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| She changed her name from Nafissa to Nina Simona and. This is DittOslo |
I feel like I enter into small veins and tunnels of life no matter how big the canvas. And search for light, not a flat.
Who is there in the universe of which we say we are all children of to say some things? Is she also a child of the universe and does she have a right to be here? Where in the world can one not play free and black but just be?
And inside there, I see her seated. I imagine it is me. I imagine explaining to my children that am no longer officially called Nafissa say Sadik for a man? My friends now hesitate to call me Naf as they always have. Or Sad. My son looks angry. He is 17. He gets angrier every hour, every day.
But there is something to celebrate. I come home with a new name and more interviews each day but still no job. He gets furious. In the end he does not seem to see us. He is in a world of his own. I know I cannot excuse every crime, I am so deeply frustrated that a man should shoot people on a bus in Årendal and I cannot excuse him, for his misery. But was he looking of a different face to wear in this society? That is a question we must ask. Destruction and rage come because one wants to replace something they cannot name. Perhaps it leads to madness but that is not the point.
It should never, ever be excused, please understand me when I say this for it was the same thing we said of Anders Breivik. But let me go back to the name thing and the loss of the self you need to be confident and to serve without fear, to belong.
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I love Shakespeare but there is a lot in a name, and more than in a name as such, so much in people knowing who you are. Your identity. And that has nothing to do with what your skin looks like or name sounds like the advanced world wants to say with one mouth but then, there are contradictions.
I saw two photos of her sitting there in the local newspaper Ditt Oslo, which is also online http://dittoslo.no/and the first thing that came to mind was 'Ho! today someone of darker skin is in a long feature!' This is Norway. This is a small publication named Your Oslo. But you do not see all yours in Oslo often. And the media is the first place of the creation of that thing we call integrering http://snl.no/integrering here, Integration in English. This is not America ( by the way is one of the tunes you hear when you ring UDI that is the Immigration police here and that's funny. I wondered how an American takes that?
This is not another part of the world. It is Oslo, the capital city of Norway not Stockholm. This is not Sweden. It is Norway. Why repeat? Well, one reason is that a certain Minister for Culture and Entertaiment in Sweden found hideous cake good to cut and show how it gets cut, it was shape of woman.. that is another story if you missed it am sure this big Internet field for the world has it for you. Just tweak a little.
So, Nafissa: She changed her name so that she could get positive replies to if she could view a flat and also get a job interview. It sounded too Muslim she said. But the paper affirmed something that the authorities of today in Norway call non-existent here. Racism. Don't talk about that. We are like stilled here. Likestilling. Social equality!
So did Nafissa remain who she was? Was she going to hit the headlines if she remained Nafissa? Some pilots hit the headlines on TV channels for changing their names too. They said that when some passengers heard soon after 9/11 words such as: "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain Mohammed Nuru speaking..." Well, they did not hear the rest. I think if you change your name for the flight it is no problem but forever? To get a job? To get a house? Well some people argue it is fine. They will say to me.
"Come on, Nafissa is clever, hun er så flink slik at...! Some Norwegians have said in this interview that this is the one thing that makes them totally ashamed to be Norwegian. Others say, well.There are many others who do it and then they get a job. Like Mr Terje Tordvel who was actually Singh Babaji who came from Stavanger to Oslo. At the aiport where his interview was, it was hard for the Norwegian man interviewing him ( it would also have been hard for me) to identify him and believe anything about him.
Some people changed names and got the job and then they kept it only for a while because of likestilling, equality, social equality? Well, the employer will tell you that they were not up to the mark, not quality material. Likestilling tongue in cheek, a famous woman here.
Norwegians often tell the anecdote that some people remark, 'Oh, the capital of Sweden!' When they say the come from Norway. And that can't be fun. For many years precisely upto 1904 Sweden occupied Norway.
Now one would like to say, especially if Norwegian that Norway is independent, and it is. That it is not a part of Sweden and will never be. You never know about that. I suspect that some people in the world would more often think that Stockholm is the capital of Norway even when they live in Oslo.
Just imagine if Norway had to change her name to Sweden just to get a little more famous. Go on, let's try. Let us change all the letter heads tonight, stamps, constitution and all laws and wake up and say... hmmm, treat us like this because we are now Swedish. Extreme? Not at all. Black people were mainly colonised or slaved by Europeans and now they change their names. But she was clever.. .hahaha! Nina Simona music and background, not bad at all... but see Norway saying just call me Namibia today because I would like the world to know I can really tap sunshine from the highest mountains these days. I won't even move to the South of the Sahara, just call me Namibia and when you are tired, call me... South Africa.. Oh, no, don't, there is Jacob there and his ladder of women .. no and that thing we fought about so hard in Norway and sang it out and went to meet Mandela.. that thing, Apartheid.. racism. No, no, Oh No! Don't say that. But my angry boy was saying it so loudly last summer.
"Why do you keep us away from Norwegians in your classes?" Happens only in Oslo they say. He went on.. really so tired and sick of it.. "I did so well to learn your language, to get good marks but I cannot be with you!" Talk about welcome teenage rage. Teenagers want to, demand to belong. Say on there... go on! Teens make a different nation.
Well, I love Oslo. I do in my own ways. But you see when there is even a Somali bus to go for food shopping in Sweden and others who drive there back and forth, well many peoples' capitals start in the stomach and for that you cannot blame me. It is so.
I would like to say that racism is over. That is a wish. No such thing. What is also not heard enough is different approaches which this nation of Norway, by now you are confused which one am talking about surely or just maybe, needs to do a lot more. What I see is that people who talk about racism in Norway are often the ones who suffer it.
And then, in a conference say, like one in which the Mayor of London came to hear and help Norway to deal with what they all called Multiculturalism, you begin to see that when these people speak they already show they have a chip on their shoulder. This should not be their battle. Or mine but we have to squeak when the shoe pinches because nobody else will know it does. That is folk wisdom and actually they say there is no racism here. That is not just they but the State leaders of 2013.
I just want to add if you are still reading that soon after Erna Solberg http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erna_Solberg and her team beat Jens Stoltenberg's. http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Stoltenberg
That means a swing to the right, there was an ad at bus stops soon after. It was the first time almost in my life that I saw women in an ad that were not slightly nude. I don't know who they were. By the time I thought to take a photo it was gone. Two women tightly clad in a Norwegian flag and woven into one like a mermaid below. That might not have been the right way to say we are right now but freedom is here.
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| Racism equals the trashing of all search for equality. Don't tell stories of equality if ... Sigrid Undset is saying in her time, there is no equality between men and women but she sympathises with all who search for it. |
I am for non-violence and will never bless a radicalised person, but I will ask myself where they came especially if they are so near me. I will not ask what race they are, nor religion so fast.
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