Different

Different

I think discrimination has been such as central theme in my life, that I have come to accept it is part of whom I am but equally the reason for being so vocal. I know many ask me to let go, calm down and not get myself so carried away. Well let me tell you why I do not, cannot and will not, ever, just keep quiet.

It all started before I was even conceived. A Portuguese mother whose own mother was discriminated for not being socially high enough compared to her husband’s family. My mother who took destiny in her own hands, chose to follow a different path from most women in her family, society and country at that time: she studied, became a professor, travelled the world, and only decided to get married in her late 30s and to a foreigner. 

A Persian father whose parents and family were persecuted for having the wrong religion, also chose a different path to break the cycle of fear, through his studies, and was granted a scholarship to pursue a doctorate in France where he worked part time to make ends meet. He spent a long time looking for a job despite being an engineer from an American university and having a PhD from a French one. But he was Iranian, with the wrong name, the wrong nationality and probably the wrong accent. And then he too married a foreigner. 

Needless to say both families were suspicious of this whole love story and the foreigner… needless to say neither family understood these two’s fascination with politics, current affairs, and how central that was to one’s life, to their lives. So my own family’s life started with two strong heads getting together and on a mission to prove the world wrong.

And then came along this Manuela Nassime … born in a French hospital in the beautiful city of Toulouse… but born without her left ear (yes it’s true and not it’s not a joke to explain why I don’t listen… do you know how many times I have had to actually justify this?). The first doctor told my mother it was a common birth defect from the Middle East so that must be the reason. The second one told her she was too old to have a baby (she was 37) so that must be the reason. In the end it was probably the vaccine one of the doctors gave her to travel whilst she was pregnant. In the end it was just meant to be this way. (And my brother was born 6 years later with no birth defects proving both doctors wrong…).

The saga continues... My father went on to kick off his career in a multinational corporation with an assignment in Iran, in spite of the revolution and the war. This meant I was mostly with my mother in my early years, and I went from nannies to nurseries, always being the odd one, the rebel who always did things differently, the chatter box, the emotional one, the one who spoke more than one language. When I then went to a French school in Teheran it was probably the only time I felt I belonged somewhere… we were only 7 in the class, all foreigners of some sort… being different was the norm. Then came my brother, so I lost all my privileges as a single child… that was different and was not fun… I was suddenly bearing the weighs I didn’t ask for being the first born, the eldest, a girl, … whatever happened, it was probably always my fault… and how dare I not behave like a little lady but rather this bubble of energy running around, exploring everything around and being overly sensitive … of course my parents probably didn’t mean for me to feel like this, but as a self-centred child, like most children are, this is how it felt.

When we moved to Portugal, aged 7, I was thrown into this institution with its unwritten rules which is the French Lycee Francais. Put into a classroom of 30 with children who had known each other since the age of 3… mostly Portuguese from both parents, middle to upper class and a lot of elite offsprings. Bullied by classmates for being shy, told off by teachers for speaking too much, and feeling totally inadequate in that jungle, I was told it was odd to have an Iranian father. Some years passed and I formed some lovely friendships to this date… probably with some odd ones like myself. During teenage hood, I was reminded that being hairy was wrong, that my clothes were not fancy enough, that I was too fat and no boys would be interested. I was made fun of openly… and if that wasn’t bad enough, I had to wear glasses from age 9 and for many years to come until contact lenses were invented. I thought that was normal so never complained and internalised… only to have to deal with these issues years later in therapy. 

To make things worse, I was not interested in being the top of the class, and academics were a must but not my passion. How could I be like “this” asked my parents when they were always the first in their studies and a reference for the families… well it just wasn’t that important. Clearly, growing up in a more privilege and cocooned family than they had probably explained the fact I could afford not to be as focused? But equally, we grew up in a society where science and rationality were and still are the reference to intelligence, and imagination, emotion and sensitivity are synonymous of weakness, dreamers and with no “real future”.

The last two years as I made a conscious effort to fit in, become good look-able and cool, things improved… just enough to fit in and starting to be a proper teenager. Little did I know that my strength would come from standing out and not fitting in. But teenage hood would not be teenage hood without that phase I guess.

