Yesterday I was told to "go back to my country," wherever I came from.
I was being yelled at for not showing up 15 minutes before a medical appointment when I had been there 15 minutes prior. It didn't matter, my expression or words or dialect or demeanor was wrong or inappropriate or inconvenient and I needed to be punished.
I don't do well with angry male voices in any language. Feeling about four years old and embarrassed, I looked back and forth at three different people telling me to go sit here, or there, or over there. It took too long so the little kid incongruously hobbling with a cane finally made it to the nearest chair.
The larger existential question of proper origin and genetic heritage didn't present itself until later, after I'd returned home. The ordeal itself sucked up all my immediate energy, the basic survival stuff that keeps flies glued to a window and moths to a flickering light, hoping for escape before it's too late.
Since Friday morning the thought of World War III weighs heavy, the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani echoing the one resulting in World War I. A friend from Guinea-Bissau kindly reminded me that Iran would require its ally Russia to engage in global conflict, unlikely as long as Russia's weakness is China's gain. Nonetheless, the innocent blood shed in geoterrorist plots will not in any way justify the narcissistic malignance of these perpetrators, these perpetraitors. Oddly, their fanning and fawning over Putin may afford peculiar protection in keeping the planet safe from total devastation for a time. Still, the brutality of life lost, such vile and unnecessary wounding, is exponentially worse when imposed on us by bullies gone mad with power and vengeance.
Send me back, send her back, send us back—where is that, exactly?
7 JANUARY 2020
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