sheep says 'terrorist' (From Times Series)

Snowdon and Welsh racism

10:08pm Tuesday 5th October 2010

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By Mohamed-Zain Dada »

On Sunday 3rd of October about 50 of us including myself climbed mighty mount Snowdon for charity. As we arrived we endured the perilous steep sides of the mountain as well some Welsh racism. You’d think that’s a curious mix of dilemma’s to face, the culinary equivalent would probably be a beautiful soufflé garnished with lamb donor kebab.

I was planning to write about how tough the climb was but another issue arose which was racism. But I’ll quickly go through the Snowdon climb in a sentence. Basically there was a path and we walked up it until the top. Ok, hopefully that covers it with enough colourful imagery to fill your mind with.

Welsh racism is abit like sheep (the reason for the donor kebab comparison.) Cheery, chewy, fluffy smiles when you look at them but as soon as you turn they charge at your buttocks like there is no tomorrow.

It all started when we arrived in Wales at the hotel after 6 hours of driving and accompanied most potent pins and needles any car journey can offer. Being remotely brown can throw up its problems especially when you grow a little bit of facial hair.

We stepped through to the hotel and some of the guests were commemorating the brave soldiers who lost their lives in Afghanistan. If you looked at the ‘shock/horror’ faces the guests had as we arrived you’d struggle not to laugh. It’s like each brown fellow passing through was a reincarnation of Anjum Choudrey. Smiling as you walk past would make you ‘sadistic’ as well as a ‘terrorist’ so I just looked down.

Then due to the lack of phone signal in the hotel some of the young men would walk around the hotel shaking their phone. This sparked more suspicion which leads to the ‘inevitable.’ The police arrived a little bit later with a list of all our names because they suspected we were terrorists.

A few people also thought we were there to build a mosque in Wales. At the time it felt like a surreal sitcom were you could not help laughing. Some of the guests had clearly thought of the ingenuity of us blowing them up whilst building a mosque in Wales.

Your mind can try to conjure excuses and you can do that middle class grumble which is reminiscent of a dodgy washing machine followed by: ‘just a misunderstanding.’ No, that’s not a misunderstanding that’s an entrenched belief that I may blow you up at some point.

When we got to the top of Snowdon though, achieving what we had done with the money we raised, everything else was peripheral (for about 3 minutes.)

But I do suggest that to add to the other irrelevant sign posting the government should add: ‘Brown + Facial Hair + walking around with a Blackberry = NO DON’T DO IT!’ Such a simple equation would avoid further stereotyping.