Of pride, prejudices & self reflection

I have been living in a different country for almost 3 years now. In the period of my stay, I had been doing a lot of self reflections. First and foremost, to visit a foreign country as tourists is so much different from living in foreign country as temporary residents. As a tourist, you only stay for few weeks and you are much too distracted with all your adventures and snapping pictures that you didn’t see the country for real. You didn’t see the faces of the people, you only saw images…blur images of a vacation, of a spending spree, of the beautiful beaches and the coconut trees.  You only heard the seagulls calling for fish, the trams that brought you from one interesting place to the next and the voices of your tour guide telling you the story behind each buildings. What you didn’t hear was the suffering of the second class citizens, the unheard voices of worker’s unions, the unseen faces of the homeless people. They are always hidden from the tourists. Always invincible until you pause yourself from the excitement of visiting the new places and “properly” look.

These are the things that I see and that I hear everyday once I paused myself from the excitement of living  and started to properly look and intently listen. Australia is such a big country and also very diverse. Because of the diversity, it is impossible to please every different races, every different ethnics, every different cultures and every different religious values. But boy do they tried. They really tried very hard. Some people tried harder, no doubt… but some people hardly even tried. It is the same with any other country, I’m afraid. It is the same with Malaysia.

Frankly speaking, every individual is born with a dose of prejudice in their heart. But their head tells them if certain prejudices are genuine or if it is just a sentiment from being oversensitive. I have to say that when I stepped out of the aeroplane, all that I was concerned about was not where to stay or what to eat for dinner (even though I was totally a stranger to this promised land) I was more concerned about what would they (meaning the Caucasian- Australian) react when they see me and my short height and my tanned skin, and most importantly, my colourful headscarf.  I have never felt more self anxious in my entire life other than on that day… well, everyday since that day to be honest.

It was only because of the warm welcome that I received from the community of the university, the ever so caring friends, the friendly neighbour and the cheerful grocer that made me feel at ease and started to bring my guard down a little, and be an open person a little. These things made me rationalize that people could be different. These things made me realized that sometimes prejudices are uncalled for… And these are the things that made me ignore my very rude neighbour that reported on us as “causing noise disturbance from the leaking tap” when the actual tap that was leaking was from my next door neighbour. The nice treatment that we received from the university people are the very reason that made us shove our prejudices away even when an old lady pulled on our head scarfs and call us with insulting names. We bear it when drunken men looked at us and yell, “Hey, go back to your country!” Because we know that despite all these, we are accepted. At least, the people that we work with are not the least bit racist…and those lay people that we see outside the university are only racist because they are ill educated and narrow minded. Well, if only these were true. 

My entire belief system was shattered when we were denied the right to pray by a man in our building. We were scolded and reported to as though we have stolen the safety deposit. It was very uncalled for. Was I hurt emotionally? Of course, but most of all, I felt discriminated, which in my humble opinion, is the worst feeling in the world. In reflection, I look back at how Malay in general have been reacted to illegal Indonesian & Bangladeshi immigrants. Had we as a population discriminated them? Had we point fingers when anything went wrong? Had we treat them less than a human? Nauzubillah, I hope I haven’t. I would hate it to make someone feel as bad as how I feel during the praying incident. It was just disgraceful.

I am very aware of my poor grammar. As a perfectionist, it is physically painful to speak in English when I know my grammar is a laughing stock. Therefore, I made it clear to speak only when necessary and listen more instead. Sometimes I feel as though people assume that I have nothing to say which is totally wrong. I have a lot of things to say except that they have no patience to listen. Easily people around me dismiss what I tell them. As though I know less, as though I am stupid…. which hurt so bad. Now, I know how it feels to  be muted. Could we as a speaking population had been dismissing what the muted population had to say? For all we know, because they talk less, they might have been reading more. Therefore, more knowledgeable that all of us combined.

I hate racial hatred. I hate it when Malays does it to non-Malays… when the Whites does it to Blacks… When the world in general does it to Muslims… When Nazis did it to Jews… When Serbians did it to Bosnians… and when Israel does it to Gaza.

“No man is lesser than the next. All men are equal. The only thing that differentiate one from the other is their Imaan, their devotion to God… And as far as the worldly matters are concerned, everyone is entitled to the same thing as long as they are willing to work hard for it. Why dismiss other people? Why discriminate? When we have no right to do that at all.”