I Will Torment You

The last time I fought anyone, before last week, was in Nigeria.

Decades before that, on an elementary school playground in Cork, Ireland, I was pulled out of a fight with a classmate that thought it was appropriate to tease me for being new and African. I learnt in the aftermath of that experience that my potential for violence, even if it was reactive, was not something that people would welcome in any way, so I tried to refrain from then on.

However, years would pass, localities, countries and cities would shed like skin and I would find myself in a handful of fights. I remember one with a classmate called Chibuzor who I thought was an individual I could play with because I was the go-to male nerd in my class. I even got into a couple fights with my siblings and cousins during those moments where our drive to be recognized as more dominant in our relationship trumped the obvious love we held for each other.

There was the fight with the _ in my grandpa’s apartment; the one that ended with him falling over while he was trying to break it up. That event nearly sent me to public school, which in Nigeria is almost akin to being sent to a juvenile detention center. Punishment was practically baked into the curriculum.

When I returned to the West, this time the US, I was informed in unceremonious ways that if any type of authority were to catch whiff of me being physically violent, I would be dealt with like any other black person in the country. But beyond the risk of a misplaced (or well placed) bullet in a critical area of my body, I was told to remember that I could be deported, sent back to the place that I had spent so much time escaping. So I did what I needed to do and stepped up my aptitude for diplomacy.

During my first few months in Indiana, a neighbor would tease me from the back of the bus and I would pretend not to understand English. The nonviolent posturing became my persona, I didn’t necessarily turn the other cheek, but I definitely did not punch back and I would often do all I could do to avoid making the first blow.

I was able to enter college and graduate without the temptation to physically resolve conflict because, fortunately, I didn’t find myself in such circumstances.

I studied abroad in Toronto and, for a brief moment, I found myself in a situation with a drunk man that thought to call me a faggot for walking behind him on the way to the train (or out of the station, I can’t even recall). But my study abroad cohort prevented me from doing anything major and to my retrospective pleasure, my nonviolent streak remained intact.

After that, I would move at least three more times, visit cities that I had not even had the bandwidth to dream of before it was time to make the travel plans, I would cop a masters in Human Rights, and in all that time, the thought of laying my hands on another person would not exist even as a possibility in my mind. For all intents and purposes, I was just not a violent person and because I carried that identity in my soul, I rarely found the need to fight for or defend myself.

This all changed on one fateful 22nd of December (or maybe the 23rd, it was quite early the next morning). While I was living in a shelter, a fellow shelter-mate decided it is time to escalate the harassment he had been heaping on me from the very first day I arrived there.

This man, self-named Snoop, but known to the government as Robert, latched on to me as a subject of his frustrations. It started with comments about my jalabiya, then he moved on to comments about my supposed lack of adherence to Islam, then most recently, it was the fact that I stunk (which was an objective lie, but that’s beside the point). This man found me as an individual to victimize and every time I brought it up, it was either nodded away as part of the shelter living, homeless experience; or I was told that he had latent feelings for me and he didn’t know how to deal with it; or even more absurdly, he was drunk.

For weeks I took the higher ground, avoided this man despite him sleeping two beds down from me. For weeks I listened to this man make slick comments under his breath, acting like a child despite being in his mid 40s. For weeks I told myself I was above the violence. And it was true– until I found myself laid up on this dude, his neck beneath my left arm and his head being pummeled by my clutched fist. I had missed pounding flesh to inflict injury, I was ready to kill him or die in the process.

Everyone that was familiar with the situation, even those in Snoop’s camp, knew that he was in the wrong for his actions; but there was also a shared understanding that there was no way to control another man’s behavior so I had been advised over and over again to either ignore his ass (pardon my language) or whoop his ass again (accept my double apologies).

I decided to return to my diplomatic ways and advocate for his removal from the shelter before I laid my hands on him again but I would be lying if I didn’t say that he activated my bloodlust. That in his attempt to diminish me, he reminded me of the fullness of my power. He pulled back memories of my physicality from the back of my mind. All of a sudden, I remembered the taekwondo classes I took in elementary school. All of a sudden, I remembered helping my mom discipline my sister during one of her rebellious moments in secondary school. All of a sudden, the idea of choking out an individual and watching the life slip from their body didn’t seem so far-fetched and unappealing; and then I remembered what stopped me from doing so the last time, the police.

On the day Snoop and I fought, we had at least four argumentative interactions beforehand. The first was when I walked by him and he started to scream at me in one of the main rooms where everyone hung out and ate. That was the time he told me that I stunk and that was the cause of his anger.

That passed, but once I put on some proper clothes (I had been wearing a set that I had expected to sleep in) and I went outside to confront him, I told him to beat me up, to kill me like he had been threatening to do. But like the coward he was, he made excuses about cameras and I went back inside.

