Don’t shout ‘Ali Babi’ too loud or drink ‘Arabic’ coffee.

Nauru

It was many years ago when friends used to sit around the fondue set, proudly announcing that some of their best friends were gay. They are just normal people ,you know, adding, just like all of us. A glowy feeling of inclusiveness would permeate the group and the chocolate dipped strawberry tasted even nicer. Afterwards, Zorba would be put on while the Coolabah cask was squeezed to its very end.

With the latest on terrorism and ramped up fear we no longer sit around fondue sets. Fondue sets are now facing customers scrounging bargains on St.Vinnie’s shelves together with the discarded type-writers or dented aluminium pots. If group discussion take place, heads are most likely lifted up from Moses’ Tablets or promised Lands of IPhones.

As a reffo from the fifties I remember the fear of passengers on buses when a whiff of Euro garlic announced itself. People would gather their belongings and stiffen up. A dago was near! My dad with his attaché briefcase was tolerated mainly because he was pale looking and free from garlic odour. We as children soon tried as quickly as possible to lose our guttural Dutch accent and accentuated Australian lingo to extremes. Even today, I notice ageing reffos still being and acting more Australian than the local born ones. It seems to have stayed with them. A supreme sacrifice and surrender of ethnicity in return for approval and acceptance. Some carry this even further. The recent disapproval of anything brown and middle Eastern, worse, Arabic, is often met with more vehement responses from those of the same background than locals.

This is why we need leaders that try and at least encourage acceptance of the foreign or different. I can hear people re-hashing the same things that occurred decades ago. At local dances I used to be so keen to be an Australian. I was fifteen and my accent stubbornly never surrendered. At least I was able to give a reasonable impersonation of Seventy Seven Sunset strip character in the hope of getting A Pride of Erin in. You wonder with what enthusiasm people get accepted with Arabic backgrounds. The dreadful media focus on extremism and the ramped up fear of refugees.

At least in the Chocolate shop it was a delusional individual who managed ramp up fear and xenophobia. Scott Morrison is not delusional. He is in full control of his senses and deliberately doing his evil work in setting up people against those from war torn countries. He is sane, worse he is so utterly and devastatingly sane, it is frightening. He does it all with a smile. Illegal Maritime Arrivals he calls them. Yet, with the stroke of a pen he could set all boatpeople free to be assessed on-shore and able to work, earn a living and restore dignity. It is not in him though. And we think that the Chocolate shop man was evil.

Don’t shout Ali Baba too loud now!

Tags: Ali Baba, Arabic, Dago, Maritime Arabic coffee, Reffo, Scott Morrison