Last week, I took a train from North Podunksburg (where I live and work) to Metropolis (the nearest large conurbation) to attend several days of business meetings there. I was riding with some of my colleagues, and after the conversation had died down and people were looking out the windows, I turned on my mp3 player and zoned out.
You know that moment when you wake from a reverie and you remember where you are, when you realize that you are in one place and not in another? Well, I had a post 9/11 moment, a quick reminder that I wear a turban, “sport” a beard, am graced by almond skin … and that these things mean something different now than they once used to.
I was humming along under my breath, then mouthing the lyrics, then singing along quietly. A Billy Bragg song was on, and these were the words I heard in my ears:
Revenge will bring cold comfort in this darkest hour
As the juke box says ‘It’s All Over Now’
And he stands and he screams
What have I done wrong
I’ve fallen in love with a little time bomb [Link] [Audio: wmv, real]
I had sung, softly and under my breath, but perhaps audible “I’ve fallen in love with a little …” and then I tried hard to swallow the next few words, but I ended up mouthing “… time bomb.” It was my own personal Clash moment, except that the song I was singing had lyrics far worse than “…war is declared and battle come down…”
You see, I don’t give people an excuse. I don’t say “that play bombed” or “she was so bombed the other day” or “that was an explosive allegation” or “he completely hijacked that meeting.” I don’t use such words in public where they might be overheard and misunderstood by others. I don’t speak to my parents in Punjabi on the phone while I’m at an airport. I call or send text messages to my friends “Patriot Act Check-ins” at each leg of my flight schedule to avoid the possibility that I might ever ever be detained incommunicado somewhere by some official who didn’t “like the way I looked.” But that day, seduced by the false feeling of privacy that comes when you’ve got those little white earbuds in and your own music rocking around you … that day, I forgot. And I’m not allowed to forget because, in many ways, the terrorists have won. This is not the country that I was born into, and I can only pray that one day, it will be again.
Look, I’m not crying boo hoo hoo over my inability to sing the lyrics I want. Big deal, right? I mean, it’s inconsiderate to sing along while on a public carriage. No, this is just about the little reminders you get, like the whiff of an exes perfume, of what you’ve lost. And some days I really miss America.
UPDATE: Play along at home or at work! Click this link and tell me that the song isn’t catchy, even if you don’t like Billy Bragg …
Also, here’s a desi connection to Billy Bragg – he got his big break by using desi food to get air-play:
The album was widely received as a demonstration of a promising new talent. Hearing DJ John Peel mention on-air that he was hungry, Bragg rushed to the BBC with a mushroom biryani, and was rewarded when Peel played a track from Life’s a Riot, albeit at the wrong speed. Peel insisted he would have played the tape even without the biryani and later played it at the correct speed. [Link]
Of course after any major event like 9/11, the spain or london bombing there will be people who act out because if anger.
But if you look at the anger after 9/11 in the U.S after 3000 people died and you compare it to the anger after the Danish Cartoons in the muslim world. The Americans look better then do people in the muslim world.
But that doesnt have anything to do with it. That is ‘the Muslim world’s’ issue. Just because it isnt as bad as Saudi Arabia in America doesnt make the issue, or the need to discuss the vulnerability people feel over it, any the less relevant.
Of course, of course – and so you can look forward to a spit in the face when Toronto finally gets bombed too, and then tell the people who did it that it’s OK, you understand their anger.
Uh, yeah… the US only invaded 2 countries and are now setting their sites on a third. It’s funny what you can do when you have the flow for enough armament to just roll in and flatten places that make you mad. Or have oil, whatevs. Why bother having angrily demonstrate when you can calmly colonise?
What on earth are you guys talking about? What does this have to do with Ennis’ post? You’re hurting my feelings!
sigh. typos are going to be the death of me. sorry “sights” and there’s a “to” in the last sentence.
Thank you all for such lovely reactions. I went away to a meeting and came back (2.5 hours later – ugh) to find some very thoughtful responses that I’ve really enjoyed reading. Just a few minor reactions on concrete points:
KXB said:
Firstly, although I may not have conveyed it well, what I’m feeling is not self-pity (at least I hope not) but tristess, sadness, a heaviness of the heart. And I grew up with the restrictions about not joking about a bomb when you cross airport security. There are big signs making that very clear.
But what I was singing was an apposite lovesong, about a relationship gone sour. If a white person was to sing those words, nobody who heard “Time Bomb” would hear it literally – it’s about falling in love with a little time bomb, about having an explosive situation in your life, a little nitroglycerine in your heart. However, those same lyrics, those same words, coming from my bearded turbaned visage would produce a very different reaction, a far far more severe one.
