In case you’re wondering who the fuck I am you can read this earlier post. It might make sense to read these two short posts about why I’m writing this here and here. And finally, for some broader context about this and future posts have a look at his longer piece here. This is the 2nd part of an essay for which the first part is here.
Back cycling from the station to the flat above the chicken shop with Stefan. Over the last couple of days I've spoken to him and Sadia a couple of times each, the plan we've come up with involves me having conversations with 42 people who are either connected to the physical altercations that have been going on, or who are perceived to hold some sort of community leadership position. Of the list, Sadia and Stefan have identified 20 individuals they believe that I'd be best placed to have the conversations with, after either one has arranged an introduction. Sadia and Stefan will carry out the rest working together. I am not convinced about this course of action, but as will become a regular feature of life over the next few years the force of will of others who love their communities pushes me on. In a month a meeting at a neutral spot will be arranged, which at present, the plan is for me to facilitate or as Stefan and Sadia refer to it ‘you boss it’.
First though, the conversations, I manage two on the Wednesday night. The first is set up by Sadia and takes place in the kitchen of a couple in their 70's, a small woman called Alia who sits at the table kneading dough throughout the two hours I'm present, and her husband Riz who’s making a very large pot of Biryani. Sadia tells me afterwards that the couple will take the food around the neighbourhood later and hand it out to anyone who looks to them like they need a warm meal. Sadia refers to Alia as the person she wants to become, and that she'd have married Riz if he'd have let her. The first half of the conversation is a non-stop whirlwind history of the neighbourhood, and the way masculinity has been constructed within this specific location. I ask maybe three questions, two of which are “and then what happens?”. It's deeply fascinating, profoundly grounded, and the type of sociological presentation that academia would cream itself over being able to produce. The second half is part strategy session, part challenge to produce. They detail, and this is as much directed at Sadia as it is to me, the challenges that are going to be faced along the way. The way Alia and Riz articulate it is that they have been struggling with the local Mosques leadership for about a decade, primarily demanding they make greater attempts to understand the specificity of the struggles facing young Muslim men living in the area. They tell us that the trick will be to not rile the Mosque leadership, but not to court them as even winning them over would have little bearing on the young men who have been involved in the fighting thus far. Instead they identify a man in his 30's known as Jay, as the person whose influence is substantial. Sadia, says that he is on the list of people to talk to, but that she is reluctant to place too much emphasis on him as he is as bad as the Mosque leadership due to his already high position in the local hierarchy. In my notes I have written “Alia looks Sadia in the eye and tells Sadia that she either wants to do this, or just wants to tell people she tried to do this.”
When we leave Alia and Riz we walk down the street to meet a three young Polish women waiting with Stefan. All in their late teens, they are the older siblings of Oliwia's best friends; Magadelna, Hanna and Julia. Stefan introduces us to them, and then quickly leaves us to it. One of the girls suggests we head to a pub not far from where we are, and as Sadia agrees to it so do I. There we all get cokes, and Sadia begins to explain why we wanted to talk to them. Both Hanna and Julia have their phones out and focus on them, Magadalena watches both Sadia and myself carefully. She does all the talking for first half hour. She explains how sick she is of the way all the men in the neighbourhood behave, with the exception of Stefan and a handful of others, to her they are not to be trusted. She doesn't discriminate between one national or ethnic group on another, she talks about the fighting and the ways in which they try to find ways of being alone with girls so they can make their move. She tells us the fights aren't about anything other than men wanting women to be property. Sadia nods and verbally affirms everything Magadelena says. They share a few stories of attempted sexual assault, and I sit like there like a dickhead with a sad expression on my face, and nothing useful to contribute. When Magadelena gets up to go for a cigarette with Hanna, Julia takes over. She speaks slower and isn't as certain about her feelings as her friend seems to be, but she does seem certain that for the girls in the neighbourhood, most of them just have to accept things as they are, because they don't have the money to get anything better. I ask her what she wants, she says at school she'd wanted to become a vet, but the school wouldn't let her do Biology for an A-Level. She then says she'd just prefer to not have to worry that her brothers aren't going to get the shit kicked out of them. When Hanna and Magadelena come back, Julia returns to her phone. Magadelena says that they can talk to other girls they know and encourage them not to say anything that might stir things up, but she won't tell them not to kick up a fuss if any lad tries it on. Sadia tells her she wouldn't want anyone telling any women that. We talk for a little longer about the neighbourhood, about the city, about what the three girls are planning to do with their lives, and Sadia gives them a short lecture about the importance of being involved in your local community. Then all five of us leave, outside the pub we head in different directions. I think about how cool the three young women had been towards Sadia when we were introduced, but that when we leave there are hugs good bye.
I make three trips a week for three weeks over to Sadia and Stefan's neighbourhood. It's doubtful that I got any more useful then I was in those first two. Each time I turn up either of them joke that I must be mad in wasting half a day on them. We spend a fair bit of time in-between our conversations with others discussing the political movements that I've been a part of the previous decade. To be honest I probably complained about those movements more than I should have, but frustration had been building prior to Stefan's first phone call, and it was frankly nice to be able to vent without censoring myself. We'd got into a nice rhythm, whether it was me and Stefan or me and Sadia. They both built rapport with whoever we were speaking, and I pushed for either commitments to being involved in whatever process was emerging, or further engagement in the conversation in the themes that were emerging, male aggression, deprivation in the community and racist policing. After maybe a week I gave up on being liked by the people in the community, it wasn't my community and everyone we spoke to knew it. I wasn't going to be sticking around for long, and in many ways I was just a tool for Stefan and Sadia who needed me to push people, ask them uncomfortable questions about their roles in and experiences of some of the behaviours that were playing out in their community. Stefan and Sadia, we eventually discussed, a week before the community meeting, basically needed certain issues to be made more visible, but a level of deniability, and me being there gave them that. The night we chatted this over, had been a particularly gruelling evening of conversations.
First with Stefan and a group of young lads, 15-19 who turned up drunk to our meeting, and we made the mistake of sitting around. They then spent an hour attempting to get Stefan to take a swing at them by making sexual jokes about his daughter and then when he wouldn't swing, two of them threatened him with their knives. We were in the seated area of a busy KFC, but Stefan decided that he should wait outside and let me finish the conversation. I probably would have preferred he ask if I wanted to go with him, but when he left, the three of the lads left too, leaving me with one who had threatened Stefan with a knife and a tall stocky lad who hadn't spoken yet, but had been eyeballing the tattoos on my arm for about half an hour. He asked if I'd been inside, I told him I had but that's not where the tattoos were from. He asked if they were the bodies I'd taken, I told him that they were those that had been taken from me. He nodded, and told me he'd just come out of a local detention centre after 6 months. I told him I'd not been inside for over a decade. “That easy isn't”, he asked. “No. It's not.” I replied. The lad with the knife slunk down in his chair and started flicking chips into the air and catching them in his mouth.