Londoners
Three Asian guys approached me as I walked up Upper Tooting Road tonight. They were in the late stages of an earlier period of extreme drunkenness, but they were happy. Melancholic too perhaps, walking the easy to recognise ‘zigzag pattern’ along the pavement.
It was late. Three guys in this formation can often mean trouble. But not tonight. These guys wanted to chat. I was feeling chipper too. The chatty one stopped me. He wanted to ask something.
I can’t remember the exact words, and after a few drinks I don’t think he could either. But it was something along the lines of 'why do English people see Asian men and think they’re suicide bombers?' He wasn’t a suicide bomber, he said. I believed him.
“Suicide bombers don’t have jobs. They think things are miserable and want to try things out ‘upstairs’”. He pointed at the sky. Fair enough. He was laughing. His friend interrupted…
“He makes too much money here to be a suicide bomber!”
He went on a bit more, saying how fed up he was about feeling like this and about maybe going back ‘home’. “I want to look like you!”
The prognosis in the heart of a man can get no worse than when he admits to the desire to be pale and ginger haired. Now I knew he was serious. I told him that not everyone thinks like that and he should stick around. In many ways he looked more British than me. He was young, slightly pissed, dressed in fashionable clothes and had just got off the tube. He was a Londoner. You don’t get much more British than that.
We left it with a handshake. His two friends, who’d been keeping a lower but giggling profile, really just wanting to keep moving, waved goodnight. They walked on, back to working out where they lived. I went back to Streatham to try and forget where I still did.
It was late. Three guys in this formation can often mean trouble. But not tonight. These guys wanted to chat. I was feeling chipper too. The chatty one stopped me. He wanted to ask something.
I can’t remember the exact words, and after a few drinks I don’t think he could either. But it was something along the lines of 'why do English people see Asian men and think they’re suicide bombers?' He wasn’t a suicide bomber, he said. I believed him.
“Suicide bombers don’t have jobs. They think things are miserable and want to try things out ‘upstairs’”. He pointed at the sky. Fair enough. He was laughing. His friend interrupted…
“He makes too much money here to be a suicide bomber!”
He went on a bit more, saying how fed up he was about feeling like this and about maybe going back ‘home’. “I want to look like you!”
The prognosis in the heart of a man can get no worse than when he admits to the desire to be pale and ginger haired. Now I knew he was serious. I told him that not everyone thinks like that and he should stick around. In many ways he looked more British than me. He was young, slightly pissed, dressed in fashionable clothes and had just got off the tube. He was a Londoner. You don’t get much more British than that.
We left it with a handshake. His two friends, who’d been keeping a lower but giggling profile, really just wanting to keep moving, waved goodnight. They walked on, back to working out where they lived. I went back to Streatham to try and forget where I still did.
Labels: Tooting Bec
posted by Stephen | 1:20 AM
4 Comments:
Wow! A serious topic indeed. I like it.
One thing that ought to interest people more than it does, is that the USA has a muslim/arab/asian population too, yet doesn't get the sort of jihadist cells springing up that we do. In part it's because the US has lower unemployment. It's also because Americans stress pride in their country and flag far more than we do, and therefore there is something more attractive for the immigrants and children of immigrants to want to assimilate to.
Over here, we're too busy being ashamed of anything and everything to be attractive as anything other than a 'base' for people whose hearts lie elsehwhere.
DY
Oh do give it a rest with your bogus statistics David. The difference in the unemployment rate between the countries is 0.8% - and a year ago there was no gap whatsoever. More people are in work in this country than ever before. You're trying to construct a theory on the back of a statistically insignificant figure?
I'm not ashamed of anything our culture represents, but I am pretty embarrassed by the conduct of our government. Ask a muslim what he or she thinks about this and you'll get closer to the truth. The flag is an irrelevance.
You've obviously not read about the hundreds of suspected muslim terrorists who've been questioned in the US since 2001.
Also, what about the five U.S. citizens who were charged in June for plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and a federal building in Miami. Or the six Yemeni-Americans from Lackawanna, N.Y., recruited to a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan before 9/11, and also the gunman who opened fire on a Jewish centre last month, killing one woman and injuring five others.
Here's a quote from Bush, in a speech made two days ago.
"Some of these groups are made up of homegrown terrorists, militant extremists who were born and educated in western nations, were indoctrinated by radical Islamists or attracted to their ideology."
For a bright bloke you don't half talk a load of baloney sometimes.
Apologies Stephen for hijacking your blog, but someone's got to keep David on the straight and narrow.
The unemployment rates that are going to matter are the ones for the muslims/arabs/asians rather than the overall national figures. I think I'm right in thinking that the US is better in that regard. I should have expressed that clearer.
Fair point to mention a few examples of home-grown terrorists of asian extraction in the US. But does the US have any equivalent to the open 'captain hook' type extremism of abu hamza?
You may not be ashamed of anything that our culture represents, but there are many in the government and the media who are keen to destroy insitutions and practices that have existed for centuries to satisfy either for a bogus sense of novelty or to keep us on track for a European superstate. Furthermore there can be no doubt that the Americans are far more proud of their nation and their flag than we are. I've been in a US high school when the pledge of aliegance is read out and I've seen the flags in the classrooms. There is simply no equivalent of that here.
DY
I'm pleased that by being born in the western world, I'm a member of the most liberal, open, enlightened society in the history of mankind. Where I was born is pretty irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. Surely, looking at the history of the 20th century, you can appreciate the dangers of rampant nationalism.
I agree that some of Blair's illiberal proposals are quite worrying, but that's a separate issue really. Also, given the way that Bush is riding roughshod over the US constitution at present, I can't understand why you see the US as a template we should be seeking to emulate.
Now, here's a quandary for you. Do you buy into the idea that the current terrorist threat justifies our civil liberties being curtailed? I've been meaning to ask you about this for a while but I can't post comments on your blog. I think it's an Apple Mac issue. It's not important, but partially explains why I'm pursuing this here.
Finally, there was an interesting, but flawed article by Martin Amis in Sunday's Observer (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1868732,00.html). Agrees with a lot of your views about the threat from Islamism (as opposed to Islam) but suggests that intervention in Iraq was the worst possible thing to embark upon given the nature of the 'enemy'.
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