![]() ![]() I tore one of his taps off the wall in such a blind panic and eventually threw myself in his shower. “I was running around trying to get enough water. "I was the one that was injured, but it was a crazy, horrible experience for Liam to witness as well.”Īndy said his body burned for what seemed like an eternity after the heater exploded in his face on the balcony of Liam’s flat.Īndy revealed: “He was trying to help me but I thought I was going to die. “The pain and the panic I felt is something no one should have to go through. "I was set completely on fire – terror is the only word fit to describe what I was feeling. Revealing his horrific scars for the first time, Andy said: “I can still see Liam trying to put out the flames with his hands. He spent a fortnight in hospital undergoing SEVEN skin grafts as they treated him for third-degree burns. ![]() In his first full interview since last month’s horrific fire, Andy Samuels said he is convinced the singer’s quick-thinking saved his life.Īndy, 21, was rushed to hospital after his whole body caught alight as he tried to fill a patio heater with gas. Liam Payne’s best friend has told how the One Direction star tried to stop a raging fire with his bare hands during a freak accident in his flat. How Liam Payne saved my life: Brave One Direction star beat out flames with hands after freak accident In fact, the YouTube and Twitter users who repeatedly called Zayn a terrorist, along with the Tumblr users who jokingly referred to him as “Mexican Zayn” (hint: Pakistan is not in Mexico, and people of colour are not a monolithic tribe that come from interchangeable countries) weren’t even the worst of it. Neither was the now-deleted (but screencapped) Oh No They Didn’t! comment that fetishized Zayn’s race, claiming that his mixed heritage was a) the most attractive thing about him and b) meant he couldn’t be brought home to meet the commenter’s mother. This process is known as Othering, and on the most basic level, it works to alienate people of colour and standardize whitenessīut all of that wasn’t the worst of it, really. This plays into the racism faced by South Asian, Middle Eastern, and South American communities and other people of colour in the West, in which they are not perceived as the standard, plain, ‘normal’ folks, but something else - something strange and out of the ordinary. He would be wrapped up in an enigma so fans could get that unique pleasure of trying to understand him, but in the end, the public would be ultimately and perpetually mystified. Somewhere within the hierarchy of people who work to shape boy-band images and mold them into compartmentalized products for easy consumption, it was decided that Zayn, the half-Pakistani Muslim, would play the distinct role of the slightly foreign one. Of course, this marketing scheme was never an accident. When was the last time you met someone named Zayn Malik at your nondescript local Starbucks on a bland Sunday afternoon ordering a vanilla frap? (Please note: this paragraph is best-read while wearing a pair of sarcasm goggles, preferably with a built-in ‘Long-Suffering Recipient of Racist Stereotypes’ filter.) His name was Zayn Malik, for heaven’s sake. He wasn’t plain and boring like the rest of his pale-skinned, bright-eyed bandmates, all of whom could’ve been the good ol’ boys next door. ![]() ![]() Zayn being a half-Pakistani Muslim was what counted as mysterious these days. He was just Harry: irresistible, charming, and endearing because he was likely to be the last of them to get a joke or crack one successfully.Īnd then it hit me. Why couldn’t any of the other quiet boys be mysterious? Heartthrob Harry Styles, for instance, seemed to speak just as sparingly in interviews and was infamous for his slow, languid drawl that most people attributed to–well, nothing. I started to wonder why it had to be Zayn that was labeled the mysterious, and even worse, bad one. ![]()
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