Oslo on my mind

Oslo on my mind

The home of most of my maternal family

Bombing News

Panic and terror thousand miles across the ocean

Phone calls and Facebook messages

Assurance and peace of mind

Sadness

Oslo, the sleepy quiet town, in mourning!

I went. I lived. When will I become?

I watched 'Va, vis et deviens' (Go, live and become) a few weeks ago. I cannot believe I waited this long to see it. My siblings had recommended it to me a couple of years ago.

‘Va, vis et deviens’ is a French film about an Ethiopian boy who is airlifted from a Sudanese refugee camp to Israel during Operation Moses (1984). Shlomo, the boy, has two big secrets: he is neither a Jew nor an orphan. He is just a son trying to fulfill his mother's request to "go, live and become". The title refers to a common phrase of aspiration uttered by Ethiopian parents to their children.

The story is as much about the unconditional love of the women (his birth mother, his Falasha mother, his French Jew mother, and his wife) who guide him in his journey to “become” as it is about the Shlomo in all of us. I loved the young Shlomo, the multiple languages spoken (Amharic, Hebrew and French), the music, the depiction of Médecins Sans Frontières, and, most of all, the message. Apart from a couple of scenes that I would have deleted, I found the movie extremely moving. At the end, I found myself asking, “I went. I lived. When will I become?”

What do La Esmeralda and the curious man have in common?

A recent article reminded me of a conversation I once had with a curious man I used to see at the gym...

It was in the summer of 2006. I had devised a brilliant plan to regularly go to the gym in the middle of the night. I thought it was brilliant because I could avoid the afterwork/evening gym crowd, the traffic and the summer heat. Among the very few patrons who frequented the establishment included a short, stocky man in his mid-forties with a quiet demeanor and a serious disposition. The first time he spoke to me was to ask how old I was. I thought it was a strange question but I replied. He laughed at my answer thinking I was joking because he said I looked very young. On my part, I was surprised he spoke English without any foreign accent because I assumed he was an East Indian. So I ventured with a question that seemed very mundane:

Mi: Where are you from?
Man: Some city, U.S.A (I forgot which city he said)
Mi: Oh! I thought you were from India.
Man (shaking his head): I am White!
Mi (eyes wide-open): White?
Man (hesitantly): ...I am a Gypsy...
Mi (blank stare): Gypsy?
Man: ... but don't tell people that...
Mi (surprised): Why not?!
Man (lowering his voice): People don't like Gypsies... I don't like to tell people... When people find that out, I have to relocate...
Mi: What?... I am sure there are many Gypsies...You know Cher is a Gypsy...
Man: Is She?
Mi: I think so...

The conversation ended as strangely as it began. That night, on my drive home, I felt some remorse for letting my curiosity broach a sensitive issue. When I arrived home, I could not wait to check on the dictionary what a Gypsy was. What did I not understand? My earliest and only clear reference to a Gypsy was La Esmeralda from Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris. It was odd that the only thing I remembered about that character was the mystique that surrounded her and others' contempt toward her.

The American Heritage dictionary defined the word 'Gypsy' as follows:

1. One of a nomadic Caucasoid people originally migrating from the border region between Iran and India to Europe in the 14th or 15th century and now living principally in Europe and the United States. 2. Romany (sense 2). 3. gypsy. One that resembles a Gypsy in appearance or behavior [Shortening and alteration of Egyptian.]

Upon reading that, I was a little bit relieved. At least, I was not completely wrong. Somehow, the conversation left me uneasy, yet piqued my interest to know more about gypsies... their culture... their history... They have been on the news recently... Had it not been for that conversation, I would not have paid attention to their story. This time, I understood what the man was trying to tell me... Cheers for random conversations!

"There is no such thing as a worthless conversation provided you know what to listen for. And questions are the breath of life for a conversation" - James Nathan Miller

Photo: Gypsy Art Image

World Cup and Nostalgia

I grew up loving soccer. Before I knew who Pele was, I knew Pele was a legendary "king of football". Soccer was the favorite national pastime. Rich-poor, tall-short, fat-thin, kids played it everywhere. We yelled, cried, laughed at the whims of our teams' misses and hits. We were under the spell of soccer magic. Watching a game was playing one. Being a soccer fan was being a soccer player. World Cup was a month long fiesta.

