Fragmented Histories

History(ies) are stories.  Stories become myths, and myths become symbols by which individuals makes sense of lived experience, identity, and the ebb and flows of life.

Brief.  A moment.  Articulated narratives wanting to be heard. Consider brief as potent, so powerful that some proclaim that they must be concealed. Containment prevents protest.

Narratives, stories, histories are powerful!

 We were extremely close, my grandfather and I.  He would whisper stories in my ear every night, as he would tuck me into bed. His breath, fragranced of stale coffee, comforted me as he shared narratives of survival, narratives of being a refugee. Though trained in Hebrew, a language that he taught, his natural tongue was Amharic. He wrestled with his tongue to provide the precise words to describe the experiences of his struggle; it was the narratives, his stories that provided meaning and understanding to me.   I lay silent, in admiration of my grandfather. His narratives lulled me to sleep.

“What is history?” I remember most vividly, at the age of six or seven asking the teacher in elementary school in Tel Aviv. The teacher’s response was vague, I only remember him telling me to read the Torah, “that is our history.”  Later I asked the same question over dinner with my grandfather, the Hebrew teacher, the man who could speak for hours on any given topic.  “History,” he said to me as I sat back to listen to his forthcoming elucidation. “History is a story, a narrative, like the ones I share with you every evening about who we are. They are stories. Stories that have everything to do with who is telling the story and who’s story gets told.” That’s all he said.  Looking back as an adult,one who studies narratives and stories, that was all he had to say.

It began with a street food vender

Early one morning walking along the outskirts of the Gaza strip, my grandfather had taken me there to share a story, to give me a history lesson, we stop at a street food vendor. My grandfather orders his coffeeand I have juice.

The story is about the history of the Beta Isreal (the story of the Ethiopian Jews), the story of the people from which I derive.  A story I have since learned that I must keep alive.  What are you? I am always asked.

There were other Holocausts.   After the toppling of Emperor Haile Selassie by  Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, during the weeks after Mariam’s ascension to power, he killed thousands of Beta-Isreali and left most of the population homeless. In addition he stripped the Beta-Isreali from their land in the Gondar Province. It is a tragic story, a story not too often told. A BRIEF story, almost erased, but we hear more about Operation Moses.

It began with a street food vendor

I arrive in Morroco, Kanitra to be exact to teach at Ibn Tofail University.  As I weave through Rabat and walk through the majestic Madina– the old city-accompanied by a student guide, I stop at the street food vendor for mint tea, fresh orange juice and a croissant. As I bit into the croissant,Kahlid the vendor (to this day, I remember his name) says, “Isn’t it amazing what the French took from us?” I pause.  We always think it’s the other way around. Kahlid and Mohsin (my student) begin to share some of the many histories of Morroco.  I’m intrigued most with the Madina’s —whose geographies, are so non-linear that the French had to build city outside the cities because they could never navigate the geographies of the Morrocan designed cities.

The title of my seminar “The Postcolonial condition of Hybridity.” The course departs from the more anthropological and biological discussions about conquest and imperialism for rather a more critical cultural definition situating hybridity as a reclaiming /reconstituting of history, identity, language and culture in new creative ways and new forms after the disruptive acts of colonialism.  Nothing will ever remain the same, but there are tracings of history, traces of culture that emerge in new forms, new systems, and new ways of seeing.

Throughout the course we spend about two weeks on the topic of language and power.  I begin teaching the course in English. The course is being offered in the English department and most the students are English majors. One day a student asked “Why are you speaking English?” I began to speak French. Two days later, I wonder why I am speaking French, I begin to speak Arabic. My students are impressed with my fluency of languages, but we are all amazed with how language gives us access to different histories.  Histories are revealed/concealed/discovered through languages.

It began with a street food vendor

My first night in Port-Au-Prince there were rows of barbecue pits that lined the street directly in front of the National Palace.  The next day, the government ordered them moved and barred such activity, declaring such actions as illegal.

Two days later, I was held up in my hotel room because of what is now known as the Food Riots. The simultaneous and spontaneous riots spread across the world from the Middle East to South and Central America –poor and working class people protested against the increase price of rice.  It was the street food vendors, students and feminist organizations that lead the protest in Port-Au-Prince.  I watched from my hotel balcony as many gave their lives, charging the UN vehicles, for the basic human right….to have food.

It begin with a street food vendor/the performance of immolation

I have traveled to Tunisa three times.  And once I passed through the small town of Sidi Bouzid, a small quaint town. In this town lived Muhammad Bouazizi, known as Basboosa to locals, a street food vendor who was known for handing out free fruit to the most indigent in his community–he himself would be considered indigent.  I want to know so much more about this man. This man who performed immolation –setting himself a flame in protest to the social, political and economic injustices that plagued Tunisia specifically and the Middle East in general.  Because of his performance, the flame continues to spread throughout the Middle East.  Basboosa, whose history was brief , who once walked about handing out free food, has now spurred the flame of freedom.

Brief.  A moment.  Articulated narratives wanting to be heard. Consider brief as potent, so powerful that some proclaim that they must be concealed. Containment prevents protest.

A moment wanting to be heard.

©Myron M. Beasley