[Because all of us can say things that are hurtful and racist, I would like to plead patience from readers who read and might be offended tone of this piece]

This is part of a longer story. I say it begins with a black kid born in Brooklyn and it ends with him dying. I say he’s black because I was taught to call him black, African-Americanism unapplied, his ‘blackness’ is more than a color of skin, a matter of internals. I hope I do not detract from the subject. This is only part of the story. What I see I do not know fully. The blood that runs beneath his skin I know is the same color as mine, but when we bleed we do not bleed the same! They say the soul of a black person if different from a white person. Since I am neither black nor white my soul must be different from both, but anyways, such state is inherited from pasts bloody, ill and unfortunate. Why am I telling this story? America is not my country nor should it concerns be mine. The black kid from Brooklyn is my story because put himself there. That I would have gone through the dance studio to learn African dance and music and exited a more cultured person, he stopped me, now a grown man, no taller than five and a half feet, stooping low to look down on me, “WHY ARE YOU HERE?” he asks. I cower, into the corner designated for the ignorant international student. I am but an unwelcomed addition into the American family, the African-American family. Why do I say that he dies? Because this story ends when he does. But this is only part of the story, the part I know, the part about me. As the rhythm of drums enlivened the beat, as feet dance, hands clap and heads sway with the music, the chanting begins, the surrender to Africanness, the crowd converts; heat rises from the earth, and the sufferings of men, women and children who bled on American soil with it. Then sweating, dancing and panting the black kid from Brooklyn, now a grown man begins to cry. His hands to his face, the tears come flowing. In that moment of a strange serenity as I watched him become one with the universe, I had my vision, but it was not pretty. The moment ended, later, after many hugs and kisses. No one kissed or hugged me that day, not the silent Malaysian kid huddle in the corner, watching, judging, learning.