Well maybe getting fetishized is not all that bad. At least it gives me some sort of attention.
Even from creepy white
men. Isn't it better than being ignored? Invisible? Why does it bother me?
But there is something about being
fetishized that is disabling, belittling, infuriating. Those body and
performance expectations makes me feel weak, unwilling and unable. I feel I am
reduced to a fantasized arab male. I feel that I am a European dream in their
desperate search to feel kidnapped, oppressed. Deep inside they know they're powerful they
know they have exploited us. And they want to us to take their revenge. To be
humiliated by us. Spat at by us. Penetrated by us. I don't fit that role. I
don't want to play your games or make your fantasies come true. I want to be
myself.
I am angry at you maybe. Maybe
that's why I don't care if I infect you or not. You should take care anyway.
It's not my responsibility. I don't think I'm infecting you out of rage. But I
don't care if you get infected. Why should I?
I am angry at your entitlement.
Your privilege. Your passport. Your healthy body and your long lives. I talk to
someone who's visiting their grandma or grandpa. Mine are all dead. Long dead.
Most of them died in their 60s. You guys don't know how lucky you are. Even if
you do. You don't stop your interrogations of us. Your violent curiosity. Your
suffocating generosity. Sometimes all we need is to be left alone. Let us be
whoever we want to be.
My refugee flatmate came to the
brunch. I only felt safe with him. I felt understood. As if both of us saw the
world for what it really is while nobody else didn't. I remembered a message a
refugee left at our refugee organization office in cairo. Or maybe it was a
quote from one of the refugees I met. It was "refugees are the only sane
people in this world". I feel what he was talking about now. We always
hear things that make us sound like we're crazy, that our suffering is not
real. That we exaggerate. That it will get better soon. Thing is it can't get
better or much better because once you sought refuge somewhere else, something
is broken and it will never be fixed.
And then I don't know what is
going on with my body. Is it the meds? Why do I feel so dull and bored? Where
is the desire? The excitement? Why am I juggling between melancholy and
numbness? Why can't I feel anything sometimes? Reminds of Joe screaming to her
first and probably only love 'I can't feel anything'. I don't want sexuality to
be alive and kicking because I want to use it. Just like I don't want to have
permission to leave berlin because I am desperate to get out of it. It just
feel like a prison. Like being tied down by a heavy stone. Tied down by a body
that is unable to relate to other bodies. That can't see the beauty in them. That
can't undress them with my eyes. That can't chase them in the streets or the
dark corners. That can't go for long cruises anymore.
Oh god I miss cairo cruising.