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White fans didn’t know he was an East Indian boy

May 20, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon, News

If I was a travel writer, working and living in Guyana, given the nature of the human being that is called Guyanese, the accusations of embellishment and fictionalization would have been endless. People would not believe some of the factual encounters and happenings. It is for this reason I try my utmost to strengthen the integrity of my commentary with identification of people once the circumstances are not jeopardizing or harmful to them.
One day when I was babysitting my daughter when I lived on Hadfield Street, Wortmanville, I had the “Best of Queen” on the stereo set. I knew the bicycle song because I was and am a fan of Freddie Mercury. But for some reason when that song was playing and the bells were ringing in the song, I ran to the window to see who was ringing their cycle bell in front of my home.
My daughter grew up, got to like Freddie Mercury, and still finds the bicycle bell incident amusing. Mercury is the news now, because his biopic is out in cinemas. I was reading the Guardian (British) about the biopic, and I instantly remembered the bell drama in my home so long ago. Mercury is not someone the present generation in Guyana would know about. I doubt the movie, when it comes to Guyana, will have a long run. But Mercury will remain one of the most fascinating performers in the history of pop music. I would put him second to Michael Jackson for sheer performance on stage.
But that is not all – Mercury is a race phenomenon. Freddie Mercury in a BBC poll was rated among the top 100 British personalities of all time. He was the frontman for one of the most successful and admired pop bands – Queen. When you look at the extraordinary rise of Mercury worldwide, but especially in his adopted homeland – the UK – you get confused about why race poison so haunts human civilization.
Mercury, of course, was his stage name. The original name was Farrokh Bulsara. He was born to East Indian parents in Tanzania, then moved on to live in India and settled as a 17-year-old boy in England. There are ethnicities like the Kurds, Syrians, Turks, certain race types in India and Pakistan and the Persian people who have very light complexion almost resembling the colour of the Caucasian race. If at a young age, someone from that type of ethnic background settles in a cold climate and becomes integrated, he/she can easily pass as Caucasian.
I wonder if the present generation in Guyana knows that many families we classified in the sixties as Portuguese were in fact Syrians. In Guyana at that time, Syrians were grouped together with Portuguese and other Caucasians. I remember when I was small there was a shoe store at Camp and Regent Streets named Shu-All. The owners passed as Portuguese, but they were Syrians.
One night on my way home from Trinidad, the plane was grounded. So BWIA put us up at a nearby hotel. From my room window, I saw a party going on, and every attendant was white. I said to a fellow Guyanese that I didn’t know Trinidad had so many white people. He said most of those I was looking at were Syrians. Google the image of the wife of the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, and you will think she is a Northern European. But she is a pure Arab Palestinian woman.
As a teenager, Mercury hung out with white boys, had a white girlfriend, and they started a band. Later as the band grew, Mercury and the band, Queen, became an international sensation. Young, white British teenagers went crazy for Mercury. It is doubtful they knew he was essentially of East Indian extraction, because his race was never discussed in the media. His fame was too great for his ethnicity to be featured.
The story of how civilization deals with race categories is as old as civilization itself. When Hitler was persecuting the Jews, they were unwelcomed in most countries, including the US. Today the Jews are accepted worldwide and have formidable clout in American society. So why do people judge others based on ethnic genes? Is there any racial group that is not mixed?
On a recent television programme on channel 9, UG lecturer Charlene Wilkinson told me and Vincent Alexander that all races are mixed up and that Vincent and I have white blood in us. Is that really true, Charlene?

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