After reading a couple of books by Harold Robbins, Jacqueline Susan wezete … I avowed that agerbEt was not for me. Oh those days of phantasmagoria, when yeferenje hager was sought for ultimate destination, a paradisal dream without any need for subaE! I asserted that I was definitely created to live yeferenj life but that some dismal force (Abiot, immigration office headed by Captain IgelE…) was holding me in Arat Kilo.

The Traz neTeq fanfaronade I blew, using expressions picked from the ferenj atalis of BhErawi T'yatr area, the movies, the common paperbacks by aforementioned authors and the like, puffed this delusory image. Although my darker complexion did not allow me to get the nickname ferenju or Chuli, my peers also hyped the preposterous claim. This was mainly because I was the fiction keju ayleyim type who walks like the boys in the 'hood on their way to a Friday didmasCHa. I guess no one had noticed that I had no literary knack whatsoever and my gait often changed depending on the movie I watched.

Some dreams come true, however. I ended up in ferenj land, and the irony is my displacement may have made me the clinical example of paranoid.

That is, if paranoia is when:

- the eyes of a pedestrian or passersby cars are going-over you, you assume what goes on in their mind is: "There goes the N who lives on my taxes".

- a sedate glance from a woman passing by is interpreted as, "You testosterone filled abysmal baboon stop undressing me!"

- sitting on public transportation the eyes around you seem to say, "Get off at the next stop. You are spattering our view and defiling our minds."

- a sudden shift of stride by a lone girl/woman walking in front of you sends you off almost galloping past without a glance, persistently thinking, "I made it before I saw the funky look that shouts rape."

- in a department store, you shun the eyes of the attendant, making sure that you left your bags outside, and avoid contact with fellow shoppers lest they sneak a barcode into your being.

- the thought of renting a first floor apartment, let alone buying a suburban villa, is a sure prelude to a dukak-like nightmare where a clean-shaven, swastika-tattooed Norman Bates look- alike holds a roaring chainsaw over your neck.

- a question that starts with "Do you …" is automatically interrupted by "No I don't!!!" with the presumption that what they were about to ask you is, inevitably, if you had drugs.

-a question "Where do you come from?" sounds malicious because you are certain that it will be followed by, "When are you going back?"

I could lightly attest the society I am living in is racist by piling up evidence of the racial remarks and color related iniquities effected on others (gorebetkn siyama yene b'leh sima) on top of what I've experienced. My rational self, however, does not actually believe that every white person is out there to get me. Otherwise, I would not be doing justice to the dear ones with whom my relationship extends to ye Tut lij, abelij … and all the other genuinely lily-white folks.

To be stared at, though, still brings up unpleasant sensations. Sew biyayut zinjero new! Darwin, igzer yiylet, made this common adage scientific. Is my apprehension when stared at because they might see me as a drone sibling of a Cheetah instead of the great…great grandson of DinQnesh? Or is it because their perusal may reveal the sins I never confessed to my nefsabat? Have I simply become a nutcase?

How do I get the fortitude to get out of this abyss? How do I become the undaunted aynawTa and pay no heed to the blatant scrutiny while Zeraf Zerffing on the street?

How do I embrace my prudent self or just call back my ancestors' wenE and return to where the streets have no name?