Post by Admin on Apr 16, 2024 11:53:29 GMT
My elusive pain
The lives of North Africans in France are shaped by a harrowing struggle to belong, marked by postcolonial trauma
aeon.co/essays/living-with-the-enduring-pain-of-postcolonial-trauma
Icouldn’t eat much, and most of the time I staggered. Strength left my weakened frame. ‘I’m unwell,’ I would say to those who listened. ‘I’m in pain,’ I would add, pointing to my stomach, my head, my wrists, when it wasn’t my knees or my neck that bothered me. During such moments, my body felt tossed between stress and poor sleep – dull, interrupted by gnawing, twisting, throbbing sensations. I wished for someone to squeeze my arm, to let me know that whatever was crushing my insides would soon be vanquished. Whenever these bursts of illness occurred, I hid, clutching an heirloom Tunisian coral pendant to which I had assigned talismanic properties.
I was a sick, curly haired child who would avoid playing outside. Growing up in the west of Paris, I already stood out among my French friends as the kid who was like them but not quite – half white, by way of my mother, and half Arab, by way of my father, which condemned me to a different category of Frenchness. I desperately wanted to blend in, to be a version of what I thought was ‘normal’. But my afflictions made this even harder. They formed a compact repertoire encompassing flu- and cold-like infections that regularly left me coughing until my ribs burned. For a time, I was littered with disfiguring cold sores.
Doctors, friends, even family members dismissed my self-diagnoses, insisting on the familiarly nebulous term of ‘virus’. Oh, it’s just a virus, they would say, hoping that would diminish my worry. But it only sparked my curiosity. Which virus? Does it have a name? Can I get tested? Why does it come for me, specifically and regularly, and not for any of my white friends?
While other children were building pillow forts, I developed health protocols – food, vitamins, herbs – and a sixth sense for detecting signs of illness. When the virus came, I deployed my arsenal of potions and remedies. When its force caught me off guard, I would let myself drift into a haze. I feared nights the most and I would rarely dare to check what was underneath my bed.
The lives of North Africans in France are shaped by a harrowing struggle to belong, marked by postcolonial trauma
aeon.co/essays/living-with-the-enduring-pain-of-postcolonial-trauma
Icouldn’t eat much, and most of the time I staggered. Strength left my weakened frame. ‘I’m unwell,’ I would say to those who listened. ‘I’m in pain,’ I would add, pointing to my stomach, my head, my wrists, when it wasn’t my knees or my neck that bothered me. During such moments, my body felt tossed between stress and poor sleep – dull, interrupted by gnawing, twisting, throbbing sensations. I wished for someone to squeeze my arm, to let me know that whatever was crushing my insides would soon be vanquished. Whenever these bursts of illness occurred, I hid, clutching an heirloom Tunisian coral pendant to which I had assigned talismanic properties.
I was a sick, curly haired child who would avoid playing outside. Growing up in the west of Paris, I already stood out among my French friends as the kid who was like them but not quite – half white, by way of my mother, and half Arab, by way of my father, which condemned me to a different category of Frenchness. I desperately wanted to blend in, to be a version of what I thought was ‘normal’. But my afflictions made this even harder. They formed a compact repertoire encompassing flu- and cold-like infections that regularly left me coughing until my ribs burned. For a time, I was littered with disfiguring cold sores.
Doctors, friends, even family members dismissed my self-diagnoses, insisting on the familiarly nebulous term of ‘virus’. Oh, it’s just a virus, they would say, hoping that would diminish my worry. But it only sparked my curiosity. Which virus? Does it have a name? Can I get tested? Why does it come for me, specifically and regularly, and not for any of my white friends?
While other children were building pillow forts, I developed health protocols – food, vitamins, herbs – and a sixth sense for detecting signs of illness. When the virus came, I deployed my arsenal of potions and remedies. When its force caught me off guard, I would let myself drift into a haze. I feared nights the most and I would rarely dare to check what was underneath my bed.