12 June 2011
Apology to readers
I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone -- I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in thıs year of revolutions. The events there are beıng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience.
This experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism.
However, I have been deeply touched by the reactions of readers.
Best,
Tom MacMaster,
Istanbul, Turkey
July 12, 2011The sole author of all posts on this blog
6 June 2011
Update on Amina
I have been on the telephone with both her parents and all that we can say right now is that she is missing. Her father is desperately trying to find out where she is and who has taken her.Unfortunately, there are at least 18 different police formations in Syria as well as multiple different party militias and gangs. We do not know who took her so we do not know who to ask to get her back. It is possible that they are forcibly deporting her.From other family members who have been imprisoned there, we believe that she is likely to be released fairly soon. If they wanted to kill her, they would have done so.That is what we are all praying for.I will post any updates as soon as I have them.
Amina
Dear friends of Amina,
I am Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari’s cousin and have the following information to share.
Earlier today, at approximately 6:00 pm Damascus time, Amina was walking in the area of the Abbasid bus station, near Fares al Khouri Street. She had gone to meet a person involved with the Local Coordinating Committee and was accompanied by a friend.
Amina told the friend that she would go ahead and they were separated. Amina had, apparently, identified the person she was to meet. However, while her companion was still close by, Amina was seized by three men in their early 20’s. According to the witness (who does not want her identity known), the men were armed. Amina hit one of them and told the friend to go find her father.
One of the men then put his hand over Amina’s mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan with a window sticker of Basel Assad. The witness did not get the tag number. She promptly went and found Amina’s father.
The men are assumed to be members of one of the security services or the Baath Party militia. Amina’s present location is unknown and it is unclear if she is in a jail or being held elsewhere in Damascus.
I have just spoken with her father who is trying to locate her. He has asked me to share this information with her contacts in the hope that someone may know her whereabouts and so that she might be shortly released.
If she is now in custody, he is not worried about being in hiding and says he will do anything he can to free her. If anyone knows anything as to her whereabouts, please contact Abdallah al Omari at his home or please email me, Rania Ismail, at onepathtogod at gmail dot com.
We are hoping she is simply in jail and nothing worse has happened to her. Amina had previously sent me several texts to post should something happen to her and we will wait until we have definite word before doing so.
Salamat,
Rania O. Ismail
BIRD SONGS
The bird flies free
Knowing no boundaries
Borders mean nothing
When you have wingsMy heart and my soul
Long to follow and soar
Out over mountains
And deserts and seasI have no wings
And earth presses in
Wrapped in a sheet
Forever to lieWeighed down by dirtclods
Never to feel
Wind on my wings
Sun on my backSoaring and flying
Freedom is coming
Here am I wanting
To know it one day
Still Sunni After All These Years
Some people tell me I am foolish for what I believe. Maybe I am. But I have no problem stating with full cognizance that I am a Muslim, I am a Sunni Muslim. The ‘why’ of it is not so difficult to explain but I will anyway.I was born to Sunni Muslim parents but that is not the full reason nor even most of it. Were that all, I would, I believe, have abandoned belief long ago. Surely, beliefs that make it harder to do whatever one wants to do and to do what, if one did not have such beliefs, would be easier would not be kept if not sincerely held. How much easier, when living in America, not to be Muslim, not to eat hallal food or wear hijab … let alone to force oneself to remain chaste …. To not fast in Ramadan and not to pray and so on …
And as I’m lazy and fearful, if I didn’t strongly believe, I’d long ago have abandoned the religion. But I did not, because I believe.
I believe firstly because of personal experience of the divine. Now, that can be explained away as magnetic fields or aberrations of the mind, if one is strictly rationalist, or as emanations of some other spirits, rather than of God.
For me, though, having accepted that what I saw and felt and experienced was real, I applied logic and reason to the world. To me, time is directional and history has a meaning. There is an end and a beginning of all things. The universe itself, we find, exists with conditions that, were they any other way, would be impossible for us. They call that the Anthropomorphic principle, if I recall correctly, and also press the idea of cosmic mediocrity. Ours is an average planet around an average star, out in the edges of an average galaxy, and so on and so forth. We are an average species in size and form. There is nothing special about us.
