I was very moved and outraged by this interview. That there are children in Denmark growing up under these conditions is unacceptable. Shame on those who should protect them, politicians, social workers etc. Hopefully they will read this article and do something about it.
We, who dropped out of education, were criminals and became bums - we were not let down by the system, but by our parents, says new poet.Who´s who
Yahya Hassan
• He was born 19 May 1995.
• His parents came to Denmark as Palestinian refugees from Belbek in Lebanon.
• He grew up in Aarhus Vest with four siblings.
• His poem collection 'Yahya Hassan', will be published 25 October by Gyldendal.
• Now enrolled at the Author School in Copenhagen.
BY TAREK OMAR
"I'm fucking angry at my parents' generation, who came to Denmark in the late 1980s. The huge group of refugees who were supposed to be parents, have totally failed their children. As soon as our parents landed in Kastrup Airport, it was as if their role as parents ceased. And then we could see our fathers rot passively up on welfare on the couch with the remote in their hand, accompanied by a disillusioned mother who never objected. We who dropped out of education, we who were criminals, and bums, we were not let down by the system, but by our parents. We are the orphaned generation ".
The words come from the 18-year-old Yahya Hassan, who this month debuts with a collection of poems, published by Gyldendal.
In addition to the upcoming book publication, he was in September enrolled at the Author School in Copenhagen. At first glance he looks like a success, but just a year ago, he was thrown out of a high school, the year before he was remanded in custody for robbery, and before that he lived in a 'sports bag', which was packed every time he had to change the institution because of behavioral problems.
Although today things look bright for Yahya Hassan, they were difficult to spot in a childhood of darkness in Aarhus Vest, which was marked by violence, fear and unpredictability.
"I have been beaten as a child. Systematically beaten. All my friends were brought up with beatings. My father spent time on finding punishments for me and my siblings. He forced us to stand on one leg facing the wall for hours with hands outstretched to each side. It's sick. It was not so much that they could not help us with our homework and cite classic poems, but rather that they could not be bothered with us that they did not take an interest in their own children, that's what makes me angry today. That's what I attack in my poems. They were just spectators who occasionally boxed our ears, in order to feel that they could still maintain order. "
Maintain order? "Yes, they still felt a kind of parental feeling. The worst thing of all was that they actually had time for us, but used it on everything else. The men played cards, lounged about, went to the mosque and watched the news from the Middle East, while the women were busy gossiping and chasing special offers in the supermarket. When a spoiled upper-class boy today complains that his father was never there because he worked late into the night, there is a logic to it, which I understand. The father was away at work. The vast majority of fathers in the area where I grew up in Aarhus Vest, were unemployed and on welfare. They had all the time in the world, they could wish for, but did not use it on us. My father once had a job as a taxi driver, it just meant that he also was physically away. Nothing changed '.
The social rottennessat the age of 13, Yahya Hassan was institutionalized after several years as a juvenile delinquent. He clearly remembers the night when two police officers and a social worker knocked on the door to their apartment.
"My sister ran after the police car and knocked on the door with the snot running out of her nose and tears down her cheeks. It was like the culmination of the misery and rottenness through my childhood. That rottenness in the sub-culture, which I have never been able to let go. "
Now you have personally had a very tough upbringing. Are you not just an unfortunate case among many other well-functioning families from the underclass?
"No. The rot is everywhere in the ghettos. Just look at how many in the underclass world perceive welfare benefits and the State. While at the same time adult men can recite the entire Quran, go to mosque every day and play holier than thou, there is no problem associated with cheating and defrauding the system - especially when it comes to obtaining disability benefits. The social rottenness is profound. Look at how many young and healthy boys in the Danish ghettos, who, in the gym, can lift 100 kg with arms stretched out and at the same time are awarded disability pension because they are not fit to work. Disability pension is what they strive for and celebrate when they get it. "
It is very similar to the underclass that Karina Pedersen and Lisbeth Zornig previously described in this newspaper. Do you see any differences in the ethnic Danish and immigrant underclass?
