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The Globe & Mail, Focus - Friday October 16th 2009 :: Nazem Kadri: Canada’s new game face

Toronto-based MC and Poet Boonaa Mohammed never shies away from sharp words that uncover the harsh realities of immigrant life in Canada and countries of the West. The title of his latest spoken-word video, Green Card - commissioned for the Mayworks Festival of Canada - tells a powerful tale of the unjust and silent truths of immigrant hardships in countries where getting papers is like “winning the lottery”. Watch the video for a little slice of this narrator’s pointed perspective.

‘Fulton Street’ is a documentary taking place in Bed-Stuy, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill. The project is titled for the Fulton mainway that bisects these neighborhoods in Central Brooklyn, currently in the throes of gentrification. To personify this phenomenon, I am approaching subjects who have lived and worked in Central Brooklyn their entire lives. The project connects ongoing gentrification to the quality of life for residents and business owners in a modern world community of African, Caribbean, Arab, Latino, Southern, and Asian people of color. The main subjects are predominantly African American, ranging from 18 to 80 years old.

“Lebanon is beautiful, it is my home… but here, I cannot be free. My view from here is blocked and the Lebanese are asleep to all the beautiful things they have to see.”

My appreciation of Lebanon begins with recognizing its style, its ability to meld renegade culture and art, the behind the scenes political discussions, the sporadic displays of cosmopolitanism amidst mental and physical rubble, and even the excesses of the luxurious jet set that lend to its enduring cool. But there are things about Lebanon that are tainted and easily eclipse the joie de vivre the Lebanese purport to specialize in. The things about this country that frustrate are not simply disruptions to my personal comforts – daily electricity outages, ubiquitously slow Internet, dismal public transport, heavy noise pollution and sticky smog. The things that create more discomfort about Lebanon’s mentality as a society is the blatant segregtion of outsiders.

It is easier to guard your tongue where there is no one to talk to. On a daily basis I will have a handful of conversations which I more or less will not understand. Language barriers suck, but they also force you to re-evaluate everything you say, and if it’s not necessarily important, you most likely won’t bother.

Michael Jackson seemed crushed under a weight of identity: black/man/star/brother/father/son. Add philanthropist/media-victim and -manipulator/accused pederast/primate owner/fashionista and dancer. Owner of, and now perhaps a returnee to, Neverland.

I keep waiting for the moment when I say: “yes, this is where I’m from, this is what my culture means, this is a connection I’ve been waiting for all this time. Everyone I meet keeps saying, “yes you are Canadian, but you belong to India” – which just heightens the disconnect between what I want to feel and how I actually feel.

These are my people, and yet there is an unreality about being here that occupies most moments. I feel as though time and place are suspended. I never know what time it is, either here or at home, and my head spins from the difference in time – day feels like night, and my stomach growls while I sleep.