She has been born in Amsterdam and into a strong Muslim religious family where both Mum and Dad spent their childhood in the Berber stronghold of Southern Marocco, where Mum hardly speaks the gutteral Dutch tongue - as a child she had to accompany Mum top one of her rare visits to the local doctor for translation related purposes.
When Dad wasn`t at work he would either be at the Marrocan Chai house with his mates playing cards and domino, at the mosque dressed in his djalebba or else in front of the telly watching Maroocan TV courtesy of the cable disk outside on the balcony - as a matter of fact most of the neighborhood has got one of these full moon shining metal disk placed on the balcony but then most of the neighborhood is of Marrocan desent, a bit like Little Tanger in Amsterdam West.
She was allowed to attend basic schooling and even four or five years of secondary schooling, only because Dutch Law declared it though. The university study of literature she was so keen on...forget it, Dad and Mum where already busy arranging her marriage with an much older uncle back in the Berber stronghold in the mother country so he could get his green card into the Dutch Kingdom.
Wether or not she wanted to go into the marriage as a virgin or not was not up to her, never mind her two brothers fucking their Marrocan heads of with Dutch girls. She had to keep the family honor to think of after all. A Dutch boyfriend would have resulted into bloody revenge by one of her brothers or even her very own father!!!
Wether or not she wanted to wear a headscarf or not was not her decision to make either. Once again the strong hand of her father and those of her brothers were always wavering above her poor Muslim head!!!
She sees her Dutch female contemporaries having fun and enjoying their adolescence bringing home boyfriends and experiencing with sex, that elusive thing which inside the family is a big taboo and only whispered about in the dark with her Marrocan and Turkish female friends who are all in the same situation.
She is lost in the hell of two distinct different cultures, devoured by the family honor and traditions brought to Holland by her parents and the freedom her Dutch contemporaries openly boast about ands she cherishes so much, lost in between two world s that are universally estranged from each other.
No comments:
Post a Comment