"Scarf? It's part of the religion, stupid"

Jean Bitar directed a feelgood documentary about children and young people in Hakunila

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By Leena Virtanen
     
      The centre of the Hakunila district of Vantaa glows in the sunshine, and the calm of noon predominates on the streets of the suburb.
      At the same time, the auditorium of the Hakunila school is full of activity. In the spring festival, pupils are performing a musical parody in which the boys and girls are trying to sing their way to fame.
      One of the brightest stars of the show is Dinh Hoang, a boy with a magnificent voice.
      Three girls sit at the back of the auditorium. Two of them are wearing scarves. The cousins Leila and Amina Taimouri are Iranian Kurds. The parents of Gagan Pablan are from India.
      Scarf or no scarf, the Idols parody hits home with everyone. When it is over, the girls tell the performers "good show!"
     
Of the 400 pupils at the Hakunila school, 65 have a foreign background. There are Vietnamese, Russians, Kurds, Somalis, Estonians, and Serbs. This is apparent just looking at the crowd in the auditorium.
     Documentary film director Jean Bitar lives on the outskirts of Hakunila. He decided to produce a film about his neighbourhood. He recruited pupils of the lower and upper levels of the local school with immigrant backgrounds to appear in the film.
     The document Säpinää Hakunilassa ("Excitement in Hakunila") has just been finished, and it will be shown tomorrow at a special screening at the Sotunki upper secondary school. The event is to be opened by Minister of Culture Tanja Karpela. After the ceremonious start, the film will be shown in schools, and possibly in cinemas, and later in the autumn, as part of the Documentary Project on YLE TV2.
     
Leila Amina and Gagan are in the film, and before the premiere they are excited. "Jean never said that half of Finland would see it", they say, feigning annoyance with Bitar.
     The girls keep jabbering away, and Bitar sighs next to them. It took him two years to complete his film, and work with the kids was "challenging" at times.
     Leila has a key role in the film, as she has the part of the actual journalist. Also holding the microphone is Mohammed Owais, whose parents are from Pakistan. Both are Muslims.
     
"My idea was to get them to interview each other. It is better that they come up with their questions themselves, than if they would just answer mine", Bitar explains.
     The questions that the kids ask each other are the same that other people always put to them - but rarely as directly as this.
     Leila asks another "Muslim lady" as they call themselves, why Muslims use scarves. When the answer is mere confused giggling, she comes out "It's part of the religion, stupid!"
     And then they smile at the camera.
     Leila asks Owais: "Do you beat your sister if she does something wrong?" Owais makes no such admission.
     
Bitar's documentary shows laughing children and young people. Anyone who thought that Hakunila would be a restless and dreary place, can forget it. In the documentary, nobody has a bad thing to say about Hakunila.
     Most of the kids at the school speak flawless Finnish, with various accents, and their body language is the same as that of their contemporaries.
     "It is surprising how quickly children learn customs - much more quickly than their parents", Bitar points out.
     To be frank, the kids speak better Finnish than Bitar does. Bitar himself is Lebanese by birth, but he has lived in Finland for 26 years - 14 of those years in Hakunila.
     
The young people in the documentary hope that the film will improve the reputation of foreigners in Finland. "That people here would learn that we aren't just some oddities", Leila says.
     They start to talk about racism, even though nobody asks. Can they smell a racist from a distance?
     "Yes. Racists stink", says Amina.
     But Hakunila is a good place, and Finland is a safe place to live, with less racism than in other countries. "Half of the Finns are OK", Amina says in her sarcastic manner.
     
Leila points out that in Karjaa, where she used to live, it was easier to get to know Finns.
     "I don't know how to be as open to Finns as I am toward foreigners", Leila admits.
     In the interviews, these Muslim kids also talk about religion.
     "We're proud of our religion", Leila Amina, and Owais say several times during the documentary. Owais adds: "It's not a good idea to say something bad about someone's religion."
     
Six years ago Hakunila was in the headlines because of unrest that had taken place, but since then it has been peaceful. Still, it is not a good idea to go to the shopping centre late at night, especially for girls.
     Amina recalls only one precarious situation in Hakunila.
     "I was once attacked by a Russian woman."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 10.5.2006

More on this subject:
 FACTFILE: The most colourful neighbourhood in Vantaa

LEENA VIRTANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
leenavirtan@gmail.com