Exhaustion of Daily Indignities

Moving through the routine

Folks, I’ve had a strange afternoon. I hope you will humour me as I figure out my thoughts on the page.

I have spent the last few hours moving through a space where at every turn, I felt as if I was treated cruelly. Without kindness. Without dignity. I was moving through a space I am already sensitive in - an international airport - and every humiliation was a razor blade to the heart. Cold, piercing, sharp. The blood taking a moment to well.

ai generated airport. duno what the luggage trolley is doing...

I felt such rage course through me in these interactions. Yet, these were not major aggressions! I have experienced far worse. Today, it was in the small moments. A person blatantly refusing to help me, or speaking impassively after they had been jovial and generous to the previous customer. Locking eyes with an authority and seeing dead space; no warmth, no humour, as if I was less than them, less than human. I’m wearing a hijab, I’m visibly Muslim, I’m visibly Black/African, I’m visibly alone. I have yes, a passport from the Global North, and yes, a visa to where I am travelling to, and yes, every right to be doing what I’m doing. But these moments make me feel small, and worthless, and I hate it.

What to even do in these moments? When they come at you, one after the other? I’ve had a lifetime of indignities, I am a resilient woman. I run through scenarios in my head. Do I scold them (‘Hello? Have I hurt you? Why are you being so rude to me?), do I try for the brusque honesty (‘Hi, are you treating me like shit because I am Muslim and African and you’re racist or subconsciously think someone like me is inferior to you?) or do I just yell (‘CAN YOU PLEASE TREAT ME LIKE I AM A RICH WHITE MAN?).

Of course, I do none of those things. I simply bottle up my frustrations, force a somewhat neutral expression on my face and say nothing at all. I don’t say thank you at the end of the interaction. I let it happen, then leave. It’s not that I don’t trust myself, it’s that I know the battle is not worth picking. It’s not as if it’ll make a difference, anyway.

I’m not sure why I’m writing this piece today. I was meant to write about friendship, and investing in the relationships that nourish us, and how I’m proud of the efforts I’ve been doing in this space. I was going to share some thoughts on the Harlem Renaissance, after an exhibition I visited recently. I was going to be light, but in this moment, the emotion I am feeling most keenly is a deep fury. Knowing I live in a world where I will always face indignities.

There is no where I am protected, apart from maybe inside my own home. Hey, maybe that’s pretty good. I mean, better than facing starvation, right? Better than facing material poverty of the kind millions, nay billions, face around the world. Yes, that is true. But I don’t want to live in a world where I must accept suffering daily, routine, unending indignities. Is this really part of the cost of being alive, of participating in the world? No-one else seems to accept it - loads of men, including Presidents, seem to make responding to humiliation their entire personalities.

But I don’t want to be that guy either. There is a weakness in that, a cowardliness that I find embarassing.

Part of the reason I feel I have less capacity for such experiences these days is because being a writer, an artist, a freelancer in this economy is to be forever steeped in rejection, and within that rejection, indignity. There is a keen humiliation in constantly being told no, being passed, being overlooked. It is part of the job, it comes with the territory. We can only succeed if we develop a healthy relationship with this aspect of the work. But I also know that the body I am in and the faith I practice increases the magnitude of that rejection by ten-fold, if not more. I know the stories I want to tell mean I have to suffer more of the indignity than many, if not most, of my peers. I have to be okay with that, I think. Right? Otherwise, what else do I do?

They’re calling my flight now, folks.

May Allah ease our burdens, inshallah.

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Listen: Harlem is Everywhere

A podcast on the Harlem Renaissance by the Met Museum in NYC. It was fascinating and inspiring, and if you can’t get to the exhibition itself, it still has so much to teach about a vital moment in history. The episodes are also on YouTube, where they show the artworks being discussed.

Read: The Disoriented

My current read, which I am thoroughly enjoying. On exile, and homecoming.

‘One night, a phone rings in Paris. Adam learns that Mourad, once his closest friend, is dying. He quickly throws some clothes in a suitcase and takes the first flight out, to the homeland he fled twenty-five years ago. Exiled in France, Adam has been leading a peaceful life as a respected historian, but back among the milk-white mountains of the East his past soon catches up with him. His childhood friends have all taken different paths in life―and some now have blood on their hands. Loyalty, identity, and the clash of cultures and beliefs are at the core of this long-awaited novel by the French-Lebanese literary giant Amin Maalouf.’

Watch: La Haine

I recently revisited this classic film set in the banlieues in Paris. If you haven’t seen, it’s worth watching - there’s something powerfully urgent and profound in its depiction of a day in the life of three men from an overlooked part of Paris.

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Thanks, as always for reading. As always, I appreciate your comments, your feedback, your participation in this little corner of the web.

Until next week,

Yassmin