Aufgabe Vorschlag B1 - Aufgabe 3.1 · Abitur Hessen Englisch LK 2021

Material

Chimene Suleyman: Us (short story, 2017)

The plastic handles dug into Madeeha’s fingers. A small rip appeared near the bottom of the carrier-

bag where a juice carton poked through. From the pavement the canal below looked grass-green, the

fungi a still blanket across it. Two newbuilds with metre-long balconies tucked between redbrick

warehouses that functioned as offices. Back windows watched out onto the water. Letterbox-red Royal

5 Mail vans parked in a line, the wide clock-face of St Anne’s behind them.

From beneath a black coat zipped high to his chin, his gut swelled. Bald, grey stubble appeared by his

ears, a day old. To one side of him a younger man with a long face and blue eyes the colour of cold

that set against the grey of his suit. On the other, a man with a tight navy tie let out a mean laugh. They

would teach her a lesson. That’s what they said when they stepped from the bus outside Lidl and she

10 had walked in front of them. They would teach her a lesson, this hummus-eating, camel-shagging slut.

Such behaviour seemed tolerated; a form of ‘cruel to be kind’, so Madeeha and people like her could

assimilate into a British way of life faster. It would be good for her. Why else bother arriving in a

country if it weren’t to embrace all of it? Every part of it. Did that include the suspicion too, she

wondered. No matter. She had heard it all before: your people are terrorists, you fuck Bin Laden 1, go

15 home, paki, go home. For only that week a man on the 135 2 had looked at her and in a sing-song voice

chanted, ‘Kill them all. Kill them all. I don’t give a fuck, kill them all.’

‘Are we all responsible?’ she had asked her husband. ‘All billion of us? Is it my fault there’s terror in

this world? Did Muslims introduce terror to these people, like they had never acted in it before? Is it

my fault, or is it yours?’ For once something was not her husband’s fault. And had he chosen to

20 answer her he would have pointed it out with pleasure. But he hadn’t responded. What could he say?

This man who had worked in a butcher’s for 18 years, who had missed family weddings and funerals,

unable to pay for a flight, who now remembered more of Poplar 3 than where he had once been born.

‘They want us to apologise,’ he said eventually, words mumbled between mouthfuls of bread.

‘For what? Did I orchestrate the killings? Or think they are good? Innocent until proven guilty. Unless

25 you are Muslim and they forget which order the saying goes.’

With bags of shopping in her hands, Madeeha was guilty until proven innocent: she hated British

people and cheered the deaths of western journalists and soldiers. She had information on future acts

of terror and could conceal a weapon beneath her garments. Truth was irrelevant, even proof wasn’t

required. This backwards, barbaric society she belonged to, for didn’t they treat their women

30 appallingly? And yet the man in the grey suit gripped the back of her arm.

‘Don’t,’ she said.

‘Fuck off.’

‘Please don’t.’

The man with the tie grabbed his belt buckle and she pushed the thought away. ‘Please.’

35 ‘Why you even here? Terrorist bitch,’ he shook her arm. The carrier bag split wider, a lemon fell from

it and rolled into the road, ‘fuck off back home and stop killing us.’

Us. She had heard this word so much. ‘Us’ did not come alone. ‘Us’ was paired with ‘They’. They are

uncivilised. They are brutal. They are savage. ‘They’ had accomplices: ‘Them’ and ‘Those’. What did

I tell you about those people? You know you can’t trust them. This wasn’t racism. No, it was self-

40 preservation. No one was going to die because political correctness had spiralled into madness and if

that meant hurting someone’s feelings in order to be vigilant at an airport, or train station,

supermarket, or road, then so be it.

‘Please.’

The open palm pushed into her back. She caught her breath, the bags dropped spinning into traffic. On

45 her knees she felt the grit rub against her skin. It stung. ‘Fuck jihad. Islam is a cancer.’

Brown Oxford shoes stepped past, heels clicked against pavement, hands in pockets that searched for

warmth.

Madeeha collected what she could: fruit, butter, meat that hadn’t travelled far. She walked slowly.

Yes, she was fine she insisted to passersby. She closed her front door and locked it. Spent a moment

50 longer than she was used to with her back against it. Shireen was home. Music on, her daughter’s

voice became louder as she sang along. ‘Mum? Is that you?’ Us and Them. She thought on these

words. Her daughter was both, but that wouldn’t matter to them. That word again. Us and Them.

Peace and Terror. Right and Wrong. Questions philosophers had centuries over been unable to answer

and yet now everyone seemed to be so sure they knew. ‘I am sorry.’ She said these words into the

55 house. Allowed them to find corners of cabinets to rest on; the photo frames: let them slow a moment

over the cushions and the toaster and the rug. I am sorry. I am sorry for keeping you here. I am sorry

you are not safe. ‘Mu-uuum?’ This is what it was to be afraid. ‘I’m coming, my child.’

1 Bin Laden – Saudi-Arabian Islamist who planned the terror attacks on 9/11

2 the 135 – refers to bus line 135

3 Poplar – district in East London

(901 Wörter)

Chimene Suleyman: Us, in: Sabrina Mahfouz (Hg.): The things I would tell you. British Muslim women write, London 2017, S. 44–47.

3.1 “I want everybody who comes here and makes their lives here to be, and to feel, British – that’s the most important thing – and to learn English.”

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson on immigration, July 2019

Referring to material dealt with in class, assess the degree to which various ways of helping immigrants “feel British” have a chance of reducing the gap between ‘them’ and ‘us’. (35 BE)