They

They are different. They are lazy. They are liars. They. Who are they?

They are the people we choose to group together: black, white, Chinese, Arab, European, anything, so long as we can make them a collective and put them in a box. I grew up in the world of they. We even made special laws. They were so different they had to live in different places, go to different schools, travel on separate buses, and use separate bathrooms. They were black. We were white. And it was all bullshit.

We, the giant collective we, are all alike in the same way that we are all different. I am as different from my brother, the boy-child born to my mother one year after my birth, as I am from Lin who lives in Beijing. I look different. I believe different things. I do different work. And I can relate to Lin the same way I relate to my brother, the same way I relate to myself. I feel. My brother feels. Lin feels. We laugh. We cry. We love. We hurt. We are the same.

Any soldier will tell you it is much easier to kill a gook, a rag-head, or a spook than it is to kill a person. That is why we have those names. It allows us to dehumanize another group of people. Once they are no longer human, we have no moral imperative to treat them well. Shit, we can do what we want with them. They are not human.

As long as we use them, the idea of the other, to define ourselves, we will always be at war. We will always be able to kill them, lie to them, steal from them, or oppress them. The world is too small for that now. We are one giant we. It is as easy, today, for me to speak to Lin in Beijing, as it is to speak to my brother in Canada, or as it is to speak to Thandi in Bulawayo, or Ahmed in Iraq, or Thiago in Brazil. And as we speak, we discover we are more alike than we are different.

We may have learned in school, or from our friends, or families, that we are unlike them, but we know differently. When we meet, when we look into the eyes of another person, it matters not in which country that person was born, what color their skin may be. We know we are the same. We spend years learning they are different. It only takes a moment for us to realize we are the same.

Return

Slammed down into the past at Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg this morning, a forgotten world of half-lamented could-have-beens; the friendly cabin crew all smiles and relief and welcome to South Africa happy goodbyes; the courteous immigration official who’s job is to let me in, not keep me out; and I’m home, surrounded by the smells, the sounds, the smiles, the buildings that used to be, but changed, and a road I took to work, a restaurant I visited once, my first kiss, an old friend’s house, the first time I got drunk. I’m home.

Hi. Hugs. How are you? Fine. And you? Fine. Great. Great. And the soles of my shoes tracking red mud up the steps, over the rug, and into the hall filled with photos from my childhood, of my childhood; the mirror that hung over the fireplace in another house, another time. Bags on the bed and the gifts stuffed beneath socks and crumpled cotton underwear sprout from matching set suitcases: chocolate for my parents. Coffee. And shoes. Some perfume for my sister. She smiles and says she likes it. Thanks. Not what she wanted? Magazines.

How’re things? Family? Friends? Job? Weather? Nice to see you. I love you. We don’t say that. We can’t. We haven’t practiced enough. Maybe in another life. Not this one. Too late.

And I’m home. Birds bicker in the thick summer shrubbery. A siren whines on the next block. Memories everywhere in the pictures on the wall, but it’s the smell and the thick red mud that trap me, so I take off my shoes and wash them under the tap outside and the water is cold on my hands.