As a kid, I was fairly skinny but age 12, with hormones all over the place, I started putting on weight. As I grew up I was told weight management was a question of willpower and I was just not focused enough in wanting to be slim. It was only at the age of 30, when I was properly diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome that I was told the reasons for my hairiness and natural weight gain… I just had to accept and deal with it. 

At 18, I chose, encouraged by my parents, to go to study in France. There I discovered the importance of politics and fighting for one’s beliefs, it was an eye opener. Equally, and despite holding a French passport, I was very quickly reminded I was a second class citizen, because my mother was Portuguese and everyone knew Portuguese people were either cleaners or builders, and sometimes taxi drivers. And after the hundredth joke, when I started snapping back, I was told I was overly sensitive and it was just humour. French humour is something else I guess or lack of it. And when I started to complain about the daily discriminations I saw my Arab friends face, I was told bluntly that if I wasn’t happy, I could always go back home. “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”… but only for pure bloods I guess. 

I remembered painfully how often my father reminded me he always had to work twice as much as his counterparts in the corporate world, just because he was not from European dissident. He did succeed and had a brilliant career, he broke the mould at a great personal effort and sometimes sacrifices. I guess I learnt not to take anything for granted and fight my way up. But it also made me conscious of what discrimination was about and to be vocal about it.

Norway was probably the most welcome and civilised place I have ever worked and lived in. And if it wasn’t the minus 17 degrees in winter and the fact garlic is considered a smelly ingredient, I probably would re consider moving there. It is socialist capitalism at its best where balance, justice and common sense prevail. I love and swear by it. I was treated with respect and courtesy. Economic justice where salaries are capped to maintain equality, employees are seen as an asset, CEOs sit in the canteen to share their lunch and ministers take the underground to go to work and bodyguards are probably unemployed.

I then went on to do my MBA in the USA… Ku Klux Klan land and equally the biggest concentration of Natives … Okhlahoma! I was quickly reminded that Americans were superior beings, but within those, Latinos, Natives and Blacks were second class citizens. That America was the best nation in the world, that wars had not been caused by the greed of a few, that carrying guns was a right and made the country safer, that they were just on a mission to make the world a better place but these strange beings from these strange lands they invaded just didn’t get that and hated Americans just because they were great. And when I complained about some incident against European students, I was bluntly told in a sorority party to go back to my f…..g Europe. Enlightening! I think I saw extremes in everything, from the nonsense of the police forces to the extremes of poverty vs wealth. I saw a man left to bleed to death in the hospital bed because he didn’t have a private insurance. I had a black man calling me racist because I didn’t answer his callings at 4am in the middle of a San Francisco street. When I sat with him and started chatting, I was told I was the first white person to ever speak to him like a human being in his 54 years of age. In another episode, in the ethics in business classroom, I was asked if I was communist… on the basis that communism was caring too much about workers’ rights, human rights, coming from Europe and being French. 

Needless to say, I came back running to communist land when I was done with my studies.

So then started the 9 month long journey to find a job. I had the right degrees, spoke several languages, had travelled and worked around the world… yet it took months to land one. Probably because I decided to do it from scratch and without anyone’s intervention. I wanted to earn it. Like my parents had.

In some interviews I was clearly told I was a second class citizen, either because of my origins (Portugal I was told was a third world country and Iran a land of lunatics, everyone who has seen TV knew this, apparently), or because my universities were not the top 3 ones, and this despite me explaining that the worse student of the best university was surely not better than the best of the 4^th one... I digress. I was also reminded in France that if I had not studied in Paris, I would not earn as much as other graduates despite starting in the same role with the same hours and same responsibilities. To add to this, I was strongly advised to drop the Arabic sounding part of my surname in my CV, as “you know how French people can be stupid about these things”. So it should not come as a surprise that in the end, despite being offered great roles in France, I chose to move to the UK, where my interviews were an absolute pleasure and where on top of what the legislation says, origin, gender, age, and other criteria are not as important as the ability to make money for a company. They saw my potential and invested in it.

