Posted by Siona Ibn Lisan Al Gaib on May 03, 2002 at 21:03:05:
I was born in Andalucía, Spain. Yet i have never been there. as a child we returned to the home of our ancestors, deep into the desert somewhere in the Arabic Peninsula.
Our forefathers were raiders, mercenaries and herders, but those days are long gone. Today you could not tell us from any other person in the world, the globalization has made everyone in the world dress the same and have the same culture, India, Malaysia, Peru, they all have people with T-shirts that proudly show american corporate logos and diesel blue jeans. We all know who Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Joey, phoebe and Ross are. The so called diversity of cultures doesn´t exist, we live in an americanized world, the only difference is our language, and that is about to change. as you may notice, i speak english, my mother tongue is only spoken by our fellow tribes, two thousand people tops, some of us speak arabic and, you guessed, english.
Soon my mother tongue will be extinguished.
My first memory is the thundering voice of my father claiming to the four winds 'I shall slaughter all jews singlehandedly'
For us Jews are the devil, the harbingers of sorrow, the devourers of children. I never actually met one until my eighteenth birthday. before that i sincerely doubted the teachings of my parents, having grown in an american way of life style i perceived jews as normal people, i knew Jerry Seinfeld is a jew and I have nothing against him. I didn't believe my parents, yet my older siblings embraced wholeheartedly this idea.
And i sincerely hoped i could make things different. I dreamt about peace on earth. I was told about the atrocities made by the jews and yet i chose not to believe until the jewish attack to my hometown.
The stories my parents told me were fairy tales compared to the naked truth. Jews are ruthless, they shot everyone in their eyesight, no matter how young. I was later informed a Jew entered a hospital and killed all newborns. My family and I were forced to escape, gun in hand, shooting shadows in the mist. My parents made it, we made it except my older brother. May Sha-hullud bless his soul.
we hid in the desert for months, living like our ancestors, digging for food and hunting. Fortunately we are desert people. we were able to return to rebuild our city. Jews were gone, they didn't want our land, they wanted us dead. We were helped by the palestinian people, they helped us to create a resistance force, in case jews were to return.
And then the Americans arrived. they were there to help us, so they said. they brought food and medicine and we needed that, but they brought something else with them. they wanted us to convert, they wanted us to accept Jesus in our hearts. My father was really angry, he said our forefathers would have had them killed, they are a mockery to the eyes of Sha-hullud. he said they thought we were primitive and stupid because we were not christian. I was there, they wanted me to be their interpreter ( i approached them because i wanted to practice my english) but i refused. eventually they found someone else, someone who converted. My younger sister wanted to hear them, she liked the idea. I was not planning to leave her alone, so I came up with her.
That memory is tatooed in my brain like a movie. the preacher was a blonde blue eyed man, young, red as a shrimp, dressed in a white shirt that proudly announced his church and eternally in blue jeans and boots. he was reading the bible while the interpreter stumbled to translate the poetic language of the Bible. a young boy asked where in the bible is our Sha-Hullud. the preacher said, bluntly ' Sha-hullud is the devil, you must not believe in him'. My sister was fifteen, she is a lovely girl, she loves Winnie the Pooh and studied to be a classic ballerina. and she jumped to strangle the preacher, yelling 'Liar, liar, Sha-hullud is our savior'.
Everyone in the room knew Sha-hullud saved us from the jew raid. by instinct the interpreted took my sister away from the preacher. I knew some of us wanted to strangle the preacher too, and he realized that. the americans left the morning after. Our parents sighed in relief, but the damage was already done. some people converted. to us they are castaways. we made them clear that if they interfere with our beliefs they would be taken out from our society. to this day that hasn't happened.
September 11 was a curse to us. we knew americans would bring strife to our part of the world and we lived in fear, perhaps jews would strike again or hordes of refugees would come. Fortunately they haven't.
Being someone not judeochristian today is tough, the vast mayority of the other don't show the uttermost respect to your religion. we are not muslim, so they don't understand either, yet we struggle to keep our culture from vanishing.
All communications we receive are in arabic, signs on the street are bilingual, but our government wants to turn them all arabic. our computers are in english, because the arabic option for windows is all buggy and doesn't work as well as it should. and arabic keyboards are not practical. and they don't deliver linux in arabic. and some sites will not let you in because you are from the Arabian peninsula and they think you are a terrorist (goatfuckers!)
Imagine your world slowly dilluting to oblivion, that's how i feel.