mohammadalisalih.com Blog

Sailing out of Florida, “Constellation,” our cruise ship to five countries in the Caribbean Sea, stopped first at Georgetown, the capital of the Cayman Islands, a British colony south of Cuba.

The first thing I noticed was the large number of Blacks, because I had thought the population would be, at least, mostly Whites. So, I wondered how was I, one of about only ten Blacks among about three thousand Whites on the ship, going to behave: Would I “act White”? Or would I be like “my long-lost brothers from Africa”?

My White wife (of 34 years) said, with a wink: “Your brothers are waiting for you,” and my White mother-in-law advised us: “Watch your wallets.”

At first, I felt an unexplainable affinity to the Blacks as we walked in the shopping area of Georgetown. (I felt they, also, most probably looked at me as different from the army of Whites that invaded the town).

Blacks were making cigars with leaves and tobacco imported from Cuba; were running restaurants that served, among other items, jerk chicken and rum; were managing stores of Black antiques and souvenirs; and were doing almost every other thing to make money from the tourists, the cornerstone of the islands’ economy.

When we passed by a one-room Black history museum, my wife declined to enter and said she wanted to continue shopping. I entered and became a little emotional as the Black woman manager described to me, the only visitor, some of the tools, photos and artifacts from the days of the British colonialism, slave trade and discrimination. But, she said Whites and Blacks in the Cayman Islands “opened a new page, and are now living peacefully.” Answering my questions, the woman criticized the Black Americans, and said they were “haunted” by slavery. But, she added: “Their situation was worst than ours. The Whites there wrote slavery in their constitution. At least the British didn’t do that, and, thanks to God, they didn’t even have a written constitution then and I guess, until today, they don’t have a written one.”

Noticing from my accent and probably from my demeanor that I was not an African American, she was surprised that I looked at myself as a Muslim and an Arab more than a Black.

For many years now, I have come to believe that Blackness or Negritude, as pioneered, about fifty years ago, by Leopold Senghor, the first President of Senegal, should not – and could not – be the core of a Black person’s identity. I have come to believe that faith, any faith (even in one’s own self) should be the core of that identity. Not only that, but Blackness, as I have noticed during more than 30 years in the US, led to a pre-occupation of Blacks with their color. At first, that observation surprised me, then it saddened, then it angered me — until the present time.

In the Cayman Islands, I noticed that the Blacks were divided into: English-speaking natives, English-speaking immigrants from Jamaica, and Spanish-speaking immigrants from Cuba. The cruise ship added to that mixture few Black Americans and a Muslim Arab African, me.

So, I noticed that Blackness, at first sight, made me feel a little close to all these Blacks, but as I started talking to them, I realized that our identities and personalities were differed because of different nationalities, languages, religions and other cultural aspects. Actually, I couldn’t even communicate with the Spanish-speaking Cuban Black man who was making cigars from Cuban tobacco.

My observations in the Cayman Islands re-enforced another conviction: Because of Blacks’ pre-occupation with their color, many tended to have an inferiority complex in their relations with Whites.

While my wife and I were shopping, we saw many huge statues of a Black pirate called: “Big Black Dick.” Next to each statue, there was a summary of his life, with this sentence at the end: “Those who knew him most intimately knew how much of a man he was; indeed, he possessed certain physical attributes unequaled by all other men of his gender.” The sexual implications were clear; also, the word “Dick” meant both a name of a person and man’s sexual organ.

I wondered whether all those “Big Black Dick” statues were symbols of Blacks’ pride or just for entertainment.

Sitting on a bench by a street waiting for my wife who was in a nearby shop, I started a conversation with a Black man and, diplomatically, asked him about those statues. With a loud laugh, he said: “White women come all way down to here because of our sexual powers. We satisfy them more than their husbands and boyfriends. And they tell us that. They are not shy about it.”

When I asked him whether that was something Blacks should be proud of, he said, probably wondering whether I didn’t already know the answer: “C’mon man, the White man colonized us, enslaved us and, until today, is screwing us days and nights. We screw their women and that is our revenge.”

Almost 40 years before, my eyes were opened to this subject when I read “Season of Migration to the North,” a novel by Altayeb Salih, a Sudanese who became famous mostly because of this novel, which became famous mostly because of its sexual encounters between Black men and White women.

Its Sudanese hero, Mustafa Saeed, during less than two years in London, had five White women sexual partners, used a different name for himself with each one, promised to marry each one and was the cause of the suicide of two of them. To each one he declared: “I am the invader.” And, during a moment of ecstasy, one woman screamed: “Kill me, you African guerilla; burn me in your temple fire, you Black God.”

Needless to say I, then, many years before coming to America, was excited by these imaginary encounters, and dreamed I might, one day, be like Mustafa Saeed.

But, in the Cayman Islands, 40 years later, I was a different person because I had already become convinced that my color (and other attributes that related to it) didn’t have anything to do with my identity.

In the Cayman Islands, my wife and I saw groups of White women taking photos and giggling while standing next to “Big Black Dick” statues. My wife and I also took pictures of each other next to a statue, me pretending to knock him in his face and she standing very close to him. We were laughing and making obscene comments. (Later, she showed the photos to her family and everyone laughed in a certain way).

That night, when we returned to our room, and before going to bed, I, as usual, sat at a small desk to write notes about the day activities. Planning to write an analysis, I told my wife I was going to ask her serious questions about “Big Black Dick.”

But, she didn’t want to seriously talk about the subject. When I asked about the White girls giggling while taking photos next to the statues, she briefly replied, using the title of a famous song: “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” When I said that some Black men felt proud to sexually “conquer” White women, she shot back: “I am not a man and I am not Black. Go and ask your brothers.” End of conversation. Time to go to bed.