But we live in a universe that is not an accident. We are rational beings and we have a moral sense. I believe that there is a creator of the universe, a First force, a God of the Universe, who set the rules that make this world. I believe that the universe is vast but that God is vaster. I believe that this God set forth the Cosmos in the distance of time and made the conditions such that, in the fullness of time, life would appear and, with it, intelligence.
But I do not believe that we ourselves are the purpose for that; I see no reason to think that Earth is special nor that humans are perfect. The universe was made for intelligent and rational beings to behold but humanity is likely not the only rational intelligence in the vastness of the universe. Otherwise, there’d be a lot of wasted space.
So I believe in a rational universe; I am a deist, I suppose. But why be Muslim? Why not find another path to the divine?
For me, that is a bit more complicated. I view God as above and beyond humanity, as much greater than we are as we are to a virus, only much more so indeed. God is infinite, endless, without beginning or end. God is neither male nor female and far above any category of our minds. God is beyond our comprehension, but just and moral, compassionate, and unchallengeable. God is so great as not to be contained in a man or a woman or a tree or an animal or a rock or anything. God is everywhere.
And God does not play favorites; no special people, no special family. I reject that God begets or is begotten; I reject Holy Nations and Holy Families. I believe that God is universal, one God for all humanity, the same God for all the intelligences in all the universe. I believe in a God unchanging through time for God is beyond time. I believe in a God who cares, not just for certain people in certain places, but for all humanity, for all sophonts wherever we may be in time or space. I believe in a God who sends messages and messengers to humanity to steer us towards what is right and place the keys of our natural religion, the natural religion of the universe, in our grasp.
I reject the idea of original sin; no one is damned because of what their parents did or did not do and salvation is available for everyone, all the time, from the beginning of time until the end of the universe.
And that is also why I call myself a Sunni, not for sectarian reasons (though I bear a name that marks me as ‘damned’ by birth to some), but for reasons of my belief. I reject the idea of special people have special access to God; I reject the notions of Popes or Imams who are infallible. I reject wilayat I faqih. I reject the notion of priests and prelates needed to mediate the experience of God for ordinary people.
I believe that all of us, men and women, are capable of comprehending the divine as much as any human can. There are no special people, just humans. A priesthood of all believers and all believers priests.
And so I believe that there is no God but God, I believe in the Messengers of God and their teachings. I try to reconcile my own life to the precepts which have been given because they come as close as humanity has known to describe both my own experience of the Divine and my own rational explorations of how the universe is made.
I am a Sunni Muslim because I am a rational person who believes in God and in freedom of humanity, who believes in the equality of all people before God and in the difference between Good and Evil.
That may seem crazy but that is what I believe.
Another musical interlude
for a funny, funny take on this:
I'm American enough to want to make poor little Glen cry some more if I can!
Jaulan is in our hearts
Yesterday was June 5th, the first day of the commemoration of the Naksah. On the ceasefire lines, there were ‘clashes’, as the press will euphemistically call them. In Lebanon, in Gaza, all across the West Bank … and on the line of control between Syrian and Israeli forces. There, 23 human beings, unarmed, were killed by the occupiers’ guns and hundreds wounded.
The occupier already is claiming that all of this was orchestrated by that fiendish mastermind, Bashar Assad. From this side of the mountain, that looks frankly ridiculous. I suppose they think he also masterminded these ‘puppets’ of his in kadima
Of course, they like to believe that theirs is the world’s most moral army and all sorts of inane platitudes to their powers of loving kindness. Here’s a good example of the most moral soldiers in the world, the elite shining light to the goyim, showering their morality down on some depraved sons of Amalek:
And here is how they explain it:
They cannot admit that they are ever wrong and so they must always work to defame every Arab, every bit of our culture, our religion, everything. We are evil and history is meaningless; all that matters to them is maintaining their myth and repeating their lies ever more shrilly. Look at the images of the Arab demonstartors and contrast them with the rhetoric of the Most Noble People in the Most Holy and Most Moral Country That Ever Was as they celebrate their Holy War:
But we are violent, we are evil. As soon as I post this, I know, the defenders of the Holy Nation will come and denounce me, will ask why it is that I do not see their cause as holy and my own people, my own heritage, my own history, as nothing more than the squawkings of baboons.
