Women making America truly great... for ever

I  love women, and I have no apologies about that. After all, “je suis un homme normal (I am a normal man)”. This is how the Malgache poet Flavien Ranaivo put it when he gladly accepted our invitation to kiss a Ms Virani, who had excelled in our French class.

We were at the University of Madagascar in Antananarivo, in 1967, polishing up our French, and Ranaivo, was guest of honour at our graduation and prize-giving ceremony. He was a minister then, but to us literati he was best known as a leading voice of the negritude movement. Along with Jean-Joseph Raberiavelo and Jacques Rabemananjara, he represented Madagascar in such landmark collections as Senghor’s Anthologie and Moore and Beier’s Modern African Poetry.

Of Ms Virani, my brilliant Ismaili countrywoman, I have no trace today. She most probably went home to Uganda, but the upheavals that were to culminate in the Idi Amin terror were fast brewing, and our compatriots of Asian descent ended up scattered all over the world.

But I imagine that the lady, like most of her contemporaries, went on to great things wherever she landed. These relatives of ours were so well-educated and progressive that they just had to thrive.

Back to the ladies who delighted me recently, all three are from the USA. Their ministering was significantly uplifting in a fortnight in which practically everything emanating from that land of the brave and the free seemed to contribute to a mounting mood of doom and gloom.

For me, it started with the “alternative fact” of so-called “Islamic terrorism”. I thought this could be countered with the simple fact that terror and terrorism have nothing to do with Islam or any true faith. But then we hear of a poor Muslim American woman, going about her duties at the JFK Airport, being kicked, with the “promise” that someone was going to get rid of her and all her likes. Is this the poisonous power of alternative facts?

THREE SISTERS

As if that was not terror enough, Vahideh Rasekhi, a young PhD scholar, returning to her school, is detained for more than 25 hours at the same JFKIA. Apparently, she had attempted to enter the US with her American Green Card, and an Iranian-sounding name, on a flight originating from a “banned” nation.

But then enter the three “sisters” who did a lot to restore my faith in the greatness of the USA. The first and quite surprising one for me was Katherine B. Johnson, the NASA mathematical genius and her sisters who helped put the first American in orbit, way back in my youthful 1960s.

I must admit that I had never heard of this incredible lady, despite her having been decorated by President Obama. But, thanks to the creative and persuasive language of film, she leapt to my attention through “Hidden Figures”. The film highlights this African-American woman’s almost infallible computations, on which the astronauts of the space generation, like John Glenn, relied like oracles.

I am yet to see the film. Moreover, I am an absolute “cipher” (zero) at mathematics. So, all I can say is that I am thrilled that it has been told while Katherine Johnson is still alive, at the spritely youthful age of 99. I think it is the real story of Americans who make their country truly great. 

The other two “sisters” will be pretty familiar to my fellow sports and, especially, tennis enthusiasts. “Down Under” in Melbourne last Saturday, Venus Williams and Serena Williams, real life sisters, battled each other in the women’s singles final of one of the biggest tennis tournaments on earth.

We might have heard that before, but this encounter was history-making in several ways. Not only did Serena Williams win her 23rd Grand Slam title, the highest number for any player in recent history. No other pair of sisters has ever met so many times in the finals of top world-ranking competitions. Secondly, at ages 36 and 35, they were the most grown-up female players ever to take to the court in an Australian Open singles final. Here probably lies the secret of perpetual youth.

But what is most edifying about Venus and Serena’s story is the tenacious, hardworking, fighting spirit that it embodies. I told you some of my “pilgrimage” to Compton, California, where their playing carrier started. Even today, Compton is not a “privileged” area by any definition.

Indeed, privilege or middle class comfort, often associated with sports like tennis and golf, was not a feature of the Williamses’ early days. On the contrary, poor, black and female, they seemed to have all the odds stacked against them.

In a society that still blindly adores wealth, insinuates that drugs, crime and gangs are the monopoly of one particular community, and tolerates such sexist attitudes as grabbing women by the “you-know-what”, girls like Venus and Serena appeared to be designed and destined for dismal failure.

Yet, taking advantage of the very few assets they had, namely, their single-minded and focused father and their strength and indomitable spirits, they ascended to the pinnacle of the American dream. What is more, they are staying there for the rest of their generation and for posterity.

It certainly has not been easy. Serena and Venus have had to struggle against not only personal problems, like debilitating injuries and other health conditions but also the perennial ugly monsters of sexism and racism. Those who follow the sport might remember incidents like one of the Roland Garros (Paris Open) finals, where chauvinistic spectators were actually “cheering” Serena’s errors, an unmitigated sacrilege in the etiquette of tennis.

Comparable discrimination forced the star to also boycott the Indian Wells, California, tournament, a major fixture on the American circuit, for over a dozen years. Then there was the uproar that followed her support for equal pay for male and female players.

In the bewildering din of walls and bans and tearing up, it is refreshing hearing stories like those of Serena, Venus and Kate Johnson and their like-minded fellow Americans.