American Woman Stay Away From Me!

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 17:51

In Brussels this time of year it seems every other public square, and there are a lot in this city, has some sort of fair like party going on. With this strange summer’s European heat wave weather making for some warm if not hot nights, street life here has taken on, by folks here taking their typical layers of Belgian styled clothing off, an almost beach like appearance. Although thankfully I haven’t had the misfortune of spotting any camel toe despite the prevalence of tourists with fanny packs. Without the normal layers of discreet unkempt styles normally seen on these streets, we here have had to get used to seeing each other in ways we’re not used to with fashion limitations that typical weather here has on us, being for the moment gone.

Being something of an immigrant myself I happen to live between two neighborhoods with large Arabic-Belgian communities. Indeed when I first arrived here it took me awhile to get used to seeing my neighbors especially women dressed with various veils. I was pretty easily shocked I guess especially when passing a group of women with a few having their entire faces covered. My first instinct was these women should not have to do that because here that isn’t required of women and I felt this priggish idea that they shouldn’t wear such things. Eventually though I got used to it and then it became interesting to try and see when walking around town here doing my errands or just commuting on foot how many different kind or styles of covering I would see in a short walk. At first a veil was a veil and a veil was always a shock. I somehow thought that there was a monoculture like uniformity of conformity to the veil but then I began to see within the women who choose to wear such coverings a whole spectrum range of diversity. Eventually I could even distinguish some hints of cultural origin to what fabric was worn which way.

Some days I even feel like I live in a modern day Byzantium where East and West meet in a city between two lands and then I have to remind myself that this is Brussels and this is just one of Europe’s cultural crossroads. Now I even see a certain dignity these veils afford. Like a good coat covers much, ones wealth or lack of it is concealed making these women equal in their own way.

Just when I think I have become acclimated to the complexities of life here something unexpected jolts me. I was bicycling past the square at the end of my street on my way home through whatever summer’s festival was going on there. These summer festivals designed by some strange politix that think their administration can liven up the city center by putting up stacks of concert electronic amplification with a temporary stage with racks of disco like lighting in what is essentially an outdoor room about the same size as a school gymnasium. I mean the natural acoustics of these old squares made public gatherings of manageable size crowds in one square possible all in the days before electricity. So once the cars are gone and the people free to move about musicians with instruments can play and be heard without electronic amplification. But nooo the city has to put up amplification to such a degree suitable for an outdoor football field for a gathering. Consequently nobody would go near the stage where the speaker stacks were and the effect was to drive most of the people from the suburbs for who these events cater to anyways (to lure them into the city) screaming back home to the relative peace and quiet of the ‘burbs.

So I passed such an event after the sound and light extravaganza had been turned off mercifully for us neighbors at the reasonable hour of eleven at night. Then people could re-gather and talk and hear each other. The accordion players returned and unintentional summer life resumed all on its own on the square. That was when something caught my eye that just about knocked me off my bike. It is hard to explain the magic you get in Brussels that makes all of its many hassles completely worthwhile. The center for the most part is still an assemblage of pre-automotive urban town planning or perhaps lack of it. The streets are often impossibly narrow in places never designed for nothing more than animal based transportation. Sidewalks are nowadays more an oversized curb- there are more pedestrians anyways than cars so people tend to walk between the passing cars right in the streets. Most of the houses and houses with street level shops or cafes are quite narrow especially where there are older buildings. When living within a building not more than nine feet wide often times I feel penned in tomb like and I have to remind myself that if this room weren’t so narrow like all my neighbors buildings then I’d have to drive to the baker for a loaf of bread. As it is the baker is just down the street within a minutes walk of the front door here. What this sort of proportion provides is a unique intimacy with strangers an intimacy that is at once close and open and simultaneously most definite in assuring boundaries. I might not have a personal space of a meters wide radius around my body like I would when walking the broad unused sidewalks in the Midwest but I learned fast how to keep a psychic space when brushing past strangers here.

So I was bicycling through such a summer nighttime crowd (victim of the heat wave fashion necessity myself, shirtless in cut-offs and sandals) weaving my path home when I looked up and into the eyes of a young woman sitting, more like perched elegantly, on a bench with an adoring young man sitting quietly in the shadow of her remarkable presence. I can’t begin to describe this woman’s appearance for she was beautifully draped beneath fabric that seemed to fall from the crown of her head. Only her beautiful dark eyes were revealed. I felt a shock by her presence and though I thought I was by now used to the mysteries of the veil this time it was like seeing someone dressed as such for the first time. From underneath the fabric I could see the outline of a nose and cheeks but the eyes were majestic. I did one of those unintentional neck breaking double takes which caught her eye and for a moment we looked into each others eyes. There is nothing I can articulate in written words to describe what I saw in those eyes or in the whole of her discrete elegant presence. For what must have been a split second time stopped and beauty and life were felt for the gift they are.

Those eyes enhanced with makeup in a way Vogue magazine could not ever emulate! For Vogue magazine will never be able to sell the idea that when it comes to beauty its what you don’t see rather than what you see. I couldn’t help but lock my eyes with her eyes at that moment and the beauty I saw framed by black fabric is etched permanently on my minds eye. Of course she looked down relinquishing the spell she had over me with a certain uncommon poise and grace and the fellow with her regained the prize of her attention, what a life we havehere! Such freedom of expression in so many ways from so many different influences!

After spending this unusually hot summer enduring the fashions the weather spawned, the Britney Spears fashion influences that make you want to curse MTV for hawking its wares and sense of eroticism abroad. I mean Britney is fine when she’s confined to yr TV I suppose because you can always change the channel to get her to leave the room. But when middle-aged mothers and their daughters begin carrying off discount store imitations of Ms Spears with fleshy midriffs seeming to flap with the breeze. I don’t know I begin to think we here in the west might benefit from quite a bit more cultural exchange with the near east.

Freedom of expression
Freedom of religion
Freedom from religion
Free speech
With these things we must try to get along.

In the mean time those haunting kind eyes will look into my soul for the rest of my life. What a privilege and gift that moment was!
Still I can’t stop humming that Guess Who/Lenny Kravitz song!

American Woman
Stay away from me!
I don’t need your war machines
I don’t need your ghetto scenes!
American Woman
Stay away from me...