Don’t laugh; I am sure they will come. And they will again and again demonstrate their arrogance and their ignorance. When not claiming that their innate superiority in all things means that democracy is not for the likes of me (after all, how else to justify their state?) or that we are all needing just a firm, pale hand to guide us, they will show their ignorance of history.
I for one know my own history. And I know my own country. I know that Jaulan was lost after the Syrians had agreed to cease fire. I know who started that war; it wasn’t us. I know that the Israelis hold Jaulan because they would steal our water and need a nice platform to keep Damascus in their gunsights. I know that there is no difference between what keeps them there and what took Saddam to Kuwait … I know of American sailors who died to keep the world from knowing … I know that their own generals admitted that all the ‘vicious wicked Syrian attacks’ were provoked by them, not us …
I know also of the ethnic cleansing that they undertook up there; 131,000 people made homeless so that Russian migrants might have a place to illegally live.
And whatever happens in Palestine, no Syrian can forget that they stole our land and made our people homeless.
And we also know who here was guilty of collusion; we know who worked closest with the Soviets then to start the war, who it was who gave the orders to pull back troops from impregnable strongholds on the Jaulan, who it was who would surrender our patrimony without a shot;
The one who gave those orders, the order that, for what it’s worth, meant the death of my father’s older brother, now has a son. And that son is called the President.Every Syrian knows that; every Syrian knows that Traitor of the Naksa’s second son is President and that another runs his squads of killers. Every Syrian knows that Bashar has never lifted a finger to redeem Jaulan.
So when the lying liars and propagandists, the makers of hasbara and singers of paeans to the so-called Chosen claims that “Bashar tricked us into killing people (if you can call mere Arabs humans and not two-legged dogs) so as to distract fromhis own crimes”, tell them to stuff it. They lie.
Those were not government planned protests; if they had any ability to see beyond their own lies they’d know that. That is not how the regime’s propaganda works. And, when the slogans of protesters have always condemned this regime for losing Jaulan, they will not bring attention to their greatest failure.
No, this is not Bashar’s trick; this is a taste of things to come. The Arab people are asleep no more and the Arab people, not the regimes, are making their own history now. They protest on Jaulan not because the regime is strog but because it is too weak to stop them. And, when we are free, this is what you will see, every day on every frontier. Millions of Arabs chanting, Thawra hat’n Nasr!
5 June 2011
ANOTHER DAY IN DAMASCUS
Well, we had a scare here but it looks like we're back; the internet was down for virtually the whole country for a day and came back on yesterday. Before posting again, I needed to be sure of safety (as well as giving highest priority to those who had greater need than me of internet use!) and here I am …In my ever humble opinion, the regime shut down the internet out of desperation; they are beginning to really feel how far they’ve fallen. I’m not the only one who thinks that they will not be able to get back up from this. However, the days and weeks and months ahead are not going to be simple ones. We know that they will be pushing back as much as they can and, among them, there are elements who’d rather pull the whol edifice of our society down than hand over power to anyone else.
Shutting down the internet failed for them because, they realized, that by doing so they were admitting that they were losing and getting desperate. Syria is no longer a country isolated from the world and where they can do as they wish. No, when they shut down the internet, they faced the ire not just of dissidents and oppositionists but of every Syrian involved in business. The merchants who rely on credit card sales, the financiers and exporters, all of them are put up against the wall. And if the regime wants to lose its last bits of support beyond clan, tribe, and sect, those are the people they cannot alienate. They’ve succeeded in just a few short months in alienating nearly everyone else; they cannot afford any more.
They lost by being inflexible and intransigent; they lost by not realizing that times have changed. That will be their epitaph; they lost because they could not change.
They thought that the methods of the past made sense. In years gone by, Syrian regimes worried about conspiracies that worked to undertake a coup. Those sorts of conspiracies – and there were many in those days – formed inside the country but sought aid from outside. Sometimes, they sought aid in Amman or Baghdad, other times further away. The years from independence until the triumph of the Baath are a kaleidoscope of such conspiracies: Baathis, Syrian Nationalists, pro-Hashemites, Communists, and every flavor found here tried and sometimes even succeeded. The CIA bragged of pulling off a coup in Damascus; others tried as well. And, when the Lion of Qardaha took power in his paws, he made sure the regime was strong against such coups from inside or outside the regime. Even now, such thinking persists; there are those parties that were not invited to Antalya and whose presence wasn’t welcome who still hold close to that model: Rifaat & Son, Khaddam, Ghadry, all three go by the model that the road to power in Damascus lies through having the correct foreign sponsors and a few well-placed bullets, without thinking that the fact that 2 of those 3 are more despised here than ever Hafez or Bashar have been (and the third can only claim reflected glory). But they are already yesterday’s men, more even than this regime.