"The immigrant underclass is still not as experienced as the Danish underclass who have had several years in the business with welfare services. But hypocrisy is clearly higher in the immigrant underclass, which on the one hand, prides itself on being orthodox Muslim and on the other hand are deceiving society. It's pathetic when someone from my hometown Aarhus, which I know does undeclared work and have cheated their way to benefits lectures me that I must behave properly. It is hard to take seriously. He asks his daughters to wear a headscarf, but ogles other women on the street when they walk past him. When I was a child playing on my uncle's computer, I was deeply surprised that it was filled with porn. He passed himself off as a saint. Those men live in a strange fantasy world where they can whore, drink and steal and in the evening go to the mosque and seek forgiveness. That way they can start again the day after, because they can just get absolution from God. It is a perverted approach to religion. I have no respect for that kind of hypocrisy. When Arabs from the Middle East look at the Arabs we have in Denmark, they refuse to believe that they are Arabs. "
What do you think?"They know nothing of the Arabic literature, history and language and cultivate a form of subclass Islam, where they use of religion what suits them, and throw everything else away. The vast majority of immigrants in Denmark work and are law-abiding citizens, but the class in question is so large that it can no longer be ignored. "
My teachers thought I was cheatingWhen Yahya Hassan turned 13, he moved into an institution for the first time. He did not fit in and educators could not handle him, so he moved on to a new institution. This pattern continued for many years until he was moved to the institution Solhaven in northern Jutland where he first became acquainted with literature.
"In Solhaven at first they thought, I was like the other delinquents. So they made me watch 'Matador' (beloved Danish TV series about the life in a small provincial town between 1929-1947) from morning till the afternoon. But one day we were to submit an essay about Facebook. I spent the whole weekend on it. When I turned it in, my teacher looked briefly on it and gave it back to me with the words: "Where have you stolen it? Cause you didn´t write it. " It made me so angry that I told her that I would write a new one right away and give it to her when the day was over. So I did. She could not believe her eyes. From that day on I saw no more 'Matador'. She gave me Danish classics, poems, short stories and heavier books. It was then that I discovered I could write. In Solhaven my teacher saw to it that I progressed, got writing courses and a stay in a high school. "
That's when you started writing poetry? "Yes, it was as if it opened up an old wound in me, a place from where the words flowed out of me. Angry words. I wrote poetry while I was allowed to take 9th semester outside Solhaven. There I experienced what it is really like to be the outsider. Many of the middle-class parents did not want their children to associate with me, so I was often not invited to the festivities. I probably did not make it easy for them, but again I felt like the Perker '. (Perker – Danish pejorative for an immigrant)
How? "Now suddenly I was the only one from the lower classes among well-functioning children. Looking at my life today, I have somehow gone from being subclass Perker to be upper class Perker. One day I run away from the police, the next I am at Gyldendals Autumn reception, where I drink wine with the great writers. But I am still a Perker. Also in the publisher's eyes. Take my editor at Gyldendal. One of the first things he said about my poetry collection, was whether we should give it the title 'Ghetto Poems'. I do not blame him, because he knows that is what the media wants. They will have a premium Perker. But I'm no fucking Naser Khader, Farshad Kholghi or Hassan Preisler, who play on the premium Perker-identity. It's all about conditions. I write autobiographical poems from the underclass on a historical parental failure. I'm not a role model or example for other young immigrants, you must promise that that is not the way you will present me in the interview. "
The showdown that never cameAccording to Yahya Hassan the largest fracture today is not the parents that failed, but rather the failed generation that has not managed to raise criticisms of their parents.
"My generation has not managed to do battle with the giant failure of their parents. Especially the educated and so-called intellectual immigrants have not lived up to their responsibility to challenge, criticize and articulate the problems that we have gone through with the exception of a few in the public debate. They are the world's best critics when it comes to human rights and wars in the Middle East, but when it comes to their own backyard, they are mute and passive '.