I’m not saying America is a horrible place, far from it. I am saying that America has a less equal standard of freedoms now than they did in recent times. This is a racially targetted restriction of rights.
Sirc said, and others said something similar:
It varies according to who you are and where you are. Sikhs have had it far worse than any other group, with over 400 hate crimes. I have a few other posts waiting in the back of my head on my personal experiences with this. And while there have been a number of violent hate crimes in NYC, NYC is one of the safest places to be. I currently live in the heartland, in a state that voted average, and that looks like … what many people think America is. And it’s not a very hospitable place. “Metropolis,” OTOH, is great which argues that it’s not just the region, but also the size of where you live. In general, you’re best off in a coastal metro area. When I go home to NYC, I feel great, and I relax some in terms of these precautions. But out here …
beauty, ennis. thanks =)
one day.. about a year an a half ago.. i was on a commuter bus into manhattan. i sat down, turned on the iPOD — knocked out. the bus jolts to a stop. doors open. a handful walk on board.. take seats. i’m an obnoxious early-20s, sprawled out over both seats. two men sit in the pair of seats in front of me. late 30s early 40s maybe. tall. dark. one was quite attractive. i turned off my ipod. i’m not sure why. i eavesdropped in on their foreign-tongued conversation. mystified by the hand gestures. they were talking about something very important. i felt a little tightening right under my sternum. i started peaking through the crack between the seats to see what they had brought onto the bus with them. we approached the lincoln tunnel. i suddenly felt an urge to call my mom. i looked around the bus. dude across the aisle was passed out. lady diagonal was putting on lipstick. i was ashamed. still am. that was one of my lowest moments ever. and, to the community generally, i am so deeply sorry.
Being from a sikh background I would feel safer in america, then living in any muslim country.
It’s horrible that you even have to write a post like this. I wish some people had more of a capacity to understand these problems instead of simply saying “well, most browns don’t have turbans.” Though obviously I haven’t experienced this hatred first-hand, I’ve seen it through my husband’s experiences. Even now when I see people giving him the eye, I purposely speak louder in English to stick it to ’em. I’m sure this doesn’t help, and I’m still not positive why I do it, but it’s almost instinct now. When getting on the subway last week with two suitcases, my first thought was what other people would think about the combination of a turban, a suitcase, and a confined area in NYC. It sucks horribly to have to worry about these stupid things.
What started out as “hey, that man looks funny” is now “hey, that man looks like a terrorist.” I don’t have much faith in that changing anytime soon.
Maybe Waris will run for President and fix all of this =)
Ennis, you took my quote out of context, no fair. I was (less artfully) making the same point you were making. Much respect, tho’.
PearlJamFan, Can you connect Kevin Bacon to Islamic fundamentalism in six links or less?
Sirc, sorry, you’re right. It was just the first geographical comment I came across while scrolling down. Probably I should have used PJF discussing his uncles at SFO and Disney … I know what you meant though 😉
And it’s not a very hospitable place. “Metropolis,” OTOH, is great which argues that it’s not just the region, but also the size of where you live. In general, you’re best off in a coastal metro area. When I go home to NYC, I feel great, and I relax some in terms of these precautions. But out here …
I agree with this. As the joke went, the safest place for a brown man to be right after 9/11 was New York City…
I also agree that theres a lot of subterrenean racism out there just waiting to bloom. All it takes for a minority population to become prey is a charismatic, bigoted, leader; a serious economic downturn; or another terrorist attack or two. With regard to leadership, I do appreciate George Bush’s calming rhetoric in the wake of 9/11.
People dismiss yahoo and related boards as sewers of fanaticism and unrepresentative of “mainstream opinion.” But really, they are places where people can honestly express themselves without much consequence.
…and one or two plagiarized nove…eh? what? Oh.
The dreaded Opal Mehta backlash. Someone hold me. Tightly.
Kevin Bacon and Islamic terrorism in 6 links or less
1.Kevin Bacon was in trapped with Dakota Fanning 2.Dakota Fanning was in Cat in the Hat with Mike Myers 3.Mike Myers had his wayne world segment on SNL which Wayne Gretzky hosted on May 13,1989 and Gretzky had part in that Wayne World skit. 4.Wayne Gretzky rookie year he was teammate and roomate of Garnet Bailey in 1979-1980 season. 5.Garnet Bailey 11 seasons in the NHL[107 goals, 171 assists]died on flight 175 on sept 11, 2001 when it hit the world trade center. 6.9/11 was an act of Islamic Fundametalism
I’m the Decider, see? I decide what’s best. That’s my job. And I decide who internalizes what.
