My Youngest Uncle: Abdel Mjid
From the beginning of my life, this man has always been some sort of role model for me. Maybe because he is the youngest man of my father’s family. And so we, the “children’, have more facilities to identify ourselves to him. I don’t know why but each time he came in Angers from Paris, I needed to see him in order to share his vision of life, his experience, his humor. The place where we used to see each other was my grandparents’ apartment, his parents. Every time we saw him there, the atmosphere changed to become funnier and “younger”. He had this power to be the center of the attention without being arrogant and his presence was attracting me and the others like some kind of hypnosis. He had some charisma (I am talking with the past tense because these days, I barely see him like one time a year) and was a good looking man if I can say so. A tall man (1, 87 meters), redhead hair (which is kind of rare for a Moroccan or for an Arab), he looked like an occidental man but when he started to speak Arabic which he learn after learning French, you could tell his native culture.
I also really appreciate who he is and his presence because he is responsible from who I am today. He influences me since I was child especially concerning my love for the American culture. Being the youngest of his family, he had tastes in matter of music or movies than I could easily share with him (being close to his generation, he was in his twenties when I was 10 years old). He made me listen rap music since I was a little boy and nowadays this passion is still present. I remember a scene where my cousin, Marwann, and I were at my aunt’s apartment in her private office, and he was making us listen some music in his computer. I was like we were discussing with a good friend who didn’t take in count the fact that we were younger than him. He treated us like men and not “babies”. My cousin was more interested in the music at that moment and could easily argue with him about it. They talked about famous rappers as Snoop Dogg or Tupac, I was impressed how much knowledge my cousin had for his age at this time and I was jealous in a way because I wanted to destroy any barrier between him and me. I wanted to be like him, full of self-confidence, charismatic and having success with women (yes, he was too).
That’s why I respected him; he created a part of my identity as for the youngest people of the family (cousins, sister). I easily recognized him in myself, some key traits and even physicals ones. Some members of my family told me that there is a resemblance between us and I took it as a compliment. Even in our way of talking, we agree that we look like maybe because now I have much more self confidence than I had ten years ago. And I will always be grateful for educating me in some ways.
