Mitzrayim in Kilburn

Mitzrayim in Kilburn

(c) Melina Magdalena 2011

Ugliness is what I found outside our door this afternoon.

There is a large vacant block opposite our house. When we moved in, there were 4 houses on this block. The houses are long gone, it has now been subdivided again, and the blocks are up for sale. In the meantime, water mains have been dug into each block, which meant digging up the street and the footpath. The parts of the cement footpath were cemented over, and the soft, wet cement had been carved into. Not just the usual stuff - names or so-and-so loves so-and-s0, or even so-and-so is a homo, which would have been bad enough.

Dayenu

No, I took the baby across to see. He was excited by the red and white striped safety banners that had been erected around each soft part of the footpath. The wind was flapping them and I was hard-pressed keeping him off the street, chasing after the ends. But something caught my eye. I picked him up and went to see.

My heart sank deeper than the pollution that lines the shallows of our shared waters of life.

So we went back home and got the chalks and I went to work. People were driving home and gawking at my big behind as I was on my hands and knees, passionately chalking out alternative messages. Well, I felt self conscious.

But undeterred.

My beloved took matters into her hands, picked up the phone and called the police. Such viliifying racist vandalism is surely against the law. The police referred her to the Local Council. It was after hours.

She too, was undeterred.

"Well then, I understand what you're saying," I heard her say calmly, "so in that case, may I please speak with your supervisor? You know what Kilburn is like. There are African kids walking up and down that street all the time. There are so many Afghani families living around here. This is not acceptable. It needs to be erased tonight. It can't wait until next week."

An hour later we were eating dinner. We heard a vehicle pull up. Clutching my bowl of risotto, I ran out the front gate and found a Council man with a tool, scratching out the hateful messages. My beloved brought up the rear, carrying the baby.

"Thank you so much for coming out to do this tonight," we told him. "Have a great weekend."

"It's just kids," he said.

"It's not just kids," I retorted. "It's nastiness."

"Yes," he agreed. "It is nasty."

And it is. Kids learn their attitudes from their elders. And it's no excuse. This is our neighbourhood, too. We are the strangers in the midst of a cultural sand storm. We are the weirdos in the village. It's our child who will grow up to inherit the world that we have helped to produce and sustain. It wasn't just for the sake of the African families, the Iraqi families, the Burmese and Afghani and Indian families that I did what I did. It was also for my sake and for my own family.