The regime tried on the foreign conspiracy theory of this revolution: it failed for the simple reason it is not true. Yes, we have supporters and friends outside, but are they so deaf as not to hear what nearly every one of us says? We want a free and independent Syria; we reject foreign intervention, whether Persian or Israeli, Russian or American.
They have tried on other theories; that there is a salafist conspiracy to create an Islamic state somewhat more conservative than the Afghan Emirate or the Najdi Realm. And we wonder, do they even know their own people? Such has never been Syrian Islam. But, even if it were, there is no evidence. They want to claim that the opposition are retreads of 1982, under secret guidance from the Ikhwaan (and all dupes of Bin Laden (note to self: avoid catty comment abt how UBL and BHA are kin)) but that, too, misses the facts. The Brotherhood here, just as in Egypt and Tunisia, is not the moving force and is only one of many parties trying to play catch up. Al Qaeda – well, they are so 2001! -- has more support in Wisconsin than it has here … in other words, none.
So all their planning has failed because they do not understand what has happened. The roots of this revolution are not to be found in bread shortages or droughts, not to be sought in audiotapes of sermons or in secret cells … no, the roots of the revolution lie in something else completely, something that one might even give a little credit to the regime for doing:
Once, these lands were full of illiterate peasants and nomads and schools were only in the towns. Things changed. New generations were born and grew numerous. Now, half of all Syrians are under twenty (though the birthrate has steadily been falling, we still have the effect of the massive baby boom of my age cohort) and virtually all above 5 or 6 have gone to school, can read and write, can do arithmetic, and so on and so forth. Not even a year ago, if I recall, the regime was proud to announce that illiteracy had been totally eliminated in the first province; that, they should have known, was the moment this revolution became inevitable.
A nation that was no longer ignorant and where everyone, rich and poor, knew that there were other ways of governance and that, in other lands, things were better, could not forever be held down. They should have seen the signs coming for a long time; the return to Islam was a first symptom, for, when a people first learns to read, the first book they wish to read is their own scripture. And, when the people read the scripture for themselves, be they Muslim or Christian, without the mitigation of priest or imam, they will begin to form their own ideas. And they will rebel against despots.
But they didn’t catch on to that … and we kept learning and seething at our loss. New media gave us ever more windows on the world; I remember arriving in Damascus and seeing DVDs on sale on the street for films that had opened the same day I’d departed from the US. I’m up to date with Doctor Who and Game of Thrones, able to watch them here (no SPOILERS!)
Syrians have always traveled and traded and settled all over the world; in Roman times, Syrian expats set up shop beneath Hadrian’s Wall and our presence excited Henri Pirenne to form his thesis. Now, as many Syrians are in the diaspora as at home and there’s not a family in the country that doesn’t have a member in the Gulf, in Europe, in Australia, or in the Americas. Those who have stayed home, too, have reached out and ‘seen’ the world virtually. We are no longer walled off from the world.
And that was where the revolution came from. No conspiracy, no diabolical plot, but the slow accumulation of grievances and indignities and a people who’d outgrown its rulers. We were still sleeping, but barely. And a spark was all that was needed to awaken us. Bouazizi first lit the spark that set the Arab world aflame. Now, it is not 1982 nor 1958 nor even 1925. It’s not the Arab 1968 or 1989. It is far greater than those. Want a facetious historical analogy? Try this one on for size; it is 1848 and the Springtime of Nations redux. Then, the rulers blamed Freemasons and such and could not comprehend that the Age of Kings and Emperors was over, that a new age had dawned. We’re that and we’re moving far faster; the old world is crumbling and a new one is begun …
But they push back. They kill, they torture. I personally doubt that they have fully twenty thousand armed men that they can truly count on; the rest are either consigned to barracks, melting away or will leave if pushed too hard. They know it, we know it. They are losing and can only lash out here at the end.
