TV
news shows depict a pitiful side of Brussels. Ratings axioms and
mental laziness have reduced the city to a conglomeration of troubled
youth, lawless murderers and trigger-happy gangsters. Now and then we
see a Muslim extremist appear before the camera, sporting a Santa
Claus beard, white tennis socks and a purely auxiliary person dressed
in niqab.
Oh
well. What do you expect? The glorious summer terraces, the beautiful
squares with benches and ancient trees, the glowing lawns of
wide-spread parks, the renowned art collections and the overwhelming
array of culinary delicacies from all over the world are not
newsworthy anywhere else either. Those highlights of Brussels
however, do explain why the city comes in fourteenth in the list of
the most agreeable cities to live in. Just under Amsterdam but 18
positions higher than Paris and 24 above London. And yet, it is no
easy love affair. Grim yet grand, posh yet poor, grey and green,
delightful and depressing, this city is all that.
Brussels
is like a mosaic of shards of glass, each reflecting varying degrees
of light, depending on how you look at it. As a tourist, commuter or
resident. As homeless, aristocrat or eurocrat. Those born here look
at things differently than migrants - from near and far - of first,
second or third generation.
The
city is plural. My newly arrived gay Algerian boyfriend Ali lives in
a different Brussels than me. He tells of the looks and insults his
colourful shorts inspire in Kuregem and of the young girl next door
from Liège whose smile is interpreted by neighbours as whorishness.
This
is where I want to live, he says, while watching the pedestrians on
the zebra crossing in Ma Campagne in Elsene. Teenage girls in hot
pants and brightly coloured stockings discuss recent conversations
with lovers, an African grandmother shuffles laboriously across the
street and the owner of an alternative restaurant is flirting with a
friend.
This
new Bruxellois describes his city as an archipelago, a cluster of
island communities surrounded by lots of water but few bridges. I try
to explain that his judgement is too hard, too quick, too simple. I
recount the story of an 11 year old adopted Haitian girl. She
followed a week-long course on the outskirts of Brussels. Only on the
second last day, she assured us, did the group of otherwise entirely
white people treat her normally. In my Brussels, she claimed with
absolute certainty, such things do not happen. There, they know that
black is not the colour of your heart.
Her
Brussels is mine. The city that is and the city that becomes. The
city made by mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers,
teachers, rubbish collectors, tram, bus and metro drivers, citizens
and people without papers. With ourpoverty, our blindness, our
arrogance, our tyranny. And with the opposite of all this.
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