The first couple of years in my career were great. Socially, I made friends with mostly foreigners… this is, after all, a common theme across the planet, when one has one’s friends and social life locally, why bother reaching out to some foreigner. As soon as I started climbing the corporate ladder, I realise there was a code of conduct… a white male code of conduct… and this is when I became a feminist… I found it very difficult to accept I had to work twice as hard to be thought half as good, I had to behave like a bloke, and that being emotional was a NO NO in the business world… except if you were a male bully, in which case shouting and insulting people was a good example of assertiveness. 

I was offered an assignment in South Africa, and despite my dream having always been to live in South America, I accepted and off I went to the land of Nelson Mandela. Sure we had studied apartheid at school, this discrimination that had happened hundreds of years ago right? Wrong. I was about to get the shock of my life yet. First of all it was very recent. And then I quickly realised that racism was and is so institutionalised I cannot even see a grain of humour in it. It’s everywhere, at work, at home, in the streets, in restaurants, in shops, everywhere. It starts with the fact that everyone is defined by colour. No exceptions made. So I was automatically branded as white. Which interestingly enough back in Europe I never really know how to define my ethnic origin… because although they have now added Arab, Persians are not Arab and I am not totally white? I digress. 

The sickness of this system was deeper than I originally thought. Even within each colour category there were discriminations. Within the whites, first were the Afrikaners from Dutch dissident, closely followed by the English, the Irish, and then only after those being granted the best posts, came the Italians, the Spanish, the Greeks and the Portuguese. Ah, once again the Portuguese were discriminated there too, my friends being called insulting names but accepting because that’s the way it was and just a joke (I must say this Portuguese acceptance of fate drives me nuts still today). And then within the Blacks, you had a whole myriad of very distinct groups of people: Zulu, Xosa, Tswana, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Venda you name it. And it doesn’t stop there, the Coloured. Now Coloured is anything else but not really: people of mixed ethnic origin who possess ancestry from Europe, Asia, and various Khoisan and Bantu ethnic groups of southern Africa. I am still not clear on what it means Colour wise and I gave up even trying to understand. Genetics studies have proven over and over we all come from the same place, Mother Africa. Blacks are browns and Whites can be pink and olive… to this date I find it really disturbing to define one by their skin colour… worse even, to define their character and culture by the colour of the skin. It’s sick and I will never accept it. But this was and is divide to conquer’s best example. 

Now I was very quickly educated by all sides of how things really were… that Blacks had a brain smaller than ours hence they could not think like “us” and even less to be allowed in positions of power and that is why this whole BEE business was nonsensic and explained why the country was going downhill and how things were so much better in the olden days even for them (clearly History is not taught the same everywhere…). I was told Whites were dirty because they couldn’t survive without a black maid and White people were all racist and mean. And I was told Coloured were better than Blacks but not as good as Whites despite speaking Afrikaans. It pains me to write these words as I had chosen to forget this for the past 5 years but a friend of mine asked me to write them down so it could be shared. I was so outraged, so shocked, and yet when I engaged in these debates, I would have the Whites telling me I didn’t understand because I came from Europe, and the Blacks telling me not to get so upset cause that was the way it had always been and equally that I couldn’t understand because I was White. I was told I was wasting time paying computer studies to my cleaner and doing homework with her at the week-ends so she could become a secretary. I was told I was wasting my time in the townships and probably putting my pregnancy at risk because those abused women had been in many courses sponsored by well meaning charities to develop themselves but time after time failed to learn. Needless to say what they really needed was someone to help them build self confidence, self respect and self love, have someone hold their hands every week, week after week, month after month, try understand their reality and adapt those “courses” to their reality. This is when I also understood that most well meaning charities are keeping the poor poor and the only way out of poverty is through empowerment, education and proper sponsorship, not just mentoring. 

Insanity at its best. 

