Foreigners Michael Mohammed Ahmad 1 Welcome Officially, it starts like this: fifteen artists stand in the backyard of a resident named David. He tells us he has lived here his entire life. He tells us that we are all very welcome – into his community and into his home. He literally speaks about his own home, but he’s also speaking about the homes of half a dozen other residents. Urban Theatre Projects is planting artists in the front yards of people’s Bankstown houses for two-­‐and-­‐a-­‐half weeks. David tells us that it is probably because of his cultural heritage that he is so welcoming to guests. ‘If a blond-­‐haired blue-­‐eyed person appears at your doorstep, you be careful because he might be a Viking, but probably because of my Scottish background, I welcome those who knock.’ There are two reasons that the Scotsman is welcoming us. One is because we are in his house. Two – and this one doesn’t apply to me at all – we are in his community. But while we stand here on this person’s land, we are also standing on someone else’s land. We are introduced to Uncle Cole, one of Bankstown’s Aboriginal Elders. The Scotsman tells us how he’s lived here his whole life. That might be around eighty years. Uncle Cole has been here for sixty thousand years. He welcomes us to his home too, Bankstown, and welcomes us to his home, Australia. He says, ‘All this around here is the Darug Country. This is home of the Darug Nation.’ What a poetic way to start a project about coming into someone’s community. Residents, colonial and indigenous, ancient and modern, black and white, both saying, ‘Welcome’. Isn’t this the kind of Australia we all imagine? The kind of Australia we all hope for and believe in? Sunscreen But let’s slow down a second. How did we all end up here? It actually starts on a lawn at the Bankstown Arts Centre, where the artists meet for a briefing and planning session. As the artists arrive the first thing they do is start to pass around sunscreen. It’s gonna be hot today and even hotter tomorrow. I find white-­‐Australia’s fear of the sun comical. I grew up around brown, olive and black-­‐skinned migrants who treat sunscreen like the real cancer – a drain on the pocket and an irritation on the flesh. It was only once I’d met my wife of Anglo background that I learned about skin cancers and melanomas and the steps you take when you find a freckle. It’s not that us Arabs and other ethnics can’t get skin cancer though, it just doesn’t happen enough for any of us to care. All the artists are worried about the heat and the sun. Here are my jokes at them, at the non-­‐indigenous ones, at the white ones: 2 ‘Love it or leave it.’ ‘Go back to where you came from.’ ‘Go back to England.’ Are these racist? I don’t care if they are. Home Alwin Reamillo, an artist from the Philippines, speaks about the arts centre in the same capacity that he speaks about the house he’s about to work on. He describes both as a type of home. I find this to be a tragic analysis. His foreign perspective on Bankstown means he doesn’t know much about the politics of the Bankstown Arts Centre. Over the last ten months I’ve come to know dozens of Bankstown-­‐based artists and residents who no longer think of their local arts centre as a home. This is because of strained relationships with one of the centre’s key organisations. My friend, Peter Polites, says it’s disgusting that he must find alternatives to working at his local arts centre because of its gatekeepers. I guess that it is kind of like a home then, especially a Bankstown home, when I think about how many working class young people of migrant background have left home and won’t go back because they chose to marry someone their parents didn’t approve of – someone from a different race or someone from the same sex. Consumption I listen to the artists have a conversation about where to find the best coffee in Bankstown. Gaele Sobott and I look at one another and roll our eyes. The conversation immediately establishes to me who knows the area and who is foreign. Rosie tells them about the best coffee you can find around here: she mentions Mohammed, who is right by the train station, and David, who is up the road. Why is it so offensive that these people want to know where to find the best coffee? I think it’s because the first instinct of most middle-­‐class people coming into an exotic community is to seek out its consumable products. While they talk about coffee I watch one girl who sits across from me wearing a Palestinian scarf. As an Arab-­‐Australian the first thing I think is, ‘Freaken hipsters!’ Lebs A foreigner coming from the inner-­‐west to Bankstown for an arts project isn’t that strange, but what happens next is entirely unique. Urban Theatre Projects have organised ten bikes so the artists can move around from house to house in a quick and 3 easy way that is cost effective and good for the environment. ‘What about someone with a disability?’ Gaele asks. UTP can consider this later. One person on a bike in Bankstown, even a kid, is rare. Imagine ten people on bikes, riding through the arts centre, stopping on traffic lights in front of the halal butchers and Lebanese sweetshops and Vietnamese restaurants. I ride with these people and I feel shame and joy at the same time: Joy at how strange the context is, shame because I am in the context. People all around us stop and watch. Three Lebbos sitting on a bench in the park point and say, ‘Look at these guys, bro!’ I understand. I am on their side. I say, ‘How ya doin, boys?’ and the one with a big nose and white cap winks at me. I don’t know if I said what I said from the artist perspective or the Lebbo perspective. Maybe I want the Lebs to know that I’m just like them or maybe I want the Lebs to know that I am totally different. When we stop at the first house, the girl in the Palestinian scarf comes up to me and says, ‘Moe, are you Lebanese?’ Only a Leb would be confident enough to ask the question just like that. ‘Yeah, are you?’ I ask. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘My name’s Nicole.’ ‘I was looking at your scarf before and I was thinking hipster.’ ‘No,’ she says. ‘I bought this in Palestine. It’s political.’ ‘Where do you live?’ ‘Marrickville.’ This person – she is foreign and familiar. Out Rosie Dennis is the new artistic director of UTP. When one of the artists says that they will be coming out to Bankstown everyday for this project, she says she is interested in changing the language. ‘Why do we say coming out? Why don’t we just say, I’m coming to Bankstown?’ The idea of who comes into Bankstown, or from their perspective, out to Bankstown, reminds me that I am part of the landscape. Clearing the Land Vicki is working in a front yard next door to Mohammed’s corner shop. When I arrive to spend my afternoon there, Gaele and this downtrodden white woman are hanging about. Vicki tells us that on her first day, there was a dead dog in the corner of the yard, which she and Uncle Cole had to bury right there. Vicki has cleared the land – these are her words – and has begun to plant twigs and sticks into the yard. Then she plants 4 colourful straws through the sticks, and the front yard is becoming an artificial garden. I stand beside Vicki while she plants her twigs and I ask her what she would do if I accidently stepped on one of them. ‘Would you be upset?’ I am tempted to do it, just to see her artistic response. She says: ‘Yes I would. I spent hours setting it up. I am invested.’ In the corner there is a bag of leaves and dirt. Gaele has a candy wrapper she wants to throw and she asks if the bag is for rubbish or Vicki’s materials. Only in the arts can we not tell the difference. The downtrodden white woman tells us she’s just a local hanging around. She bad-­‐mouths Aboriginals, saying that cops hassle them because fifty percent of the time they’re asking for it. I look over to see if Vicki heard this. I think she told me she is Torres Strait Islander. I know the white woman’s comment would anger her. She has her back to us, still sticking straws through the twigs. Then a friend of mine appears named Wael – he is short, stocky, bearded, bald, olive-­‐skinned and soft spoken. He tells us how a few minutes earlier he had been sitting in his car enjoying the sun when a police officer with eyes on him circled the block twice. The officer finally came over and asked what he was doing in his car. Wael said he was just resting. The officer asked Wael for some ID. As Arab-­‐Australians Wael and I experience this kind of thing all the time. We are treated like foreigners, even in Bankstown. Vicki is treated like a foreigner, even in Australia. Simone and Joey … But Simone is not present. Unlike the other artists, it is clear that something abstract, something artistic, is taking place here. Gaele tells me to just drive down Northam Street till I find a fireplace in a front yard. It looks like a living room. It’s actually a trophy room. On the mantle of the fireplace are trophies that Joey and Simone have been collecting for the installation. Joey is fascinated by a picture he collected from the salvos. It’s a collage he believes was created by a child. ‘The parents must have been proud,’ he says. ‘That’s why they framed it.’ I stare at the crappy horse and flower inside the frame. ‘How do you think it ended up at the salvos?’ I ask. ‘Someone might have died,’ he says. ‘Maybe it belonged to the grandparent.’ Joey explains how he protects the installation overnight – from rain, I mean, not drug dealers. He shows me how it folds up: The Demountable Trophy Room. People who walk by ask him if it’s a garage sale. He offers tea and coffee and hopes for a chat. David, the house-­‐owner, the Scotsman, walks out and onto the lawn. I ask him about the Vikings he mentioned last week. ‘Were you serious?’ He’s old and has withering white hair. He puts his fingers through it. ‘Well look at me,’ he says. ‘I have blond hair and blue eyes, I didn’t get that from the Scots.’ 5 Political Hipster Nicole has been in the yard of a Greek family for nearly two weeks. She has been taking their rubbish and turning it into art. She pulls out some of her recent creations. They used to be milk cartons. She’s cut them into shapes that look like trees and plants. She puts one in my hand and I admire it. Then I say, ‘How would you feel if I just tore this up right now?’ She says, ‘I’d get really angry.’ I ask, ‘Why?’ She says, ‘Because it’s not yours.’ I say, ‘Well technically it’s not yours either. It’s garbage.’ She says, ‘I’ve re-­‐valued it.’ My job is done. Moving House Today we are moving the house that Alwin has built. Eventually we will all have to do this. The sun flares up and the air digs down into our skin. There are bushfires across the Blue Mountains, fires like the locals have never seen. Fifteen people carrying a small house through the streets of Bankstown is another thing the locals have never seen. The smoke and the wind and the heat sweep through the Western Suburbs. Like I said, eventually we will all have to pick up our houses and carry them down the street. We start at the Bankstown Arts Centre and carry it on a pallet with stilts – eight of us squatting. The group is made up of people who do weights and people who do Yoga – but not because they are South-­‐Asian. We lift and the weight of Bankstown bears down on me. What will the locals make of this? ‘Watch the door, go lower,’ we scream, we can’t even get it out of Rehearsal Studio 2. ‘Watch the trees, watch the branches,’ we can’t even get it past the gates. We lug the house out onto the street, across the road, through the park. This looks like a council job, with all of us in fluoro vests and people out the front steering and pointing and directing traffic. Lebs and Skips and Fobs and Nips look at us from their cars. Some smile, some frown. Gaele drives slowly behind us, she is our backbone, and Fadle films in front of us – he is our proof. Tim Bishop calls out, ‘Can we get someone taller over on this side!’ Amen says, ‘Spewing, I just got back from the gym.’ Alwin says, ‘Thank you’ and ‘Sorry’. Those who lift sweat and pant until we reach Northam Street. We squat in a front yard, and the house lands. I say out loud, ‘Three of my cousins could have done this on their own.’ 6 Unwelcome The sun is in its final hours and it sits on Northam Street like a Big Mac. I’m here to visit Toby’s house but I can’t help parking on the other side of the street, I can’t help drifting towards the demountable trophy room and the generous Scotsman. Toby sees me and wanders over in his cowboy hat and cowboy boots and cowboy jeans and cowboy shirt. We sit and talk for half an hour before it’s realised that I should be on the other side. Toby’s house is shabby and abandoned. The grass hasn’t been mowed and it’s going yellow and it attracts flies and mosquitos and those harmless bugs that we don’t know the names of but we see just as frequently. In this case, the grass really is greener on the other side. The windows are barricaded. The white paint is peeling. It’s the perfect house. Toby sits here and writes music. Sometimes he goes for runs instead of bike rides. A fat Fob drives by and we can hear him screaming at his passenger – actually, he’s just talking real loud, actually, he’s just talking. I laugh; laugh at Bankstown and Toby just stares. We sit out the front of the house and discuss gender politics and gay politics and race politics, but mostly I speak at him. Toby tells me that the guys next door, they are big, and they come around and ask if the house is his. ‘You should knock it down,’ they say. They might be my cousins and I take pride in how dumb they are, and how out of place Toby is, and how nice the burning sun is on my face. Toby’s partner is pregnant and might go into labour. At any moment, he’ll run off to be there for her. I wonder if he’ll ever come back. 7