The Americans have gone a bit hysterical, which is a good thing in the shadow of Trump’s election. It is a small but significant demonstration of awareness and one would be tempted to think of it even as contrition. I was here when Bush was elected in 2004, and the bleak helplessness that people vocalised at that time pales in puny comparison with the deluge of emotional trauma that is currently making its way across the airwaves and newspapers. This would matter more if, as a result of all the angry rants and incredulous talking heads, there was something other than a Trump presidency. But that ain’t happening.
In all of this, a whole population of sleepers have suddenly awoken to the fact that America is deeply racist, occasionally xenophobic, openly Islamophobic and pretty misogynistic. I am constantly surprised at their surprise but the recent reactions to the news that the Trump presidency machine cited World War II era Japanese internment as a legal precedent for registering Muslims have vexed me. Greatly.
What? You're going to get out of airport lines and make them frisk your panties because you want to feel included in the discrimination? No, I didn't think so
I was at a dinner the other night, surrounded mainly by expats, most of them transplants from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Halfway through dinner the door swung open and and a woman burst in and chucked her coat on the sofa while muttering apologies about her lateness.
“You see my cousins and I were all in an emergency family meeting, “ she said to the table in grave tones before finishing with an ominous “Given the current climate…”
“What did you discuss?” someone asked.
“Well,” she began, “everyone was coming up with a plan about when is the moment when you should leave. The Jews in Germany faced the same thing and so many people couldn’t read the signs of what was about to happen.”
I began to get uncomfortable but she was just gathering steam.
“…and think of the registration! They can show up in the middle of night and just evict us and take all our belongings. Imagine what people with kids will do.”
It has been argued that minority communities in the US have long faced much of the authoritarianism which is now feared from a Trump presidency
“Yes!” chimed in another woman at the table with wide-eyes and wider hips. “Apparently they come between 4 and 7 am, when you’re most likely to be home. That’s when they get you!”
“Exactly,” agreed the first, looking around at her captive audience (so to speak). “So the family was just hashing out plans about when everyone will make a run for it, you know, in case we have to.”
There was a general air of agreement around the table followed by a solemn silence. By now I was shaking my head in astonishment.
“What?” she asked, her eyes narrowing on my shaking head. “You don’t think they’ll begin registering Muslims?”
This was going to get messy, so I downed the remnants of my wine before saying “No. I only know they’ve already been doing that. For years. The only reason you’ve woken up to this happy fact now is that the liberal left suddenly finds that fetishising Nazi-is-the-new-right danger is the new thing to do.”
“That’s patently-“ she bagan.
“What nationality are you?” I interrupted to which she replied that she was a British passport holder but that she had been raised in Europe and was married to an Indian American.
That did it for me. Suddenly it occurred to me that everyone at that table with the exception of yours truly had either an American, British or Canadian passport. All of them had steady incomes and practically none of them were in immediate danger of being registered, let alone deported overnight - even between the hours of 4 and 7 a.m.
I reminded them of this fact before asking: “Have any of you actually had to go through the registration process the Americans called NSEERS? Or visit Muslim countries for protracted periods of time? Or been pulled aside, legally, at every port you enter so they can strip search you and pull apart the lining of your bags while asking if you have ever been to any training camps?”
No one spoke up.
“So…no. And since none of you were born in a Muslim country and don’t have a passport stating your actual religion, you do realise that the chances of them deporting a British citizen back to the Queen are slim, considering they’d have to deport every British citizen in the US, including Zayn Malik, to achieve that? Or that even in that awful, unlikely, Zayn-less situation, you’d be sent to London. Not Damascus or Quetta or Jeddah or Fallujah or Kabul. But bloody London.”
“Actually I live in Zurich.”
“Jesus…”
“Well what’s your exit strategy then?!” the woman asked, me, straining to ignite some fire in her voice.
“Sweetheart,” I replied pouring the last drops of strength into my glass “I am from Pakistan, I live there half the year. This is the exit strategy.”
It pissed them off that I didn’t allow them to fetishise the very real danger people face so that they could feel somehow victimised and therefore directly affected by the political situation, simply because they felt otherwise impotent to do anything about it. It’s wrong and self-centered. And its also disrespectful to lump yourself in with the genuinely disenfranchised or the targets simply because you want to be included. It’s almost as bad as when white people here state on Facebook that they are going to register as Muslim too, and stand in solidarity. What? You’re going to get out of airport lines and make them frisk your panties because you want to feel included in the discrimination? No, I didn’t think so.
So, good for you! You’ve woken up to the policies and practice in America that makes being a Muslim here an uncomfortable experience. This is not news for many, Many groups feel and have always felt disenfranchised here. To act like this is a new predicament is an insult to their struggle and a testament to how far your head is up your own business. The only good thing that has come from the recent presidential election is the only thing that I saw as a virtue of Trump’s presidential bid: his presence is like a tumor in the body of America, a body that has recently woken up after years to the discovery that it has a cancer. Good, diagnosis is a relief and now at least we can talk about it. But to claim the cancer is new or that it only affects you the most (when you actually mean you’re surprised it might affect you at all) is ridiculous.