From the electric fenced walls of the rich suburbs where the theme of the day is either rugby, a braai or how the country is in the wrong hands, to the shacks in the townships where women are abused, men are unemployed for most of their adult lives and running water and electricity are still a myth for many, I think I saw the worse and the best of humanity, even worse than in America. I learnt about Ubuntu, about the notion of community, of how one’s child belongs to all in the community and how we are nothing without one another, how elders should be cherished, how one shows respect to one another independently of their social status. I also learnt how prejudice is engrained in everyone’s brain from birth, how the fear of the other is taught and institutionalised. I finally learnt that the only way forward is through education, both academic but also human, and that one should never ever give up or accept the status quo. I met people who realised the past was wrong and one cannot just forget, forgive and move one. I learnt that the damage of regimes such as Apartheid or what we have in other parts of the world such as Palestine, but even within Europe and its well protected institutions that protect the wealthy will take generations to be erased, if ever. Finally, I learnt, only recently, that racism is not just the prejudice based on skin colour, but how it translates into deeply rooted twisted institutions and how economic power is kept by a few.

And then I did an even worse crime. First I divorced a good Dutch man. How dare I divorce for no good reason in the eyes of others. How dare I take my own destiny at hand and choose a different path from the norm with no real good explanation (I still have to listen to this 10 years later). 

And several months later, I fell in love with a Cameroonian man… in South Africa. Now that brought a whole new dimension into my life. From having to deal with people turning their heads in the bars, restaurants, streets, clubs, just because a black man was with a white woman or a white woman was with a black man, it was odd everywhere, we got the looks everywhere. I was asked what it was like to be with a Black man, and why I was in love with him. I was met with round eyes of surprise when I said he was extremely intelligent and had an exceptional general knowledge of current and international affairs. I was told by both sides of the fence I was getting myself into trouble and should really be careful.  

To make things worse, I fell pregnant unexpectedly and chose to become a single parent for personal but well thought reasons. Now imagine this… having a mixed raced baby, unmarried, on my own and without a living maid or night nurse in South Africa. And then going back to work within 6 months, full time. Bring on the comments, the gossips, the unsolicited advice, the judgements. How selfish of me I was told repeatedly. But interestingly enough, becoming a mother made me stronger, much stronger because more than ever before, I became determined to make this world a better place for my son. I am determined to empower my son, not against the world we live in, but to face it head high, dignity, strength and determination to be himself, proud of all his heritages, not just of colour or culture, but all the personalities that have paved our ancestry. If nothing else, I want to teach him Ubuntu. 

I left South Africa for a number of reasons. One of them was not wanting my son growing up thinking racism, discrimination and social injustice were the norm. I left South Africa because eventually I realised I was fighting a fight that had started in my homeland of Europe, and my fight for justice made more sense back home, in its epicentre, than in someone’s else land, where at the end of the day, I would never really get it from a historical point of view. Like no one will ever understand what I went through in a war torn country, in cities going through revolutions, all the discriminations and other experiences I have faced unless they have shared the same.

Let me clear though. I am not bitter, rancorous or vindictive. Yes I have been victim, but no I won’t dwell on it. I will however fight back. My battles against discrimination continue daily in many fronts. Except that I have learnt to feel proud of my many differences, except that now the last thing I want to do with my life is fit it in so others feel more comfortable about themselves. What they think of me is their problem. And yes I will be vocal, loud, emotional, female, mix, sensitive, unusual, feminine, passionate, mother, friend, parent, masculine too, sister, daughter, evangelist, tall, short, fighter, rescuer, think, fat, healthy, unhealthy, rational and irrational, the list is long. I will be myself and strive to become my better self as I grow older. 

Racism and discrimination of all sorts are so institutionalised in all our societies across this planet, we do not even realise that it is there in the first place. From how the world’s map has been pictured making Europe bigger than what it is, how history books are written and how media portray “the truthful facts” by those who hold power, the skewed fairy tales we tell our children, our conscious and unconscious biases, our behaviours at work, at home, at school, in the street, our fears, our emotions… it’s in every single aspect of our lives. But that does not make it right. That does not make it acceptable just because it has always been like this, ever since we came into this world as animals. If humans is what we want to call ourselves, then we should start by acting as such. If you think I am over reacting, chances are is because you have never experienced what I am talking about. I accept that. But please do not judge me or my reactions is all I ask, don’t tell me to calm down and get over it. That’s all you said to me was just a word, that’s it was just a comment, that it was just a joke and I am over reacting. 

Let me be. Let me speak. Let me fight. Because someone somewhere needs people like me to fight for them, because they do not have the privilege I have to speak up.