Vulnerability

Today I spoke at the Ministry of Education and Children’s conference on “Advancing child rights and democratic school environments - Embracing diversity and combating hate speech”. There I shared my personal experiences of prejudice growing up as an Icelander with a mixed background. Here is the text of my speech:

Dear international guests and colleagues. Firstly, gleðilegan dag íslenskrar tungu - happy Icelandic language day! It is an honor to be here with you today and get a chance to share my experience. Before I start I want to kindly remind you that in order to do this, I am diving into my own past, putting some of my trauma to words and sharing with you my personal story. 

My name is Miriam Petra Ómarsdóttir Awad and I’m born in Reykjavík in 1990. I’m the only child of Margrét Elín Friðriksdóttir and Ahmed Hafez Awad, but I have three half-siblings. As you may have noticed from my name, I’m Ómarsdóttir but my father was named Ahmed by his parents, in honour of his grandfather. He was not allowed to keep his name when he got Icelandic citizenship in 1969, so he picked Ómar from a list of accepted names. I’m therefore the daughter of Ómar and my brother is named Ómar jr. after a father who was actually not called Ómar to begin with. One can say that my interest in the way we treat foreigners in this country goes way back. 

Anyway, my mother, Margrét, is from Bíldudalur, a small town in the Westfjords. I feel very much at home in that region because when I was growing up, we would go every summer to stay with my wonderful and kind grandparents, amma Nanna and afi Friðrik. My father was born in Cairo, Egypt. My nena Fifi had Syrian roots and an amazing sense of style, and my grandfather Salah was a doctor. He sent my father to school in the UK and it was from there he then came to Iceland in 1965. My parents taught me a lot of things growing up, like parents usually do, but what has really stuck with me is how my mother’s kindness and creativity continues to inspire me and the appreciation for different cultures and the value of learning languages I got from my father. 

My childhood was very Icelandic, with some Egyptian and international elements. I experienced this mix of cultures as completely normal. I didn’t feel different from other kids until I realized that the world around me did not see me the same way. I do not remember experiencing prejudice myself when I was very little, but mom was for example told by an elderly female relative that I, her only child, looked like I was always dirty because of my brown skin.

The first thing I noticed about being different was how people would ask me where I was from. Even in a large group of people, I would be singled out and I was the only one questioned. I would reply “well I’m from here” - which is the reality of my situation. People would smile at me, almost in a condescending way, as if I couldn’t be saying something more nonsensical, adding: no, I mean, where are you really from? I, personally, am not really from anywhere else. But my answers were never enough. 

The conversation would later enter a stage which can be described like a never-ending cat-and-mouse chase where I deliberately dragged it on forever, highlighting all my connections to Iceland before mentioning my foreign father. “There it is!” That is what they were looking for. Often, despite having made it clear that my mother’s side of the family was indeed Icelandic or that Icelandic was my first language, as soon as people knew about my father, I would get questions about when I had moved here and when I had learnt the language. It was as if my father deleted my mother’s part in me. Deleted my own definition of myself. As if it was simply impossible for me to be Icelandic as well. 

Don’t get me wrong, curiosity about family histories is a very Icelandic thing, and I actually love speaking about mine, but the difference is the relentless questioning of your own definition of your nationality, the pushing for you to prove that you are Icelandic enough (which you will never be in the eyes of the questioner) and the absurd moments where this happens. When no one else is questioned it just becomes yet another reminder of how you do not fit in. What has made this even more hurtful are all the other incidents stemming from the same ideas. The teasing and bullying based on my foreignness, the degrading comments about my skin color, the hateful comments you read online, and once I became older all the numerous times when colleagues or complete strangers questioned my knowledge or authority and rather asked “to speak with someone Icelandic” at my various jobs. 

Not to mention all the times I’m just addressed in English because people assume I don’t speak Icelandic, even up to the point where they reply to my Icelandic emails in English. Language also affects how people treat you. While they think you are a foreigner they can be cold and distant but once they realize you are a native speaker their attitudes change towards the positive. It's a tiring feeling, to be met with coldness and hostility only because of your foreign looks. All of these experiences are bad because they dig away at your own sense of self. For most people their national identity is one of their core ways of identifying. It marks a sense of belonging.

