2010-06-06
2010-06-02
Life Is Where You Live It.
So out here in the ghetto, the day only really starts just before nightfall.
They all come out in the evenings. The fat Balkan ladies, with their slip-ins chockfull of socks and their layer-upon-layer of cardigans. Three or four at the time they walk slowly filling the pavement with their enormous bulk but, despite size and age, they saunter like young women, swinging their hips, arms somewhat stiff with dainty hands at an angle to the body. They walk like I hope I'll walk when I'm 65, bodies saying "yeah I'm old and fat now and I live in this cold old country and I don't even understand the language of my grandchildren but you shoulda seen me when I was 19, phew, I turned heads I did, I was sassy I was" and they're so damn right to walk like that.
The arab women don't walk like that. The arab women, like tidy little penguins in their black cloth coverings, they walk with tiny little sharp steps, they argue with eachother and they laugh and they yell at the kids, they rush they do the women but they still manage to stay three respectful steps behind their more languidly strolling husbands who all wear woollen hats and smoke cigarettes without filters. The husbands walk slowly, fat bellies in front and hands on back, they all wear sandals and the children invariably wear pyjama tops. Do they not realise pyjamas are for sleeping in? Or do they prefer the softer pyjama cloth to a regular cotton? I'll never know because I won't stop and ask them. I just watch them as I swish by on my bike and then I go home and blog about them.
The children here, they actually play outdoors. Good or bad may the weather be, they're still outdoors wearing practically nothing, kicking a dirty deflated football around with their sandalshod feet. Minus five and no jacket, no hat, no mittens, they run and fight and shout and there's always a baby in a pram left right out in the sun in the summer and I wonder at how they even survive, but they seem healthy alright I reckon. At least they get fresh air and have loads of friends all over the place, that's possibly more important than dressing according to outside temperature.
I live in the ghetto. I'm just a number here, just another single mother getting just-about-by on a part time wage and a tired wad of cash from the government every month. I'm just a statistic and my child grows up another number: just another boy who never knew his dad who grows up in the ghetto and speaks four languages before he's seven but never learns to speak Swedish without an accent.
Out here in the ghetto, you either love it or leave. I live in the ghetto, I love the ghetto, the ghetto loves me.
They all come out in the evenings. The fat Balkan ladies, with their slip-ins chockfull of socks and their layer-upon-layer of cardigans. Three or four at the time they walk slowly filling the pavement with their enormous bulk but, despite size and age, they saunter like young women, swinging their hips, arms somewhat stiff with dainty hands at an angle to the body. They walk like I hope I'll walk when I'm 65, bodies saying "yeah I'm old and fat now and I live in this cold old country and I don't even understand the language of my grandchildren but you shoulda seen me when I was 19, phew, I turned heads I did, I was sassy I was" and they're so damn right to walk like that.
The arab women don't walk like that. The arab women, like tidy little penguins in their black cloth coverings, they walk with tiny little sharp steps, they argue with eachother and they laugh and they yell at the kids, they rush they do the women but they still manage to stay three respectful steps behind their more languidly strolling husbands who all wear woollen hats and smoke cigarettes without filters. The husbands walk slowly, fat bellies in front and hands on back, they all wear sandals and the children invariably wear pyjama tops. Do they not realise pyjamas are for sleeping in? Or do they prefer the softer pyjama cloth to a regular cotton? I'll never know because I won't stop and ask them. I just watch them as I swish by on my bike and then I go home and blog about them.
The children here, they actually play outdoors. Good or bad may the weather be, they're still outdoors wearing practically nothing, kicking a dirty deflated football around with their sandalshod feet. Minus five and no jacket, no hat, no mittens, they run and fight and shout and there's always a baby in a pram left right out in the sun in the summer and I wonder at how they even survive, but they seem healthy alright I reckon. At least they get fresh air and have loads of friends all over the place, that's possibly more important than dressing according to outside temperature.
I live in the ghetto. I'm just a number here, just another single mother getting just-about-by on a part time wage and a tired wad of cash from the government every month. I'm just a statistic and my child grows up another number: just another boy who never knew his dad who grows up in the ghetto and speaks four languages before he's seven but never learns to speak Swedish without an accent.
Out here in the ghetto, you either love it or leave. I live in the ghetto, I love the ghetto, the ghetto loves me.
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