I totally misread that. I think I should be arrested.
Now we know, for sure, that PJF is a Canadian.
F’n A. Alright, PJF you have earned your right to be one-track uncle.
I was born and raised in western canada, but in next year will make the big move down south. USA USA USA USA!!!!!!!!!!
Hahaha. How many desi-six-degrees of separation can we do for Kevin Bacon? How about Kevin Bacon and Billy Bragg? I’m sure we could do the six degrees for those two. And, on a totally wierdo note, who’s the desi Billy Bragg? It’s all so confusing……
sirc what does one-track uncle mean?
And that was the 1st time I ever did 6 disagress of Kevin Bacon.
[9/11 was an act of Islamic Fundametalism]
Yeah, I hear Atta flipped friends flipped out because their Muslim hair band failed to become the next Stryper…
meaning totally obsessive in a slightly genius sort of way?
😉
ennis, this was a great post. Thank you for writing something that stimulated dicsussion like this.
espressa, thanks for posting that confession. I think it takes a big person to care enough about that kind of mistake and publicly apologize for it.
Eddie: The safest place for a brown man to be right after 9/11 was New York City…
In New York: I had a piece of ice thrown at my head, got called a dothead (at a bar in the East Village), and was then told that this was okay because “You’re brown and I’m White” (this later turned into a huge fight outside the bar during which bottles were thrown…I was happily not part of it), I attended the funeral of a Bangladeshi man who was killed, a demonstration of another Bangladeshi man who was stabbed to death, and when the War in Iraq started, I felt afraid to leave work both because I was afraid of being attacked in a hate crime (one of which had already occurred in the posh Brooklyn neighborhood I was living in–a Pakistani photographer was beaten severely within weeks of 9/11) and because I was afraid of political violence. In 2003, the police handcuffed me and searched me in a subway station because I was watching two other people get arrested and not complying quickly enough with their directions. I was wearing a kurta, but I don’t think that this had to do with it as much as that I was questioning their authority.
And I’m bourgie!
Real fucking safe.
When I was a 12 years old I had a stryper album, I think it was called To hell with the Devil
“People dismiss yahoo and related boards as sewers of fanaticism and unrepresentative of “mainstream opinion.” “
i called yahoo boards a sewer, but i do think it represents “mainstream” opinion more than anyone would care to admit.
Whoa. PJF – I’m… floored. I join sirc in applauding your talents.
Na, brownfrown is just spitting out the traditional reactionary canadian anti- yankee ism.
it’s mostly harmless. Here’s a good guide to it from a canadian.
http://www.filibustercartoons.com/canguide_4_aaa.php
I remember visiting Alberta a few months after 9/11. When I spoke with my Chicago accent, they got even more confused.
I was living in Toronto when 9/11 happened, and even though the events that transpired that day had an effect on the people up there, there was never any major backlash towards Muslims or Sikhs, aside from a couple of isolated incidences of vandalism at a Mandir and a Gurdwara in the Toronto area. The mood was sombre and sympathetic, and I never felt the target of untoward sentiments.
A couple of years later, I moved to northern California, and all of a sudden I felt a certain uneasiness despite the time that had passed since 9/11. Perhaps mainly because I had just left a city with such a large and accepted Indian population for an area where that wasn’t the case, but it was the stares, body language, and the insulting comments I’d get from time to time that was a little unsettling. The sense I had after moving to California was very reminiscent of the feeling I had when I was the only turbaned Sikh kid in high school – just a certain uneasiness and having to be constantly aware of my surroundings and who’s in them. You mitigate your behaviour to make sure you don’t pick up the attention of someone who is just looking for an excuse to cause you trouble. Being in a large city doesn’t necessarily help. Visiting Venice Beach in LA, my brother and I were “shooed” away by a stall-owner/vendor, because having two turbaned guys browsing his sunglasses stall was apparently bad for his business.
I’ve of course become used to it again, but I get reminded by my non-Indian friends when we’re out, who aren’t used to the silent (and not-so-silent) attention you get when you look a certain way.
MD said :
I haven’t read all the comments here, but I find it amusing that you (a republican ? 🙂 ) like Worker’s Playtime. If I remember correctly the liner notes say stuff like “Capitalism kills music” and talks about how great Mao is or something — and I don’t think BB (Billy Bragg not Bong Breaker) was being ironic. Still, I share your (and Ennis’s) fondness for the album — catchy, funny stuff.
