Inferior musings

I remember the inferior feeling i had sitting around the Moroccan family in their home in Targuist, Alhucimas, having just arrived from Europe with their fridge, mattresses, Nutela and even Cola Cao… because after all, nothing could be bought there in their “aldea” it seemed, only the essential bread, maybe olives, tea and a few other items. My friend and I had arrived before them having taken a different route so that we were able to witness their arrival, looking very European in their brand name clothing, smelling of sweet perfume, and carrying especially those gifts and other curiosities which seemed to be a luxury there and which were so symbolic of Europe. I had become a spectator and just another Moroccan looking on at this welcoming spectacle which took me back to Trinidad and being the same spectator to relatives arriving from the US- according to instructions from my mother, we were to treat our “guests” “who came from so far” as royalties.. we were to answer to their every beck and call, we were to do whatever they told us, get whatever they needed, give up our beds, even our full meals sometimes.. and we would oblige to all this with a mixture of bitterness and awe. They would pick at the roti handed to them, complain of the annoying mosquitos and the boring local stations and laugh at us when we weren’t familiar with the popular music groups or slang or tv series that everybody was talking about. Our trini accents and bad English would be the butt of jokes as they tried to imitate us, laughing at our backwardness as they saw it.. Although I must admit that our way of speaking also held a certain charm and exotism for them, for sure enough, on their return to the Big Apple, they would also be speaking with their “funny” accents and comment to us the laughter it provoked from their West Indian friends…

This all came back to me sitting on the sofa in the modest house of my friend´s aunt, taking in the spectacle of the arrival and coming to terms with the sudden inferiority that overpowered me when I saw the pains and troubles the single aunt was making to ensure everything was perfect, like bringing out several dishes to please the little son who was picky and grumpy, or practically washing the hands of her “guests” before they sat down to eat.

Later another bout of inferiority would slap me in the face as I realised I was not fair enough to be attractive to the men there who saw “brown skin” as almost equivalent to ugliness… maybe this is an exaggeration on my part due to my wounded pride. .and once more, this took me back to Trinidad where fairness cream was the in-thing because nobody wanted to be dark, marry a dark man/woman.. at home, comments like “he so black and ugly” would be accepted as truths and milky-white skin was heralded as desirable, superior, beautiful.. we all knew it, it seemed, accepted it, sadly and worse of all, interiorised it..

This psychological trauma is what continues to characterise many former colonised peoples, from Indians to West Indians to Africans in general. Fanon did say that to rid oneself of this psychological trauma, the colonizer had to be killed.. he, a Black West Indian who had married a white French middle class woman.. these are the contradictions which fascinate and haunt me..