Now, this account would not be complete without discussing the dehumanizing effects of islamophobia on my self-identity and mental well-being. The prejudice and hatred aimed at the cultural background of my father is a whole other layer of menace in my life. When I was growing up the majority of misconceptions about my Egyptian heritage were rooted in orientalist fantasies such as flying carpets, genies in lamps and people who were not real but rather mystical characters not like us. After 9/11 and the subsequent wars these ideas drastically changed towards the negative. The questions I got about my father took a darker turn. Strangers were still relentlessly asking me where I came from but once they found out about my father they would add comments about him which were rooted in the belief that all Arabs were evil, violent terrorists. I listened to strangers, and sometimes even people I knew personally, state that he must be violent towards me and my mother, that I had probably been born from his violence onto her, and how lucky I was to live here away from these horrible barbarians. Actually, sometimes I was also told to just “go back to where I came from”. 

The ideas of Muslims being inherently bad and unable to live in “our civilized societies” echoed throughout my teenage years, in films, in the media, in public discourse and from the lips of politicians and leaders. It was everywhere and it actually still is, contradicting my actual experiences of the hospitality I’ve felt in Egypt and the love from my family. 

The degrading way Arabs and Muslims are spoken about did not only show up in hateful comments but also culminated in the most violent incident of my life. I shared a large taxi back to Reykjavík with people I met at a friend’s housewarming party in Hafnarfjörður. The entire trip I was sexually harassed by a group of guys sitting in the back of the car with me while calling me multiple racial slurs Arabs. They also threw in some degrading anti-semitic comments about my looks, proving that all hate speech needs to be taken seriously. The taxi driver and other passengers all witnessed this but no one came to my aid. The longest 20 minute drive of my life.

Make no mistake, the prejudice I’ve faced has the same roots as the rhetoric still being used about people from the Middle-East who seek refuge in our lands. These originate in the same ideas which convinced us at the start of the century that these people needed to be bombed so we could save the subjugated brown women from terrorizing brown men, or so we could give them democracy. Today, people often try to hide what they are truly saying, but it becomes blatantly clear when they talk about “those uncivilized people” as a complete contrast to other groups of immigrants or refugees which are spoken of in a welcoming way because they are “more like us”, even when they are all just humans faced with the same kind of horrible situations and wars. 

The years and years of dehumanizing Arabs is also evident in the piercing silence we see from governments around the world today. We watch the deaths of thousands of innocent people who have been denied their basic human rights to life, liberty and security of person. The silence shatters me and reminds me of the degrading comments, the way I have been rejected by my own compatriots simply for creating a mental connection with an “uncivilized” part of the world. How am I supposed to go on with my daily life knowing that when it comes down to the nitty gritty, our lives are valued less because of how we are perceived as “uncivilized” by people who do not even care to know us.

Now, believe me when I say that I am very privileged today. I have had the chance to educate myself, to travel, to dream. I have a job where I feel my knowledge and input is valued. It truly is a privilege. I also have a big, loving family, friends and colleagues here in Iceland, in Egypt and elsewhere. My identity is stronger than it has ever been because I know that I am as Icelandic as anyone else. I’m also a proud Egyptian who carries in herself the love of her family and her other homeland. Both statements are true. One does not negate the other.

When I feel hopeless and hurt, whether it comes from reading hateful comments online or listening to the same old dehumanizing rhetoric against people who I identify with, at least I have these wonderful things to look at, to anchor me. Having the chance to live my life fully, feel supported and loved, as well as experiencing my true potential is what keeps me from falling into an abyss of despair. But the wounds are deep and they are real. These experiences hurt me to the point of hating myself so much that I spiraled into self-harm for not being Icelandic enough, never good enough. And it pains me to think about other young people experiencing the same prejudice I faced and still continue to face, even though in my case it might be less obvious today, as I navigate society as an adult with privileges. 

I hope that my insight here today has given you a deeper perspective of why this work is important. I hope you see how no dehumanizing language should be excused because you know where it ends. In hurting individuals. Discussing hate speech cannot just be a feather in our hats, it has to be followed with tangible actions on all levels of society. I’m not only here because I'm passionate about the topic but because I know it is about actual lived experiences of people, it’s about mental health, physical well-being and frankly, about life and death. And now I hope you are all aware of this too. Thank you.