Translation by: femme/900/26 September 2005
It's a fine day. The weather is good. I left the city to go have supper with some friends. It's the beginning of a pleasant evening.
I park my car at the convenience store that is not far from their place. The beer we want obliges me to. At the moment I enter, a woman is leaving the store carrying a case of beer. It's Friday night for everyone.
I hold the door open for her and she turns around to thank me, a
smile on her lips. She's very pretty and I smile back. As she
looks at me her gaze becomes gloomy. Something has disturbed her. I suppose she must think that I'm smiling too much at her.
I enter the store. The
lady at the cash register looks at me and her
face denotes a kind of aggressivity. I suppose she must be experiencing an internal struggle, as they say.
A man leaning against the counter is busy having his lottery tickets validated. He looks in my direction, uneasily.
Why do they
Look at me in this way? Could it be that they're all tired?
I ask for my brand of beer. "In the second cooler, if there's any left," the lady answers in a gruff tone, without looking at me. Cool! There is some left!
I come up to the counter and I put down my booty. The lady is busy the whole time validating the gentleman's enormous pile of lottery tickets. He looks at me and then turns toward the lady. "You can go ahead of me, sir," he says. "Thank you, but I'm not in too big of a hurry," I say, but accepting at the same time his offer to go in front of him.
The lady seems a bit vexed but rings up the sale without saying a word. I pay and go out of the store.
Sitting in the car, I start it up and ask myself what it is about me that sitrs up such hostile attitudes in people?
I was born here. People
say that I'm a rather handsome young man. They recognize that I am well brought up and I believe my parents have indeed done a good job raising me. Perhaps then it's because I speak with a slight foreign accent?
It's true that I'm of Haitian descent. But I don't remember people having this attitude in the past because of the color of my skin.
Why now? What has changed?
A flash of light shoots through my brain and I suddenly understand: I wear a face that they fear.
Since I am what one calls mulatto, the people around here take me for an Arab. Because of that I am an incarnation of the nightmare that haunts each one of them-that they will see some terrorists land in Quebec.
BINGO!
In my innermost heart, I know that I have put my finger on the source of my pain.
The province of Quebec, a land of refuge that has grandly welcomed thousands of immigrants since Expo '67, is in the process of changing, subtlely perhaps, but without a doubt.
Some questions command my attention as I drive towards my friends' house. Should I become anxious and betray such an attitude? Should I change my behavior? Have the terrorists won?
I don't know. I hope not. But I believe that people need to be reassured. And it isn't the information that is broadcast on television, over the radio, or published in the newspapers that will do this. Quite the contrary.
Even so, I'm lucky to be the son of an immigrant because, for me, the state of being foreign does not really exist. This is the point of view I have embraced my entire life.
Starting now, as soon as I encounter those looks filled with uneasiness, even anxiety, I will smile in a friendly manner, without affectation. Now and then, I do avert my gaze. More often, I don't even look at the people around me since I have a vague feeling that I make them uneasy. Even my shrink confirmed that there was a strong increase of anxiety in his patients in relation to foreigners (and therefore, those who look like them) since September 11, 2001.
I am always spontaneously defending Haitians, women, homosexuals, and the disabled. They're easy marks. From this time on, I'll sympathize with all the people whom one despises, with all the Arabs of the world who, for the most part,t all, and with all those who look like foreigners, wherever they might be in the world.
And I'll have more patience with those who are afraid of everything that's different.
I would say that when I was younger I was a citizen of the world. Today I know how true this is.
I now wear the face of the world. And I'm proud of it.
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