The next time was by my bunk, he was repeating his tired threats and I told him in one of my clearest tones that since he wanted to kill himself, he would die, and even then, I had meant it in a metaphysical way– that the spirits that protected and guided me would finally give him what he sought when he drowned himself in liquor or when he mixed that boot powder with his weed and tobacco. I had not even imagined that I could be one of the angels of death in his life.

During the last throwing of words, I told him very directly to go and find something else to do and he responded by suggesting we walk up the street so he can prove to me that he can kill me. My friend told me to ignore him. I did and moved on with my life. However, one thing I’ve learnt is that madness, insanity, by definition, does not respond to reason. Meaning that despite the fact that I chose the high ground consistently, the permission he gave himself to disturb me would not wane if I did not show him, in all the ways available to me, that I would not stand to receive it. Basically I had to tell him, take it elsewhere because I was not the one.

I had tried to appeal to Robert’s humanity. I had tried to be friendly, to listen when he recited a ‘come as you are’ hadith. But none of it worked because what he probably really wanted was to fuck me.

On the surface, he made it about my sexuality, but he was friends with the other gay (but admittedly less visibly so) people at the shelter. He tried to latch onto the stench of my section of our aisle, but the truth is, even if it was stinking, he would still be out of pocket to go to town on me like that when he could have easily involved shelter staff and have my ass reprimanded. I’m pretty sure he didn’t even understand why I got on his nerves, but it happened regardless and his actions precipitated the tormentor in me.

As an individual literally trained in human rights, the harm of others has been outside my frame of mind for years. Even the most vicious of criminals were (and are probably still) undeserving of capital punishment if there are other viable alternatives. But when you are in a closed space with an individual that is unable to process their vendetta with you and, because of that, unreachable in the halls of negotiation, you cannot see eye to eye with such a person. They do not want to humanize you because then they will need to explore the feelings and emotions beyond and below the anger.

If we were to sit down and talk about what had been going on in front of a third party, I’m sure he would find it difficult to articulate his grievances and would rather clamp up or storm off. And although I do have empathy for mental health in need of thorough healing, but I will not condone an environment where a mad person thinks that I am a person they can police and dehumanize. Before I could advocate for his removal, I felt I had to show him in the way that he could understand that I was not scared of him (or anyone for that matter). That whether he was drunk or not, he needed to stay away from me and keep my name out his mouth. In fact, he needed to forget I existed.

But after being reminded of the cost of a murder charge in the criminal system, even one in self-defense, for a Black, immigrant man, I had to bring forth my diplomatic side in fuller force, and this might be the grander lesson. Because even with the adrenaline rush (similar to what could be achieved with vigorous exercise), I still had bruises to tend to. I still had the metal bottle that was squashed during the fight. My glasses cracked and bent out of shape. There is a cost for everything, and because of the distance between me and my last fight, I had forgotten the cost of the fight on the body; talk less of the social, legal, cultural, statistical, spiritual selves.

On Christmas Day, I ended up reporting it to the staff at the shelter. Not much came from it, but I made a report so if something were to happen, they would know that I had complained about unwarranted harassment. I guess it was a grace for all of us. I set up precedence so the staff could start prepping him and his case load team for his temporary or indefinite departure. I was also providing documented evidence that would support my need for emergency assistance and to leave that place. One of us had to go.

There is also the fact that I did not want to go to jail, prison, or even enter the court system. And this is why I couldn’t discount the shelter. Because even as it brought me so close to the animal that I had tamed so well, it also brought me close to people who had crossed lines into the places I might have been heading; and they were advising, in their most sincerest voices, to not let this man be the one that sends me to jail, that ruins my life, that steals my freedom, my light.

And I guess that is what it ended up being in the end. My potential for violence was and is still strong, but the way violence is treated, even when justified, makes it so that one really needs to think twice about it; but we also have to consider questions like is violence ever justified? Would I be in a better position if I was in an environment that did not persecute violence as harshly as here? Unfortunately, I do not have the answer to those questions.

Our first fight ended because we were separated by cops and, in all honesty, I only stopped because the cop threatened to mace me. I already have bad and sensitive eyes; I couldn’t imagine having to wash out mace at the shelter and be essentially blind while Snoop and his homeboys tried to jump my ass as soon as I came outside.

This isn’t a theoretical exploration of violence, and that does change the scope, but it can be interpreted in many ways; it can be a sign to tap into the tormentor in you and be an angel of death, or it could be a reason to work extra hard to put distance between you and the source of the need to be violent. I will choose the latter because this is a pit stop, not a final destination.