Where I grew up... 

In the hearty winterlands of the Arab-filled municipality of Dearborn, Michigan, a punk was a rare sight. Well, okay, I spent my first 13 years there then migrated to a much less Arab locale, and Dearborn was only very Arab on its east-side. But these are just background tidbits that if I fail to reveal, the subject of this piece will call me out on. What follows are my ruminations on the only punk I ever knew.

As a disclaimer, I portend to have no specialized expertise on this subject. In fact, I know close to nothing about punks. As the subject of this essay wrote in response to a draft of this essay: "your article kinda feels like some dude that watched a few rap videos and saw a few kids in baggy jeans at the mall and tried to write a dissection of hip-hop culture." I don't contest the basic concept of that, except that I have never seen a punk music video and I thought punks wore tight jeans.

This may be nothing more than a cornucopia of prejudices, misinterpretations, ignorance, and slanderous accusations pouring out. Alert readers may even point out that I would not tolerate such generalizations and pointed idiocy towards Arabs, and they are probably right. As a result, this piece is more about my favorite punk and how he informed the punk citation in my mental encyclopedia than it is about punks. Please direct scathing critiques to Rickey Kim, the publisher of this magazine.

The punks I had seen during my formidable years in the 1980s were on the non-Arab west-side of town, except for one. My friend's older brother, Saladin represented to me the alien world of punkery. When I saw or interacted with him, I felt as an old crusty white anthropologist mingling with a member of an exotic tribe. His hair was always pointing in every direction possible, he preceded gothic cultures knack for the dark wardrobe, and listened to bands with weird names, such as the sex pistols.

He captured one of the defining characteristics of a punk -- he was a salient and highly removed member vis--vis most everyone else but fell into a small network of equally alienated folks. They were kind of like Al-Qaeda in that regard, but with different means and goals. It was as if they rolled in packs. They seemed to share a distaste with the rap/technno and sports culture that everyone else, including myself, fell into.

The way he talked of the mainstream, in retrospect, makes me wonder whether the punk motif is a form of high culture. They seem to elevate their own sense of beingness above everyone. Maybe as an outsider to that shadowy clique, I merely perceived condescension. Plus, I am sure everyone else thought they were weird. It was, perhaps, a kind of reactionary elitism then.

Still, I remember well the story of a brave punk whose English class poem cut to size the prototypical young Arab-American "bro," painting him as the gel-haired, mustang-driving, club-going, techno-playing, fila-wearing Night-at-the-Roxbury type many of them are. It invited a general melee that found many punks and Caucasions brutalized.

Though Saladin is a poet, and a fine one at that, he was not the author of the above-mentioned literary provocation, and (just for the record, he disputes that the author was a punker). Nowadays you can find Saladin on the New York city poet circuit. He is a graduate student in creative writing.

I have always held a special place in my heart for Saladin. He is a halfie such as I am: half-Arab and half something else. Both of our marginalized other halves are European-American. Saladin's is Irish, which he referenced in a poem called "Libra" with the juxtaposition of "Scimitar and Shillelagh." Just so you know, a scimitar is an Arabic blade with a curved end and a shillelagh is some sort of an Irish weapon I believe. Despite the perfect genetic mingling to be an arch-terrorist and the obvious implications of his metaphor for himself, Saladin avows all violence, except if it involves the pursuit of women. All's fair in love and war, two ingredients Saladin mixes perfectly well (Just kidding).

There are few other generalizations I want to draw about punks from my knowledge of Saladin. As the inhabitants of a marginal cultural space in this country, they seem aptly critical of ideas and concepts that are accepted as truths. Since they stand or stood outside of the acceptable frames of cultural discourse, they were living iconoclasts. That often informs politically and socially progressive views, but it also can result in crass post-modernism. The type that says Socratically that all we know is that we know nothing, ad absurdum.