But it is far from over; the world has seen what they did to Hamza al Khatib and we know that we could be next. Now, we have rituals that we do before Friday prayers, new rites of ablution. I keep my nails trimmed shorter than they have ever been lest I be captured and they try and pry them off. I clip down my father’s toenails for the same reason and we dye each other’s hair. I write my name, my identity numbers and phone numbers on my arm freshly every Friday. And so does my father. I write out in English and Arabic on his back and his chest; he does the same for me. Yes, it is odd … but it is safety. When, if, I am dead or he is, before they wash me down and wrap me in a winding sheet, I’d like it if someone knew who I was and tells the world. Or, if we end up in mass graves, when they disinter us, someone will know ‘that’s what became of them’.
I hope I am wasting my time with that; I hope I wasted my time seeking inks that were hard to wash off. I hope it’s something I soon will laugh about.
But I cannot be sure. Today or tomorrow might be the last one for me; or, tomorrow might be the first day of the new Syria. Ben Ali is gone, Mubarak is gone, Saleh, they say, is gone as well. Assad has not much longer and I plan to see him go.
We went up north and helped spread sparks, in the cities of the plain and by the banks of the Orontes; we listened and we carried messages. Some were sent beyond this land, others were carried here in turn. And we heard people talking of frustration; we’ve been pushing so long, they said, and they kill us and we just die…. Why not take matters in our own hands and let them know? Take up the guns which are buried, uses bombs and make revolutionary justice.
I for one pushed back against that; we want a new Syria, a break from all that’s come before. If we take power by killing and torturing, if we make summary justice and examples of Them, how are we different? All we will have done was trade the Tribe of Lion for another Tribe, and nothing will have changed, nothing will be different, except who it is who rapes the land and who is beaten down. No, we must not.
Some people say you fight fire with fire: no, you fight fire with water, not with fire. We will put out the blind hatreds of sectarianism not with sectarianism of our own but with love and with solidarity. We must remember that. We must remember that, in overthrowing this regime, we must not replace Alawi-Aflaqi sectarianism with a sectarianism of our own. We must not simply change the names on the doors of the ministries but remake this whole society.
And I fear; already tales of lynchings have started to begin. How long before there are more? Each day that goes on like this sees more anger at the regime, more justice that is demanded and not given. If I were them, I’d realize this. They cannot go on this way; they will lose, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next month, but, when the Eids roll around, other names will be said in prayers and all of them will be dead or fled … if they do not break soon, there will be oceans of vengeance and rivers of blood spilt when they do. For their own sake, for their kin and their sect, they need to stand aside while there is still hope for them. We are a forgiving people, a hospitable nation, and with great hearts; we will still forgive them their crimes now … but we are also a nation of long memories. And we are growing impatient.
They must go, they must go soon. That is all there is to say.
INVITATION
“Look long into my wand’ring eyes
Follow my gaze cross these dark’ning skies
Place all your trusts in my hands
And follow me to other lands
See as I the wonderment
As we fly above the Firmament
Stand before the Ancient of Days
Be by me beneath his gaze
And follow me into the Deep
Jump with me from cliffs most steep
Walk with me above the trees
Live for a time beneath the seas
Face with me the Demons bright
And always will we fight the good fight
Falling into the Deepest Pit
And see what Lightbringer himself has writ
Come then with me, friend,
Join upon an endless quest
And seek knowledge and all that’s best!”
FOUND WANTING
All dark nights
And endless searches
Now are ended
At last, I have found her
The Queen of All My Dreaming
That Source of All My Longing
She has a name
A face
A voice
Now all that is left to do
Is but to win herBut that
That is the hardest part
Indeed
An Avernian ascent
A thousand if’s appear
And of these if’s
I have no power
All that lies within Her
The True
The Pure
The One
And if she scorns me?
I will have been weighed in the scales
And found wanting
1915
There is at my house
A drawer full of medals
My Grandfather earned them
A long time ago
Pretty ribbons colored
And dull medal pins
They were won fighting for
God, Caliph and Country
Or catching a bullet
In the first days of warSo long ago
The Great War
The War to End All Civilization
Or to Save
Or Something
(What to End? What to Save?)
