angel's witty comment. When he found a young black boy in a black suit he did not lash out at her. Instead he laughed and playfully pinched her arm, it was almost like a tickle rather than a reproach. Somewhere deep inside his sleeping conscious, her father knew that she was too young to detect an honest face from a criminal's; and somewhere deeper he knew that a lie was detected in one's eyes, not identified by the color of one's skin. Yet, he laughed gleefully at the throat-cutting comment his young one just made, because somehow the devil on his shoulder convinced him that "She was too young to understand".
But dear Abu-Fatima, she will grow older, and in her lifetime she will see the color of skin before the context of character. She already understood that having full lips and a dark hue of melanin meant being poor and less of a person than she was. Just that morning, her mother stripped her of her golden bracelet claiming that there were too many thieves at the market. But no one had told her what a thief was supposed to look like, all she knew was that time and time again her father clasped his wallet tighter when a dark man with shaggy clothes walked by. She didn't know that their features were, in fact, similar to those of her great grandfathers. She didn't know that they could work hard and earn an honorable living just like her father did. She didn't know that there was a bloody explanation to why their clothes were shabby. ; and that someone out there decided to betray God's decree of equality and bestow a war-infested fate on the "young thief's" people, just because they were different. Nevertheless, she is the future of a divided nation who was never taught unity. As such, our broken present sort of makes sense now, doesn't it? How do you break this cycle of prejudice when you don't even know it's unjustified? How do you understand it is unjustified when you haven't been taught that hate speech is not a breech of your freedom, or that racism is not right?
But dear Abu-Fatima, she will grow older, and in her lifetime she will see the color of skin before the context of character. She already understood that having full lips and a dark hue of melanin meant being poor and less of a person than she was. Just that morning, her mother stripped her of her golden bracelet claiming that there were too many thieves at the market. But no one had told her what a thief was supposed to look like, all she knew was that time and time again her father clasped his wallet tighter when a dark man with shaggy clothes walked by. She didn't know that their features were, in fact, similar to those of her great grandfathers. She didn't know that they could work hard and earn an honorable living just like her father did. She didn't know that there was a bloody explanation to why their clothes were shabby. ; and that someone out there decided to betray God's decree of equality and bestow a war-infested fate on the "young thief's" people, just because they were different. Nevertheless, she is the future of a divided nation who was never taught unity. As such, our broken present sort of makes sense now, doesn't it? How do you break this cycle of prejudice when you don't even know it's unjustified? How do you understand it is unjustified when you haven't been taught that hate speech is not a breech of your freedom, or that racism is not right?
As I relay this story, I remember someone asking me about my people's outlook on diversity, and how they classified themselves. They were basically asking me to define my racial belonging, and identify myself. In trying to explain how my forefathers probably thought they were better than his, I found that I too was trying to understand this identity puzzle I was born into. It may be outdated to say that our souls do not choose the bodies they inhabit, but is it misguided to say that we do not always choose the definition of our souls, either? It is true that we are not born with stereotypes and fields of classification embedded into our minds like veins to the heart. But then how do we explain someone so young preaching concepts that only an old, corrupt soul is meant to comprehend? Indeed, we often unconsciously pass down legacies, and I believe that is mainly because at some point in time these legacies turn into norms practiced so casually. Thus, when Palestine is recognized merely as a non-member state after sixty-five years, no one questions why it took us so long. For the most part, people seem to have lost faith in their cause, or maybe they had forgotten them all together. It is not a surprise, then, that the genocides in Darfur and South Kurdufan have not even been recognized as conflicts worthy of global intervention. But what does, in fact, strike me is that tomorrow Abu-Fatima might call on the world and ask them to aid Sudan. Therefore, I wonder how it is that we find the audacity to call for change when we refuse to accept our black african brothers and sisters as indispensable organs of the Sudanese body, meanwhile refusing to completely assimilate with our Arab counterparts. We almost refuse the two sides but ask to be classified as an entity of both simultaneously, and the worse part is we don't even realize it! This is what makes the cycle difficult to break. Nevertheless, all hope is not lost, and maybe somewhere out there Fatima will break loose of these social buckles and chains, and write to the world a blog post in an attempt to create a mental revolution that paves the way for a tolerable future.