I was hesitating to write about this, going back and forth and questioning if I should let this out or not. As a human being, I like to show I am good at what I do in front of other people, even though I tend to practice self-flagellation and excessive self criticism, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. This hesitation actually has been going for a while, but eventually I realized if I am to be the best version of what I can be, I have to admit my flaws, and understand and believe it’s more important to be humble from the inside than be an egotist person having pride over being realistic.

To get to the subject, I have to say that I have participated in a No Hate campaign in my home country for a year, aimed to combating hate speech and raising awareness on some cultural practices and sayings we actually say and do everyday that are harmful for others and a shape of racism. Then I started facilitating trainings on the topic and “preached” about inclusion and preventing hate speech. Sometimes, my friends tease me by saying things in front of me that will get me to start preaching and telling them this isn’t acceptable as they know how I can easily get charged and teased when they say something inappropriate from my point of view or could be racist.

Being here in Portugal, I have faced some (what I thought) stereotypical questions, to mention few: Do women drive in Jordan? Aren’t you supposed to cover your face? Is your relationship with your brother OK? Do women have a role in your community? I didn’t mind the questions, i actually expected them and even ignorantly expected being bombarded with accusations too, but of course that didn’t happen. Then, I was thinking maybe I should do something about it, a session that represents my culture, something to face these false “accusations” and try to change the image of where I come from.

I was discussing this with one of the organization team at Rato, and said that some of these questions are too obvious, why would someone ask me if I was a Muslim when it’s too obvious to them since I have a head scarf on (more of a turban) and I don’t drink alcohol nor eat pork? but my colleague’s reply got me into a maze of questions for weeks: Don’t expect people to know, don’t expect they see you as you see the stereotypes.

After thinking and reflecting and just questioning myself, I realized I was boxing myself in the stereotypes. I was actually excluding myself when the others just saw me as I am. They didn’t see my headscarf, they probably didn’t even notice my different accent while speaking English, I was actually creating this wall around myself and thinking people see the surface where I was the one superficial. On a different layer of my ignorance, I found I was actually practicing hate speech and discrimination by expecting people to discriminate against me, I expected them to be something I thought was awful, and what’s more awful is that I was accepting this imaginary exclusion by embracing the idea of “They don’t know”. In the end, I was the one who didn’t know.

It seems that sometimes we get caught in all of these terms and words and trends and forget the truth, the truth that is right in front of us but we are stuck in the propaganda that we lose the reality. I admit I am ignorant and expecting people to be something they’re not, something I despised inside, something I was actually turning into. It’s probably not easy to go back to reality when we have everything focusing on one perspective, it’s not easy to see the other views when it’s only one wide screen blocking the views.

Now I hold this responsibility of what to expect from others, as I am aware that I shouldn’t expect anything, I should only expect people to be people, to be human, I shouldn’t box myself nor others and get caught in stereotypes, I have to understand that I am not a victim if there is a stereotype about people from Jordan or women or even Muslims, I am not a victim when I expect others to see me as I think they would, I am in this case an offender.