And he’s gone
And so is all
He thought he was fighting for.
ALL FALL DOWN
I.
Guns! Tanks! Airplanes!
Rolling carcasses of steel
Caress the levelled hillsides
With Death's Icy Gaze
Leaders chanting endlessly:
"Deutschland uber alles,
Brittania rules the waves,
Roma aeterna victoriaque,
God Bless the USA"
America, Germany, Britain,
Rome, Babylon, and Ur
"Dust to Dust,
And Ashes to Ashes"
Hurry up now and get past the "to"!
Who shall be next?
Stand in line and wail!
We all fall down
Lord Protector, Guide us now!
Defend us against the Devil
And the Fury of the Northmen!
The Enemy of God and Man
Will forever have power enough and more
(Hitler was elected, too.)II.
The Sky breaks
The Sun streams in
Skulls in Mountains
Mark Hulagu's Novus Ordo Seculorum's wake
Where were ye birds
And your pebbles
To send this Abraha's elephants back
Beyond the Sea?
Alas! O, Attila! O, Alaric! Alas!
You never left a scar like this!
Ya Haroun, what thanks did Karlos Magnos' kin
Send for Abu'Abbas?
A burning city?
A ruined land?
By the Sweet waters of Babylon,
We will sit, weep, and remember
And in the mountains of Nineveh,
We will rend our clothing and lament!
Do not fear, O Babylon!
Now their walls are covered, too:
"Mene, mene, tekel, upharson"
happy shall be the Collector
Of your debts!III.
Blinding flash! Heat!
Scorching earth!
Is today Black Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday?
Another Guillotin stands proudly by
Watching his brilliance shine.
Like Bulgars, we've been blinded
Only we have done it to ourselves.
The silence you requested is granted
Now go thou
And do likewise!
O You Proud King!
O You Proud Kingdom!
Men pray to you saying:
"None is like you,
None can war against you!"
Forty two months of you!
Enough!
Too much!
Like the Nephilim, like them of Gomorrah,
You too shall drown!
I hope against hope
I pray to whoever hears it is so.IV.
Suddenly,
I look up
A woman stands before me
In one hand, she holds a torch
A Red Light blazes.
And in the other?
A placard:
"I am
America the Great
The Mother of Prostitutes
And of all the
Abominations of this Earth!"
And I knew!
Liberty was drunk!
You Lying Whore!
You Prostituted Lush!
Mother!V.
Like Oedipus,
I plot to kill a king
But I, I shall kill you too, O Mother!
"Rache! Rache!"
A bloody finger writes.
Widows and orphans
Sonless mothers
And motherless sons
Attest that, yes, you are no wimp.
Now, if only, your mother
Were sonless
And wife a widow ...
But, you were not alone!
Revenge will be great!
Revenge will be bloody!
And a long way off.
Play amidst the rubble
Dance among the Ashes.VI.
"Ring around the Rosies,
Pocketful of Posies,
Ashes, Ashes,
We all fall ..."
ILIKIMU WRITES
Shahar! Athtart! Anat! Ashima!
Qadeshtu of the Sacred Rite!
Kothar and Khasis! Melqart and Fishy Dagon!
Smith Baal of the Thunderbolt!
And Shapash who rides above them all!I see your faces graven on the stones and know
You were mighty ones here in your time
Gods over all that you surveyed
You made your worshippers so wealthy
And brought down doom on any who disobeyedNow your temples all are crumbled
Back to the dust from which they came
Or buried beneath the names of other gods
When even your cities and your peoples
Become but names on tired tonguesWhat becomes of gods like you
When none can even say their names?
Do gods go into heaven or vanish in the air?
What matters then a mortal’s life
When even gods are soon forgotten?
UNDER QASIYOUN
Beneath Qasiyoun, we live and die
And seldom look at the cave
Where once two brothers fought
And ground cried out with bloodAt mountain’s foot our dreams are lived
Beneath ten thousand years of ghosts
And armies of the djinn
Who look down on us and
judge us for what we’ve madeOf all that they’d left to us
And that we squandered for a day
Of roses and fancy silks
And dancing on their gravesOn Qasiyoun, the Prophet stood
Looked down and said “not yet
Not now for me is paradise”
And rightly turned his back on usFrom where the sacred river poured
From vales already ancient then
And spilled out on our plainAnd we unfit to their honor
Who paved paradise and established here
A brothel and a bar
A gambling house for Babylom
And a charnel pit for our kingWe turned our patrimony
Into basest currency.
