The Xenophobe in Me
Something happened to me a couple of weeks ago, and I keep thinking about it, obsessively. Maybe getting it out there will help as a kind of therapy.
There is a girl in my daughter’s kindergarten. I’ll call her Elif (not her real name). A normal-looking three-year-old. I assumed she and her family were German Turks. (There is a huge community in Germany, about 4 million ethnic Turks who are an integral part of the German economy, society, and culture.)
I’m not sure why I shoved them into that drawer. I guess it was the Middle Eastern sounding name – Elif – and her parents’ general appearance. The mother is a small, shy woman in a hijab who doesn’t speak German, and the father is a moustached, sweats-and-moccasins wearing man, who often comes to the kindergarten with the backs of his moccasins folded in, like slippers. I mean, it’s a major moustache, Tom Selleck would envy it. I never really spent much thought on Elif or her family, my brain did the processing and classification all by itself, putting them in a drawer “German Turks”.
A few months ago, my daughter started complaining about Elif. “She hits me, she follows me around, she pinches me”. You know the kind. I didn’t pay much attention; the teachers in the kindergarten are very good at managing minor conflicts. I talked to my daughter’s teacher and found out that Elif wants to be friends with my daughter, but my daughter doesn’t like her. I decided not to interfere.
When my daughter said she doesn’t want to invite Elif to her birthday, I didn’t mind. Didn’t try to encourage her to make friends with this girl. You see, my brain had imperceptibly done something else – Elif’s family had been put in a larger drawer in my brain labelled “People I don’t want to communicate with”. They barely speak any language I understand, the father dresses funny, they don’t look like well-educated or interesting people I can talk with. So, I told my daughter not to be upset if Elif hits her or annoys her. “You can’t be friends with everyone”, I said. “Just be polite and walk away”. My husband and I even discussed it one evening over Indian pasta. We know that at some point our daughter’s friends will become major influences in her life. So playing with children from families that we consider culturally similar to us, seemed like a good idea. Again, we didn’t try to encourage our daughter to get to know Elif better, to play with her and keep an open mind.
Time passed. I kept hearing complaints from other parents about Elif. She seemed to be a difficult child, aggressive, finding it hard to fit in. Her German was worse than that of other children. That’s normal for a child from a non-German speaking family, it just takes a bit longer for the brain to adjust. But kids are cruel. They reject the ones who seem strange or different. So Elif’s situation in the kindergarten remained difficult.
A month ago, I joined a seminar in the kindergarten for parents of children from multilingual families. To my astonishment, Elif’s mother came as well. I didn’t expect it. I thought she was one of these women who, according to stereotype, never feel the need to join society, never learn the language, are happy to stay home and take care of the children, the house, the husband. But she was there. She spoke German, albeit with difficulty. Sitting in a circle of women, all foreigners to this country like her, she was able to open up and tell us about her life.
Her name is Yana. Her daughter – Elif – refuses to eat. Neither at home nor in the kindergarten. She only accepts bread and the occasional cup of milk. They had to contact a professional because it’s starting to affect her health. Yana is happy for the opportunity to talk to other mothers of non-German descent because being a guest in a country so unlike your own is hard not only for her but for her children. She is hoping we can give her insight and advice about Elif’s difficulties. Her family has been living in Germany for three years now. They come from Syria.
You can probably guess my reaction to this revelation. I felt like the smallest, most stupid person on the planet. I watched this shy woman, in her hijab and black cardigan, a mother of three, trying to be an example for her kids about how you can forget the war and start anew. I had labelled her as boring, uneducated, uninteresting. I had pegged her daughter as unworthy of my own daughter’s friendship. And they were both survivors who needed only one thing from me: to get to know them before I judge them.
We all do this. We brush past people in our lives that we don’t know, and we have already classified them in one of the drawers in our minds. We judge. We fail to help because we don’t have time to care.
My daughter and I talk about Elif now. I try to make her understand that when a child hits and screams, it means they need help, attention, kindness. When we bump into Elif and her mother in the kindergarten we stop to chat. I wish I’d done this earlier. I don’t know if my daughter’s attitude can change now. I hope it can. I hope we can all help Elif feel accepted, get healthy, be happy.
But whatever I do, I still feel ashamed and hurt by my own stupidity. By how the hidden xenophobe in me shapes my opinions, my actions and, worst of all, those of my child. Because it seems there is a thin line between open-mindedness and xenophobia and that line can be crossed every day by not paying attention, not sparing a thought.