“Hey Camel Jockey, why do you stink so bad?” The taunt hit me from the back so at first, I said nothing. “Where did you park your camel?” What the fuck is a camel jockey? Standing, at my locker, the numbers from my combination drifted into oblivion from my mind as I tried to picture what the boy said. Nothing came to mind because I didn’t know what a jockey was. The word itself so strange for someone like who loved reading. It drew a blank for me, and I got busy in trying to decipher it, never realizing it to be an insult.
Arriving from India merely a year ago, I still didn’t get much of the lingo surrounding me. Or the culture, or really much of anything at that time. It’s a bit hard to go back to that time because much of it was spent on acclimating to my family. An older sister who appeared a stranger, parents I had not seen for a few years, and now in a new city that sounded amazing: Long Beach. And of course, a new school. A seventh grader. Me going to an American school! So much to learn. It turned out although it felt like decades away from my family, it was a little less than two years. But then again, small brains make for huge memories.
“Man, that stink.” More laughter as it dawned on me, they weren’t going anywhere. Two white boys, snickering and pointing at me. I pushed back my glasses to see them clearer even though they’d already branded me in shame. They came into my view and fueled my low self-esteem for years. Just images of teeth, mean laughter, and my embarrassment of not knowing how to answer them. How do you respond to a taunt? Not just a stranger, but a white one at that, people I had not had much interaction within that time. I understood their intent, I just didn’t understand the slur. So, I nodded dumbly, smiling (I don’t know why and, even now, that part agonizes me), and walked past them. Why the fuck did I smile? It still haunts me. I cringe inside each time I remember their laughter and my stupid fucking smile
Their laughter follows my brain all the time, and even now, echoes in my memory’s hallways. I wish I had done more than just show my teeth. Who does that? Get ridiculed and you just smile? I ain’t no Gandhi. I just didn’t know any better. Always feeling left behind, out, on the outside, never feeling like the inside. That was my American experience at the time. Just grasping my way ahead, not realizing some words warp your soul, make you doubt yourself, wonder if you are any good. They succeeded in diminishing me, no! I did that to myself. I didn’t have to be a camel jockey if I didn’t want to be one, but I took those words in. Rode that camel as if my life depended on it.
Silence. My only weapon. One that serves me at times, but more often, gets me into deeper shit. Easier to ignore, pretend it didn’t happen than God forbid use my words to explore my feelings. To appear stone faced, immovable, unaffected, the one that says “you are not gonna get me” even when I am deeply wounded instead. The one that can make others feel unloved, uncared when they share vulnerable things because this defense developed exponentially to get away from the camel jockey. Even now, not much of an image comes to mind. It just does not make sense, but then again, the boys already made the image for me. The Other, one who lacks the porcelain skin or the light eyes. My skin defined me.
My darkness a target for them, not realizing or caring their words cratered me. To them, just another brown boy to point out in their world of not belonging, to just go home whether I had one or not. Just not be here. Hear that enough times, and it means never being comfortable with myself, my skin, always acutely aware of my foreignness; no matter how long I have lived here. It seeped in my soul like dirty water going down the garbage disposal. Two words thrown at me carelessly, yet I caught them and swallowed them whole like candy.
The bell rang, and the boys scattered, giving me time to make it to the next class. Going back a few years ago, it amazes me how small the hallways are now, as if shrunk by time, yet huge for me as a thirteen-year-old. It felt cacophonous, massive, able to swallow me in the swirling crowd, yet I always felt alone. The lone horse on the field, different from the others. I couldn’t shake that feeling. Until I met others like me. All of us from different countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, China, and Laos, places that sound foreign to me even today, yet they became my safety net in North Long Beach. All boys where English was not the first language, nor was it spoken at home so we practiced it in school with each other.
I didn’t know it at the time, but even my time with that group, I was the Other there as the Indian. I took it for granted, not realizing that I rode alone on the label. Treated as something entirely different even though I came from a different continent with a language not even close to Arabic, but my brownness made me a target for those white lips. Lest it be seen as my whining of a deprived childhood, those words allowed me a freedom of sorts. When put into a category, it allowed me to bypass other stereotypes. One brown person looks like another to some. It didn’t matter when I didn’t know it was a slur, but the shame stayed even though I couldn’t understand why. Hard to figure out when as a big glasses, mullet haired brown boy, there was just so much I did not get.
Already an outsider in my mind, this new label did not compute. The word camel I understood, but the second part drew a blank. But the boys’ sneers made their intention clear. Disgust. At me. With me. For me. Nothing to do with my insides, but my brown skin. A pigmentation I had no control over. What was it about our bodies that made disgust so easy? Especially at others. I think about those times occasionally and I do wonder what it about me was that brought those comments. No words came out of my mouth, but my looks spoke to them somehow. It made sure they scarred me somehow, but what did I do? It coils inside me, this late frustration for which I did nothing in Junior high, well because not only did I not have the words, but the context was also far beyond me. My struggle was different. Away from my nuclear family for a few years, even those people seemed like strangers to me so this new thing confused me further.
That was my MO for most of my junior high schooling. Confusion. Lack of understanding. Taking in with other brownies who were even more different than me. Swallowing the slur like medicine which made me sick in a way I did not quite understand until much later when the understanding came, and the bulb of hate flickered on in my head, but I wondered but why. What was it about my skin that riled them so, at least get to know me before you hate me. That I could accept. I have been a shitty person, and there are people in this world that are well justified in me not wanting to ever see me again ever. Even now, I burn bridges, create big hurts, argue senselessly even when I know better. I break those walls willingly, but it never quite made sense to dislike someone just for their color.
Yet even as I say that I know that I have done the same, maybe the only high ground I have is that it was not as mean but that’s subjective. Did I not get nervous seeing a bunch of black boys coming towards me? Or white ones? Or even Mexican? That apprehension did not appear with my own, but then again, I also did not have the turban. I passed as the Hindu majority so did not have as much to fear as the other minorities. So shit does roll downhill. And so, I take pause. Perhaps the camel jockey preemptively punished me for my own bad behavior? No! I didn’t do anything to deserve that name except exist. They knew nothing about me, and it didn’t matter what damage they did.
I never told my parents because it didn’t occur to me to say anything. A cone of silence in what happened in school because home had it owns fraught issues. The Camel stayed in the barn of School. That’s where he belonged along inside my head. Even now, the image comes of a white guy riding the camel. A brown person just does not fit in my world image of this slur. Which makes it even odder that it sits so comfortably inside me. Maybe it works the engine of regret that that I am not white or other races. Makes me wonder what it would be like to be not to be Desi. However, as I get older, more and more pride fills me for my culture. The desire to pass it on to my offspring so great that I try to remember all that my parents and family taught me, so my son never feels like a camel jockey. And perhaps that’s the reason I needed to learn its meaning so I can ensure my son does not convert outside hate into a internal compass for himself.
Those boys receded from the hallway and my memory. The name hung around because I carried It for far too long. Theirs names lost in time, but their faces etched into my brain. Yet I keep nodding, keep silent, keep them inside me but now they are splayed onto these pages with the hope just like ink, they too will fade away into nothing. It will take work. For far too long, there are words inside me that no longer belong there which need to come out and die on this page. So they can no longer define or have power over me. Let them lose their strength as they are expelled out if I remember not to breathe them back in. To not let my son catch this disease of disgust. To keep him safe from the Camel Jockey.