Why do you think your generation has not managed to raise criticism? "Many of the parents have time and again told their children, that they should be grateful that the parents fled to Denmark, for what would have become of the kids if they had remained in the refugee camp? As if they did us a favor. It is emotional blackmail, if you ask me, and a ridiculous argument which does not absolve the parents of their responsibilities. "
You do not think it is because your generation of well-educated immigrants have been aware that their parents came from disadvantaged backgrounds, and therefore have been lenient with their deficiencies?
"Yes, many have thought: one does not kick someone who is already lying down. But I also believe that the public debate in Denmark has had a negative effect. Immigrants have constantly been on the defensive since they came. Often with good reason. But when, as a minority, you are on the defensive, you do not evolve, because self-criticism is put in the same category as the 'enemy's criticism. But in spite of everything, it surprises me that my generation has been silent. It is the parents who are the problem, they are the ones who caused so many boys with immigrant background to become criminals, to drop out of education, and be on benefits'.
But when you clearly blame the parents, don´t you forget the individual responsibility, that these guys have for their own future?
"If you have never learned what is right or wrong at home, it is difficult to make the right decisions as a young man. If your parents only raise you with beatings and Koranic quotes and never with profound conversations, it is hard to be prepared for what society has to offer you. When parents have done their part in creating a healthy and good person, you can talk about personal responsibility '.
Now we have a gifted young man like you who speaks up about parental failure. What do you suggest should be done?
'First, we must recognize that there is a huge problem here. And when I say we, I mean immigrants. Fear of conflict comes, oddly enough not from the ethnic Danes, but the immigrants themselves. Furthermore, there has been too much hesitation to place children with immigrant background outside of their home, even if the parents evidently were not able to be parents. Because they had a different culture, there has been a greater understanding for the fact that they beat up their children. That is what they do in the Middle East. In this misguided respect the ethnic Danes missed the mark. But first, my generation must deal with their parents 'failure'.
CHILDHOODPoem
FIVE CHILDREN IN ROW AND A FATHER WITH A CLUB
MULTIPLE CRYING AND A POOL OF PIS
WE ALTERNATELY HOLD OUT A HAND
FOR PREDICTABILITY´S SAKE
THAT SOUND OF THE STRIKES
SISTER WHO JUMPS SO QUICKLY
FROM ONE FOOT ONTO THE OTHER
THE PISS IS LIKE A WATERFALL DOWN HER LEGS
FIRST THE ONE HAND HELD OUT THEN THE OTHER
IF NOT QUICKLY ENOUGH THEN THE STRIKES HIT RANDOMLY
A STROKE A SCREAM A NUMBER 30 OR 40 SOMETIMES 50
AND A LAST HIT ON THE ARSE ON THE WAY OUT OF THE DOOR
HE TAKES BROTHER BY THE SHOULDERS STRAIGHTENING HIM UP
CONTINUE TO HIT AND COUNT
I LOOK DOWN AND WAIT FOR MY TURN
MUM SMASHES PLATES IN THE STAIRWELL
WHILE AT THE SAME TIME AL JAZEERA TV TRANSMITS
HYPER ACTIVE BULLDOZERS AND OFFENDED BODY PARTS
THE GAZASTRIP IN SUNSHINE
FLAGS ARE BEING BURNED
IF a ZIONIST DOES NOT ACKNOWLEDGE OUR EXISTENCE
IF WE EXIST AT ALL
WHEN WE ARE GASPING IN AGONY
WHEN WE FIGHT TO CATCH OUR BREATH OR MEANING
IN SCHOOL WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SPEAK ARABIC
AT HOME WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SPEAK DANISH
A KIND OF SCREAM A NUMBER
http://politiken.dk/debat/ECE2095547/digter-jeg-er-fucking-vred-paa-mine-foraeldres-generation/
Topic: Poet: I'm fucking angry at my parents' generation