Almost
quitting time last Thursday, then Suad showed up, looking worried. We had met
Suad twice before, both times with her husband. They are Somali immigrants
newly arrived in Svendborg & needing some local guidance. Both speak Danish
but Suad is very fluent, very lovely & pleasingly plump. (Does anybody
still say that? It describes Suad.) Her hair is the original afro, bleached
orangey at the tips, no headscarf. Thursday she showed up alone, bruised after
a beating - not the first - by her husband. She had left in a hurry while he
slept & wasn't about to go back. At the volunteer/self-help center where I
work we offered food, tea & sympathy & an hour later got her on her way
to a women's shelter. We enjoyed imagining her husband's rage & frustration
when he realized she was gone, out of his clutches, away from the repression he
thought he could keep up in Denmark. Dream
on, fanatic - that's not how women behave in the west. HA!
Of course
Suad is the lucky one here. She gets all the sympathy; he gets despised &
laughed at. What a dickhead. Did he really think he could keep a bright woman
down? When will those idiot Muslim men ever learn? If they can't deal with
western values, they can beat it back where they came from. Good riddance. They
are all terrorists at heart anyway, aren't they?
Yeah, I
think they are, but I begin to understand the mechanism. In the case of
Somalia, it's very clear. Not only is there a civil war on & no functioning
government, but their livelihood was smashed when French fishermen violated
Somalia's territorial waters & other nations followed their example. Most
Somali pirates are ex-fishermen out of a job; that's why they know the
territory so well. The lucky ones get to Europe or the US & some do really
well - like the successful Somali enclave in St. Paul, Minnesota. Four young
men from that community played the pirates in Captain Philips & one was even nominated for an Oscar. Then
there are the others.
A culture
that doesn't drink even a beer & forces its women to wander around in their
own pup tent is as not-Danish as you can get. There has always been plenty of
sympathy for the women & children, while the men were despised. Needless to
say, this makes integration a whole lot tougher than it otherwise might be,
& not only that. This attitude often makes the men even more repressive to
their women - who figure out fast enough that western societies are going to be
a lot more fun than what they came from. Here in DK girls get better educations
than boys - really keep at it & are rewarded, especially if they ditch the
Muslim headscarf - which of course keeps the vicious circle turning. There are
jobs for immigrant women, mainly in the public health sector. Read: nursing
homes. Everybody figures women from backward cultures are born caregivers at a
time when there is a shortage of young people here & a crowd of oldsters
needing care. Guys aren't so lucky. There's not the big demand for unskilled
& semi-literate; besides, they repress their women. Yes, it's the only way
they can feel just a bit manly in a country where they are not popular, but
that won't get them any points & shouldn't. They have to change their ways.
Suad is
safe now; her husband is frustrated & pathetic. Canadian Amanda Lindhout is
safe too, after 15 months of Somali captivity, starting in 2008. More on that
next time.
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