Hell, I’ll do it three steps (using http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/ )
Osama bin Laden was in Farenheit 9/11 (2004) with Britney Spears Britney Spears was in Pauly Shore Is Dead (2003) with Sherri Shepherd Sherri Shepherd was in Beauty Shop (2005) with Kevin Bacon
Wow. Damn powerful tool. Humanity is victorious at last:
Kaavya Viswanathan was in The Today Show (2006) with Katie Couric Katie Couric was in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) with Clint Howard Clint Howard was in My Dog Skip (2000) with Kevin Bacon
This is too much fun.
Aishwarya rai has a Bacon number of 2:
Aishwarya Rai was in Last Legion, The (2006) with Colin Firth Colin Firth was in Where the Truth Lies (2005) with Kevin Bacon
OK, I’ll stop now.
Or:
In 2003 Senator Robert Torricelli raised money for Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry and also donated money to a 527 group called “Americans for Jobs and Health Care” that ran controversial ads juxtaposing candidate Howard Dean with Osama bin Laden.
Torricelli was implicated in the Chinagate scandal, investigated by Senator Fred Dalton Thompson.
Fred Dalton Thompson was in White Sands (1992) with John Lafayette
John Lafayette was in Loverboy (2005) with Kevin Bacon
Therefore, Kevin Bacon is a terrorist.
Photographic proof of Kevin Bacon’s link to Al Qaeda!
A few years ago I was coming back to the States after an extended period of time and flew into LAX. I didn’t know about the Transportation Safety Authority (TSA), which had been created in my absence. I was on my way out of the terminal to immigration along with my fellow passengers, primarily East Asian. There was a TSA officer waiting before immigration (armed, of course). The black hole of my relative darkness drew his wandering gaze away from the other passengers and he pointed to me and instructed me to come over to him. Papers – he looked over them, looked up at me, back at the papers, asked me a few questions which I don’t remember – check. He let me go. This was before immigration, mind you, so I can only imagine where I would have ended up if he hadn’t been satisfied.
Immigration was, of course a breeze. The woman at the counter asked me how long I’d been gone, stamped my passport, and welcomed me back. Customs too, was very simple straightforward.
Waiting just beyond customs, however, was an officer from the LAPD. As I was going through customs, I saw her interact with the family just ahead of me in line – a white blonde woman with her cute blonde daughter. The officer chatted them up and was very friendly. Then came my turn, and she saw me turned into a completely different person. She grew taller by about 3 inches, got a very serious look on her face, and started interrogating me about where I’d been, why I’d been there, what I’d been doing and for how long, etc. etc. THE LAPD! That’s what’s really scary about this whole situation – before 9/11 there was a limited number of authorities who could ask such information. Now it seems like anyone in a position of authority can perform such an interrogation, and God only knows where one can end up if one doesn’t comply.
So now, planning another return to the States, I’m not only considering what to take with me, but also my appearance – do I shave the beard? Do I cut the hair? What should I wear? Will any of it make a difference? Did I get off lightly last time or was that the worst I’m going to face?
It’s amazing how much I’ve relaxed since moving to a ‘coastal metro area’. And I’m easily mistaken for being Mexican – a bit easier to deal with than if I wore a full beard and turban. 😉
How did those of us who grew up, or currently live, in more heartlandish areas deal with things? I don’t know how my parents did/do it. I think at this point, they’re familiar with their ‘neighbors,’ and the neighbors are familiar with them. Mind you, no one else but them – because their proven good folk, who don’t eat children, practise dark arts, or blow up buildings.
(The taste in my mouth just now…bitter gourd. Gack.)
Why do white people love chinese food?
Why do Chinese people love McDs?
why do Indian people love Indian-Chinese food
Why do Indian people ask funny questions?
Why do PunjabiJatt’s ask funny questions?
Whatever happened to Punjabi Boy, and do you think he’s returned, but is simply operating under a different name/names?
I was just trying to introduce some comedy into the convo, but honestly, that question has always piqued my curiosity. I personally love greek, italian, and of course am biased towards indian food.
I’m of a jatt background yet it is something that I could care less about. Yet so many other punjabi’s think that being a jatt is the greatest thing ever. Could someone explain to me what so great about being a jatt.
Also since all punjabi jatt are sikh’s, but sikhism doesn’t believe in the caste system, somebody has to explain this to me.
To PearlJamFan
Firstly, you’re incorrect to state all Punjabi Jatts are Sikh, the majority of Punjabi Jatts are actually Muslim (from west-punjab aka pakistani punjab). Secondly, simply because I have Jatt in my username it doesn’t mean I feel superior or look down on anyone else. It’s my culture and I am proud of that. Why do you feel the need to announce your love of Pearl Jam? 😛
But here in Vancouver with the really high punjabi population I have noticed here that alot of punjabi just love saying that word jatt.