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Post by zemelmete on Aug 2, 2004 18:35:38 GMT -5
Sadly, I cannot read, because I don't know french.
Can you something translate in english, please?
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Post by sublime on Aug 2, 2004 23:54:35 GMT -5
To be black in Tunisia
After the account of Sub-Saharan residing at Morocco, here the second part of our debate on the relations interraciales in the Maghreb. This week, J.A.I. opens its columns with Affet Mosbah, Tunisian black. A testimony without concession on a subject up to now taboo.
To the end of 1980, in France, several racist crimes come to be committed, whose victims are mainly maghrébines. I am of all the demonstrations to denounce the insupportable one. I y côtoie of many Tunisian, known and unknown compatriots. Seemingly, all gathers us, but I cannot hide my perplexity: these made indignant faces rightly are the same ones which, in the streets of Tunis, grimacent in the passing of a Black: "Ya Kahlouch! "("negro "," swarthy man").
What is intolerable on a side of the Mediterranean would be it, other, perfectly normal, natural?
Born in the Ifriqiyah antique, with the septentrional point of Africa, I am all at the same time woman, black, Tunisian, Arab and Moslem. A composite identity in which some believe to see a "richness". What reality really does not confirm. My country abolished slavery in 1846, before France, and gave the women, one half-century ago, which was owe them: equality. Two social and institutional reforms of an amazing range and a modernity. Today, if the Tunisians enorgueillissent themselves readily of the freedom which the women in their country enjoy, it is rare that they evoke the abolition of slavery. Why?
"the black question is a problem of White", said Jean-Paul Sartre at one time. In Tunisia, the Blacks are neither a problem nor a taboo. At most a discrete minority. A social subcategory, which, vis-a-vis with the insults, dissimulates its revolt like one hides a scandal, in silence and shame. A revealing anecdote. One evening, at the end of my service in a traditional ballet with the Theatre of the town of Tunis, a friend me susurre, joker: "You are the black spot of the white ballet! "Another, shining intellectual, does not imagine simply that Black can be a ballet dancer: "How this is possible", maugrée it in front of his/her daughters - who are being my friends...
The White are obviously very minority on the African continent. However, when the Tunisians speak about a Man from the Ivory Coast or a Malian, they designate it as "African". Aren't we ourselves of the Africans? Which is the hidden direction of this car-exclusion by the verb?
In my country, racism is not institutional: never you will see a deputy expressing xenophobe theses with the platform of the French National Assembly. He is before very social. He éructe in the streets, shelters behind the shutters, betrays himself by attitudes or glances... It is a permanent and camouflaged spittle. Who can testify some if not the Blacks themselves? But the majority are keep silent, as if they feared to pass for skimped spirits, complexed, even from the paranoiacs. Then when Black is finely called "White-Snow", it is satisfied to smile... Isn't this "humour"?
Here, a Black is "oussif" ("servant", "slave" and, by extension, "black"). On their passage, my congeneric hears regularly comments of the kind "Congo" or "Senegal". How if one could not be at the same time black and Tunisian! The insults redouble when the "victim" has misfortune to be a woman. Atmosphere of the streets of Tunis east at this point empuantie by the gravelly remarks that it is heard there permanently that it is preferable to leave accompanied by a man. A paradox in this country which, since 1956, freed the women by promulgating the Code from the personal statute!
Naturally, the authors of these stinking remarks will savagely deny to have held them! Even friends, sincere but blind men, will find that, nevertheless, you tend to see the evil everywhere... But question the Blacks which live here, the sub-Saharan students, for example: all will tell you similar experiments. On our premises, racism is ordinary, odourless and underground. It is necessary to be confronted there to become aware of it. It is not a violent racism, it does not kill. It is a finger pointed on the other, daily. A secrecy of family. Mortal, in the final analysis.
My childhood was a daily confrontation. What to make when a kid is caillassé only because it is black? Nothing, if not to lower the head and to advance well quickly towards the school by hoping that the "little scoundrels" will find another target, any, a tree, a dog, uneven or insane... In my district, insane, precisely, often saved me the setting. I did not forget his strange glance when it happened that we find ourselves face to face. Were it surprised, it also, to discover "the black spot of the white ballet"? I will never know it.
A long time, I was afraid of the street. A long time, I hoped to live one day without insults nor verbal aggressions, far from these insistent glances. I preserved a step constantly pressed of it. And a taste for dark clothing. If I hate the red color, it is undoubtedly that in red a Black is doubly visible. A dark skin is a sufficiently heavy costume to carry...
With adolescence, the things changed a little. The children of the vicinity had been accustomed to see us. We formed part of the landscape, they were not more aggressive. We thus lived in good intelligence, without being easily deceived. The insults are from now on of another type. When, by inadvertency, the "oussif" word is released, the faulty one, at once, stammers, is excused almost. It would like to take again an expression which it usually uses only with white interlocutors. The lapses of this type are legion "Your mother is very beautiful, says to me one day a lady lodged by my parents, one would say White" "White" is also said "will horra", who means "free", in opposition to "slave". Definitely, the institutions evolve/move more quickly than mentalities. Slavery is abolished for a long time, but the language betrays the major thoughts, not to say the level of development of a company.
