Origins of Hatred

"I threw myself toward a leg. I would bite it to the bone, anything to stop these men hurting Mamma. But as I sank my teeth into the soft flesh, I felt a hand tighten around the back of my neck. I was dragged to my feet. The hand was so strong, so powerful. I couldn't move, couldn't hear. It felt as if a giant were swinging me through the air in his fingers. I wanted to breathe but my throat was too tight. I could not take in any air. Looking down, I felt a wet stain spread across the front of my shorts as darkness exploded in my eyes. Everything went black.
Looking back, I can see that the seed of hatred was sown inside me that day. Until then I hadn't understood what was happening around me - why the people called Arabs seemed to hate people like my family, why they were richer than us, why police beat men and women on the street, or why Mamma was so silent and sad most of the time. But the day an Arab raised his hand to my mother was the day that set me on a path to hatred. I was too young to give the feeling a name, but each time I thought of what the man and his kind had done, I felt my stomach twist and my heart beat faster."

From a book that recounts Emmanuel Jal's life-story as a seven year old boy in Sudan growing up amidst the civil war that claimed most of his family. Before succeeding as a rapper in the UK, he would fight as a child soldier in the Christian Sudanese Liberation Army. Review of the book in WaPo here.

Desert Arabs (1875). From the New York Public Library’s public photo collection.