It is late, and I am about to drive out, to get my third vaccine dose. It is raining and just by coincidence I have loaned the car of a friend for a few days. So yes, I drive out and not with my bike. But at the connection of my street and the main road, there is an accident. A figure in the pavement, couple of cars stopped and more people moving all around. So I park, get out, ask what to do, and get told to deviate traffic so the wounded person is not run over. Which I do. Sunday night traffic should not be that difficult to manage, I tell myself. In few minutes a neighbor sees me, walks into his own house, and with his limited dutch pushes a reflective jacket on my hands, so no other car run me over. No need I tell him, just when I am spotting another car pushing his way through. So I eventually place myself in front of it, force him to drive to the side, and when he passes me, I tap his motor hood: “there is a wounded person in the floor” I shout.
He wasn’t amused.
Actually, he was furious. Hand break, window down, shouts. “What?” I managed to ask. “DON’T TOUCH MY CAR”. I don’t really understand or believe, so again: “dude, there is a wounded person in the floor”. And then, even harder, more in my face, and if possible, more angry: “DON’T YOU FUCKING TOUCH MY CAR!”. Eventually I stop repeating my line, and he does too, and we look at each other. Anger and lack of understanding. Well, not really. Anger? more like frustration, lack of recognition, hurt pride, offense. A car, I know myself, is the result of hard work, is a symbol of welfare, is a possession that tells about yourself. Even not having of a car is an statement in itself, or so I like to believe. So yes, I do understand that a car being hit by an stranger is a thing to get angry at. Or not angry, not quite. But frustrated, unseen, insulted. And then all these things, all these things together, that made him angry.
Actually, they didn’t. We are angry already.
And yes, I did write “we”. I wish I could say that this thing, this anger, this wish to shout and crush some idiot that happens to be in front of you, only happens to the newcomers, to the moroccans, to those angry black males that are around. But no. These thing happens to us, us migrants. The color is the least important of it. What matters is that we are angry, we have had it but we keep having it. And we can’t take it, not anymore. Call it discrimination, call it racism, call it sadness at the state in which our countries are. In the end it does not matter how you, or me, call it. Forget about the car, which also in the end is just a stupid male thing (or so I believe). Think about what does the daily doubts do to anyone “arrived” let him or her be a newcomer or a third generation. The constant explaining of this nuance of the language, or that aspect of that tradition. And let’s not even start about the politicians that want us out. Let’s, even if for a second, consider the fact that every migrant knows that there is a relevant percentage of the dutch (and german and italian and spanish and venezuelan and you name it) that wants us out. Just out, Back to wherever we came from.
What do you think that that make us? Do you think that such state of things might make us angry?
No shit, sherlock.
No shit.