When I moved to the U.S., I wondered what happened to the magic of soccer. Nobody, except the very new immigrants, cared for it. To my greatest disappointment, Americans did not share that worldwide passion and, and, in fact, insisted on not calling it "football". So every World Cup series, nostalgia suffocated me. I turned to Univision to watch the Copa Mundial de FIFA and to be delighted by the announcer's passionate shriek of "gooooooooal". Like in the past, I yelled-cried-laughed mostly alone. But I knew I was sharing the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat with millions around the world. Every World Cup presented an opportunity to revisit my childhood memories of Paolo Rossi's team that had Italy celebrate for weeks, Michel Platini's moves that had my friends emulate them, and Diego Maradona's "Hand of God goal" that had us talking for days...

This World Cup, I was resigned to do the same. I was excited that FIFA selected for the first time an African nation as its host. I expected the minimum coverage from the American media as usual. After all, I have come to accept that soccer is not an American pastime. To my delight, I found out I was slightly off. This year, I was pleasantly surprised at the level of American media coverage. I even felt some American soccer romance budding. Americans are starting to embrace the real "football". I can now be nostalgic in English. Welcome to the World Cup fiesta, America!

Of Pushkin, Dumas and Illusion

This past summer, I met my maternal granduncle L for the very first time. He had come to attend my brother's wedding from Italy, where he has lived almost all his life. He is a fairly young, around forty-something year old, professor of history at a major university. He had married his high school sweetheart, an Italian physician, had a son and then gotten a divorce. Most of the older ladies, smitten by his good looks, outgoing personality, and charming wit, were ready to play matchmakers and find him his soul mate. He was flattered and amused by the attention. What I found most captivating was the cultural difference or, should I say, cultural illusion. A great storyteller that he is, he shared with us many anecdotes, one of them being this.

One day in the early 1990's, he goes to a conference where a colleague, who specializes in African history, is presenting his research findings on Alexander Pushkin's East African ancestry and his future plans for the project. The presenter's position is that Pushkin’s great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, was originally from a border town between Ethiopia and Eritrea and that further research studies need to be conducted. A third colleague and L start to question whether Pushkin should even be a topic in African history. He is Russian and his contributions are to Russian literature. One who is specializing in African history should be focusing on Africa. Why create the illusion of a history? There are many topics within the African continent that need to be explored...The Pushkin expert overhears their remarks, fumes over their discouraging comments and protests to deaf ears...

Upon hearing this, I vehemently disagreed and defended the Pushkin expert. Yes, Yes, Pushkin is Russian but his East African ancestry should be examined and should be of interest to African history experts. In the U.S., Pushkin would have been considered black. Why shouldn't the East Africans claim him as part of their history? In my passionate argument, I even tried to lecture on how history should be studied forgetting briefly that I am talking to a historian. My argument was only met by a stunned look, a look that said ‘cosa stai parlando?’ There was an obvious difference in paradigm.

Long after the conversation ended, I wondered whether my view would have been the same had I not been conditioned by the American view of race and politics. One of the issues that has disappointed, baffled and confronted me in the land of the free is how the free was, dare I say, mentally imprisoned by race. Over the last two decades or so, it has greatly improved. I only imagine it to improve in the future. But still... I sometimes resent the issue and the conditioning.

A recent controversy surrounding a new movie about Alexandre Dumas (père), L’ Autre Dumas, reminded me of L’s Pushkin story. The controversy centered around the fact that a black actor not having the role of Dumas, a person of color, but instead Gérard Depardieu being cast for it. The general American view is probably an emphatic No. It does not matter that Dumas is three-quarter French; he should be portrayed by a black actor and not by Depardieu with a tanned face and curly hair. I wonder what the general French view is.

"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten-thousand truths.” Alexander Pushkin

I have yet to see the movie and I am already disappointed… not because Depardieu is playing Dumas but rather at the annoying storyline, i.e. Dumas allegedly had a shy collaborator, Auguste Maquet, who deserves much of the credit for the plots and drafts of Dumas’ most famous works. If this is not annoying to a Dumas fan, I do not know what is. I would have liked the illusion that exalted me to remain intact. Oh… how fascinated I was when I first read Dumas’ literary works as a child… and …when I found out his paternal ancestry as a new immigrant... knowing little then how many times I would have to examine and reexamine my illusions.

Photo 1: Two of Arts - 2000 Visual Mashups by qthomasbower

Photo 2: Alexander Pushkin in Negro History (Jet Magazine, May 28, 1953) by vieilles annonces

Photo 3: Alexandre Dumas in Negro History (Jet Magazine, July 24, 1952) by vieilles annonces