Guest post by "Nestor Notabilis" In 2001 I'd only been living in the UK two years. I was evacuated briefly during the first Gulf war but my first real experience of living there was when I was ten. It never would have occurred to me that kids in other places might see the normal or even posh clothes I saw everyday as something to dress up as for halloween. I don't remember any of us talking about politics outright, about names and who was killing who, that was a background: people dying it being unfair and unsafe. According to my Mum the unrest in Bahrain at the time was so bad things were blowing up every weekend. We went over there for holidays and it must have just become background.
I don't think I can thank my parents for my views. I don't remember them trying to educate us about equality and some of my Dad's family are really....very racist. We grew up surrounded by people (mostly men) from India and Pakistan and Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. They worked in the shops and drove us everywhere (because women are forbid to drive) they were the guards on the gates and cooks and cleaners and baby-sitters. And they were treated, are treated, terribly. I think I connected that to being barred places for being female, having to eat behind a screen, getting told to cover up, my Mum getting turned away from hospital because my Dad wasn't with her. It....lined up.
There were terrible things about living there, there was beauty too. It breaks my heart because it often seems as though the rich and powerful there are going out of their way to kill what's beautiful.
I love what you said in your comment about Basanti and faith (even if I am not at all religious). I wish it was different back home in a lot of ways. Know your work is amazing and I recommend it to virtually everyone I meet.