Saladin in his post-punk years introduced me to the term "Rasta-Aryan" - a very un-post-modern expression since it denies cultural chameleonism by bounding up group membership with monopolistic traits. It ranks authenticity much higher. And Saladin knows white people are not supposed to have dreads. Saladin informed that as with all sub-cultures there were very thick divides between punk sub-categories. There were the "mall types," to borrow Saladin's phrase, and I guess those who kept it real.

But Socrates was not a punk, though he did have long hair and lived outside of Greek's wild party life, if he did exist at all. He wore white robes, which in fashion terms, puts him outside of the punk rubric. Or maybe he would have been a mall punk.

The other generalization I want to allude to, I will pose as a question because I am still not too certain about this one. Is the state of being a punk a transitional one? It seems to me that punks are no longer as numerous as they were. Have they gone the way of dinosaurs, drilling as a mode of headache relief, and Capri pants (for now)? Perhaps they are interned at a camp x-ray-like edifice somewhere. They surely would be targets in the Right-wing cultural revolution that has brought so many conservative blondes into the public realm. They wail on about the destruction of moral values in the US, something punks played a role in I presume, albeit a marginal one.

By the time Saladin was a well-established undergraduate at the University of Michigan with me, he had shed all overt signs of previous punkness -- the punk rock group tee's, wallet chain, and black Chuck Taylors. He was fully absorbed into his own cultural buffet of hip-hop, Arabic culture, slam/poetry, and recreational horticulture. He and his good friend Ronnie, actually recorded freestyle sessions, a decidedly non-punk enterprise. I will not relay too much second-hand commentary on the quality of his rhymes. Let's just say his punk past shined through. (To which, Saladin wrote: "we'll battle next time you come through, bitch.")

So began my impression of that particular style as a phase or temporary state. Much like the hippies of yesteryear, they shed their collectively idiosyncratic ways, if that is not an oxymoron, and melted into other sub-cultural genres or the mainstream they railed against. Is Saladin a punk sell-out or is it an unstated rule that being a punk is a club with temporary membership where the honorably discharged graduate on to other marginal sub-cultural leanings, while sell-outs confine themselves to cubicles, shopping malls, and top 40 soft rock radio stations?

Now that I think about it, this brings up a fundamental question of definition. What the hell is a punk? Where does one draw the line with other similar sub-cultures, such as goths? My examination of Saladin has done nearly nothing to shed light on these questions. Actually, I don't really care.

I should point out that Saladin seemingly defied many punk mores. His taste in music was a bit eclectic, including Public Enemy, De La, Tribe, and ICE T. He pointed out that people are often unable to disassociate "your taste in music with your whole lifestyle." Which I think means that an authentic punk can have diverse music tastes.

Part of my hidden motive for writing this is personal. I guess since he was older than me, I saw him as a role model of sorts. Few older guys would recognize me outside of their function as neighborhood bullies, but he did, even if it mostly consisted of sarcasm and easily out-witting me when it came to force-fields and imaginary GI Joe reenactments.

After he read my first draft of this piece, Saladin called me a "weirdo." I tried to explain to him why I wrote this:

"Although there is an undertone of fun, I also did this because I have some respect for you...not complete, but a fairly decent amount, mostly for your intellect and worldview, but not for your slovenly lifestyle, devilish grin or numerous chemical addictions."

As a conclusion, I am going to share two prominent memories of Saladin, my favorite punk.

First is a tale I often tell, which in all fairness he categorically denies (I would too!). We were at his house playing Atari, which I figured all punks were bad at then, and I was hungry. I had to be in third grade or younger. I approached the fridge and found little bits of papers covered in dabs of mustard. When I asked what those were, one my friend's younger siblings ate one of them. A ghetto hors d' oeuvres. As the eldest, he is implicated in this. I cannot recollect as to whether he feasted on them, though, but am prepared to testify in front of a House Investigative committee that he did.

Second, by happenstance, we both took the same bus to Washington DC for the anti-Gulf war protest. I was honored to sit next to him for the entire trip. I felt cool - even though he was a punk.

Copyright © 2002 Evil Monito