My time as a terrorist – Unclassifiable
I am an averaged sized male, 1.78m tall. I have olive skin. I cannot be classified as white. The best description that I can think of in the conventional methodology of boxing people is Caucasian – whatever that means.
I enjoy growing a beard. I am privileged enough to be able to don one of these majesties of male testosterone. I am also relatively alternative in my fashion sense, my tattoos and my approach to people.
Over the years I have progressively struggled more and more with the issue of racial classification. I studies politics at Rhodes University and for some reason we never covered the top of racial classification, where it began and why it has never been lost or forgotten. I wish we had because maybe then maybe I’d have some insight.
It all began when I was about 16 and started to realise that I could grow a sizable beard in a short period of time. I now have a 5 o’clock shadow at 11am and a full beard within 5 days of growth. I would venture out to the local hotspots for teenagers my age and could see the confused look on the faces of people around me, people I met and acquaintances who didn’t quite know me well enough to know my last name or heritage. I would meet these people, they would shake my hand, bemused and I quickly began to recognise the look: “What is he, where does he fit in, should I know where he is from, should I treat him differently, what’s he doing here? Black? White? Indian? Arabic? Mediterranean? Bomber?”
You might think that I am being oversensitive about this and so did I initially until I began to speak to people around me about my perceptions. All of my friends jokingly and openly admitted that it took them weeks to figure out that I was not X, Y or Z but was W. They tried to place me but couldn’t. Girls that I would interact with, meet and talk to began to intimidate me because I was wondering if they were concerned about the ambiguity of my racial classification. Many of the girls I dated would later tell me that they knew I was Muslim when they met me. I’m not.
Flash forward to 2004. I organised a trip to the United States. You can see where this is going. 3 years after 9/11 and I had no chance. I shaved my head, cut my beard, stayed out of the sun, wore my best suit and brought along all the sworn testimonials that I required to gain entry in to the US of A. Approximately 4 hours later and barely escaping without a cavity search I was granted entry in to the United States of America. I made sure that I shaved my beard every morning, that I stayed out of the sun and spoke with a pronounced English accent. I could not afford to be misrepresented in the USA, that would almost be fatal. I was young, naive and impressionable back then. In spite of all my best efforts, I still received the looks, questions, queries and was “randomly stopped” at almost every airport terminal I entered and exited.
Moving onward to 2005. I was freelancing in the UK at the precise time and in the precise location of the 7/7 bombings in London. I was at the Canary Wharf station 2 days after the bombings occurred. I hopped on the tube and carried on my merry way. I was carrying my camera bag on my back sporting the typical freelance photographer look; long hair, unshaven, scrappy looking Camel-Man image. Bad idea. Three men approached me, prodded and poked me and forcefully asked me what I had on my back, was it a bomb and did I know who I was messing with. At this point I was slightly more aware of the world. I probed them as to what, precisely, they meant, showed them my Cypriot and South African passports and calmly told them that I had a camera on my back. Not good enough. Two more men joined the onslaught and forcibly removed me from the train. I walked the rest of the way home, went straight to the bathroom, cut my hair and shaved off my beard, yet again. I was beginning to think that being hairy on the facial area was somewhat of a curse.
Again in England but this time it was 2006. I was getting on the Eurostar heading for Paris for 4 days with my girlfriend. We packed one bag – short trip – and I carried it in to the metal detector area. Wrong move. We passed through the metal detectors unscathed but as I picked up the bag and the security guards were able to confirm that the hairy, dark-skinned man owned it and I was done for. They stopped me and proceeded to unpack our bag item by item by item. They stuffed everything (underwear, sensitives and fragiles) back in to the bag with no regard for privacy or respect for personal property. My girlfriend has since carried every bag that we own through any security. She is white-skinned, brown haired and clearly not going to bomb anyone, you see.
Ending that trip in England I had to leave on the passport that I entered on, my Cypriot passport. It seems as though everything I do is wrong when it comes to security because I showed my passport and was lambasted with an onslaught of questions and queries. Yet my passport is a valid EU passport. No one else was being stopped (then again they were all pasty white folk who clearly had not propensity with their light skin and light hair to bomb anything). Why was I? Why was I being scrutinised? I stood at the check in counter for over 90 minutes while security ran my name, passport number and fingerprints through every security system in the world. That is not a hyperbole. They literally ran my details through every possible system that they could. After almost two hours I had almost missed my flight but they smiled at me, doffed their caps and called for the next in line. Goddammit now I’m getting pissed off.
The same premise still applies today and for some reason more so in the current climate. Indoctrination has moved to an uncontrollable level. The Western world is pushing their fearful concept of terrorist rebellion on to the rest of the world and you might laugh at me but it has reached South Africa more rapidly and more pervasively than you would like to admit. I can admit it, I live it. I decided that I had had enough and that I like my beard, I liked wearing scarves around my neck even if it was a black and white scarf that resembled the ones you’ve seen Bin Laden wear on TV. Fuck you, I am who I am – take it or leave it.
I have been flying a lot recently. Work permits me to travel to Cape Town fairly often. One would think that a simple evening trip back from Cape Town to Johannesburg would happen without an incident. But I am becoming wiser now to the ways of the fearful and Western-indoctrination. Waiting to board the plane in the Cape Town airport a family of four sat opposite me. Father, mother, daughter and son, all, one after the next took turns to look over their shoulders, confirm that I looked like a bomber, and whisper their concerns. At one point, the father even approached the airline employee asking if I was on their flight. Call me paranoid but I watched it happen. At this point I started to get irate. I put my leather jacket on over my hoodie, put my hood on over my shaved head and covered up my beard with my scarf. I put my laptop (bulging bomb) on to my back and stood in line, right in front of the family. They were shitting themselves. Bastards.
Now do me a favour, think about this one really carefully, tell me if you judge people based on the colour of their skin, the length of their beard or the way that they dress and think about it the next time you interact with people. We know you look at us differently, we know you think of us differently and I’ve started to like it. I’m coming after your preconceived ideas, I’m going to destroy them, your ideas, not you.
*Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I ever been involved in a terrorist movement of any kind. In spite of my appearance I have never considered bombing anything or harming anyone. Ever.
I am a South African with Greek/Cypriot heritage and proud that people cannot classify me. I am unclassifiable to the naked eye.
