Friday, February 13, 2009

When harrassment meets racism at prejudice boulevard

This story has been lingering in my mind for while now. Last week, I don't remember which day I was going home a bit late. Nothing extraordinary about it, I knew that there would be predators on the road and all. But luckily for me there was a certain distraction, there was another woman on board, which is rare to say the truth, I'm usually the only female at that time taking a bus.
So to describe that woman, she had very well done hair, tight cloth and all the accessories and make-up. And no I am not saying it was excessive, it was just more than me, but she was quite conforming to the social norm, if I may say.
But apparently, the predators thought otherwise. Now at first when we were at dawra, in the bus, waiting for it to move, this guy gets closer to the window and leans over it. The girl who had an open window tried to ease her way out of the situation with minimum friction and scandal. But the guy doesn't seem to care, he just leans over from the window and starts inviting the girl to drink from his redbull!
Now I had been in bad situations where I get harassed and I had been in situations when I see racism taking place and I had made myself a promise not to let such behavior go on, like to do something, anything, at least give these predators an evil look. It usually doesn't work.
This time, when I heard him, I turned back (because this was all happening in the seat behind me) and I gave the guy a look, a very obvious what the fuck kind of look. But still the guy didn't care, he didn't even turn to me or anything, he just didn't notice my presence. But then when he was done (and she didn't drink his redbull) the girl looked at me and I just said: "He's an asshole"
Then the bus leaves, but of course the driver had to turn back and ask the girl where she was going... There were no reason for him to do that but he wanted to talk to the girl. Then he tries to initiate an aggressive annoying and abusive conversation but she just puts an end to the conversation, so the driver turns and laughs with his gang of obnoxious men.
Then the girl smokes a cigarette! Big mistake if you are not in a safe environment, a female-smoker is a free of charge prostitute in the minds of abusive people.
Then the final punch was right after the girl left the bus, the guys kept staring till she disappeared and then the driver launched his chef d'oeuvre:
حدا يعطيا سيف العبد
Someone give her Seef l 3abed
and if you don't know what seef l 3abd is then it's this label of cleaning equipment and it's one of the most racist things ever, do you remember the famous nigger heads thingy?:
yeah the seef l 3abd is pretty much the same and you can guess what the obnoxious driver was implying to.
Yes the girl was brown, ironically, she was not african, she did not have the facial traits of one but she had a darker skin.
Now you would understand why this girl attracted so much harassment, she just happens to be darker than the average Lebanese... or should I say normal Lebanese.

1 comments:

Ila said...

This is awesome!