Paris, 2001. Second Intifada beats its full and the demonstrations follow one another to denounce the "abduction of president Arafat" by an unnamable chief of war and the racism of State whose the Palestinians are victims. During the one of them, I make halt with some Tunisian friends around a coffee. Some brought their children. We project to join together us for the electoral evenings to come and one of us proposes to go to dine in "Ali Oussif" - Ali the Negro. I scan the faces of my companions: except for a friend artist, nobody stumbles. I strike fist the table and asks whether the patronym of the restorer in question is "the Negro". Not, one answers me, but itself accepts that it thus is called and into pleasant readily. Definitely the "syndrome White-Snow" with the life lasts... I insist: which difference is there between very short Ali and Ali the Negro? If this one had the clear skin, would my companions call it "Ali the White"? Is a man what it does or what it appears? And of which nickname do they thus affublent me in my absence? I leave the table. Will the children present continue, tomorrow, to express in all good conscience same larval racism?
The following day, I receive a bunch of flowers Parma color, accompanied by a chart of excuses. The shipper is one of my companions of yesterday, who seems to ask me for forgiveness for all the others. Apparently, it is the only one to have understood that "Ali Oussif" and me, following the example all Tunisian Blacks, we feel, in a certain manner, foreigners in our own country. And in the heart as of ours.
My country is multiple. It is a country moving, opened, a ground of paradoxes. It grants the harbour due felt sorry for for racism, but not the possibility to me of proving my charges. We equal in front of the law, but are discreetly kept away socially, without no White realizing some.
One could multiply the examples of discrimination or insidious ostracism. A member of my family works for the national company of aviation: he is a chief of cabin. As it is expressed in a punished language, it is him which was charged to record the greeting message of the passengers. Finding me one day on board an apparatus of the company, I intended his voice to shell the traditional security instructions. But on the screen placed in front of me, it is a fort pretty blonde who mimait them.
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Post by sublime on Aug 2, 2004 23:55:01 GMT -5
I am not close forgetting a Sunday exit with el-Alia, between Tunis and Bizerte. Having parked the family car, we were encircled at once by a group of autochtones, which, the face stuck to the pane, was put to observe us as they would have done animals out of cage. They laughed and grimaçaient: "Of the Blacks in a car, Blacks in a car! "Terrible feeling of smothering, faintness. Yes, we were human beings sat in a car. The black question is, indeed, a problem of White. The Tunisian South is differently reached that North, the Blacks y being much more numerous. Here, there are the free ahrars, men, and the abids, the slaves - terms used without complex nor false modesty. One goes to festivals "at the abids" or "the ahrars". Beyond an apparent cohesion, the South is deeply cleaved, but the social codes are known only initiates. It is necessary to be originating in the area to become aware of it. Take this nice tradition of émietter the meat of the guests, at the time of a meal. A long time, this drudgery fell on the Blacks. Thereafter, to show that mentalities had changed, the White put a point of honor to reverse the roles. The intention was good, undoubtedly, but the only fact that it is necessary to justify it proves that there is no equality. The Blacks of the South would have to say so much... I remember an anecdote. In the years 1980, a couple returns visit to a patient and sets out again ulcerated. Why? Because the abid had a telephone. A privilege reserved for the ahrars! There are not statistics on the standards of living compared of the various communities, but force is to recognize that the Blacks are practically non-existent in the suburbs knack of Sidi Bou Saïd or Carthage, on the heights of Tunis. One finds them in the popular cities of Kram or Goulette. Few sociological tests take the trouble to study this component of the Tunisian population. In fact, the interest carried to the Blacks remains, essentially, of the order of the folklore. In painting, the representation of the black man is, altogether, faithful to reality. It is shown as it is in the life: musician, servant at the time of a ceremony of marriage, etc. The Blacks are witnesses of the social life, very seldom of the actors. Who will brush the portrait of a Tunisian Black posing in his law firm? In does a work, moreover remarkable, entitled the Tiger-cat, the Bouâbana painter represent a black woman - a amante? - whose sensuality explodes literally on the fabric. There is no doubt that the painter respects his subject, but nevertheless, I cannot prevent myself from thinking that this alleged sexuality except standard of the Blacks is an unbearable stereotype. Let us be us thus animals? Art, in its sincerity, depicts and denounces the hidden tares of a company. One would seek a pictorial work in vain representing a marriage between white and black Tunisians! The phenomenon is not current, but there however exists, especially in the popular mediums. The middle-class, it, remains overall hostile with the mixtures... "We are all equal", often hears one claironner. Moreover, it is a precept of Islam! Equal in right, certainly, we are it. But are the hearts and the skins really ready to admit that a Black is "a made man of all the men, who is worth them all and whom no matter who is worth"? Even in Tunisia, in the shade of the jasmines. By Affet Mosbah Free online translation tool - babelfish.altavista.com/ |
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