Sold our mothers off
As slaves to men from other lands
And smiled happy to beAnd Qasiyoun looked down at us
And said paradise no more
Ana min Virginiya
I’ve written down that I am an Arab, that I have a name without a title, that I am patient in a country where people are enraged. I’ve written that my roots were entrenched here before the birth of time and before the opening of the eras, before the pines, and the olive trees and before the grass grew.I was born an Arab; I was born a Syrian. Arabic was the language of my first words and, insh’allah, it will be that of my last. My first memory is of Damascus and, perhaps, so too will be my last.
But I am complex, I am many things; I am an Arab, I am Syrian, I am a woman, I am queer, I am Muslim, I am binational, I am tall, I am too thin; my sect is Sunni, my clan is Omari, my tribe is Quraysh, my city is Damascus ….
And I am also a Virginian. I was born on an afternoon in a hospital in sight of where Woodrow Wilson entered the world, where streets are named for country stars … I grew up on a battlefield of the American Civil War in a town where other ancestors have lived and died for 250 years. And I learned this language in Virginia.
As a Virginian, I know other things besides those that I learned for other parts of me. I learned words and aspirations and desire to be free; I memorized whole passages and made them a part of me. I learned to say that “should I hold back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself guilty of treason towards my country, and of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, whom I revere above all earthly kings.”
I learned to declaim: “Is life so dear or is peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, All Mighty God! I do not know the course that others will take; but for me, Give me liberty or Give me death!” for those were good Virginian words.
I learned to recite Quran and I learned to recite another Virginian’s words:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”
Therefore! Write down on the top of the first page:
I do not hate people nor do I encroach but if I become hungry the usurper's flesh will be my food. Beware.. Beware of my hunger and my anger!
Dreams
I dreamed a dream that frightens me though it felt like one of hope. I dreamed that I was walking through an endless city, though at first it seemed familiar. I think that in this dream I was in my first year of high school, at least physically, though I was also me as I am now.I passed down endless empty streets of grey buildings beneath a sky the color of iron. It grew colder as I walked and a wind blew in and chilled me. I wore only a thin jacket and pulled it tighter. I walked on and on. After a time, it began to flurry. I kept walking, aimless, but not lost; I don’t know where I was going but I knew that I must keep going.
Colder, colder it grows … and I saw a car coming along. It was a battered tan Saab, from the middle 1980’s. The car stopped beside me and the passenger door opened. I looked in and I saw Miriam, my sister’s friend. She gestured for me to get in. I do and off we drive.
I remember her; she was older than me, and she was cooler, prettier, smarter, the kind of girl you’re jealous of at that age. She was always nice to me so I am not surprised that here she is.
We ride out of the city; I don’t remember if we spoke. The snow flurries grow thicker as we drive. And on and on and on we go. The city fades around us, hidden by fast falling snow. The road vanishes behind us and before us; everything is white. Still we drive on.
And after a long time, the snow starts to weaken. We are still in a land of monochrome white but I know the storm will go now. We drive on and I see before us that the road is now visible, a black line across a featureless plain.
Then, brilliant, bright emerald green rising out of the snow like an island, I see a meadow where oaks and olives and other trees grow. Miriam drives towards it. Then, we are underneath the trees, walking on the softest grass imaginable. A party is going on. There are many people here, they are all smiling … and many of them are faces that I think I know.
It is warm; it is summer here and the sky is crystal blue even though the snows are not far off. I take a cup full of some sort of punch from a table and I walk into the happy throng. I feel a hand upon my elbow. I turn.
Twinkling eyes behind her glasses, it is my great aunt, Minnie, and she gestures me to sit by her. I do and she is asking me how life has been for me since we last spoke and I’m telling her and spilling everything to her as I always have … and I ask how she is; she says she’s doing well, that there’s someone she thinks I’d like to meet. It’s her brother, my grandfather, and he is engrossed in conversation with another man who, I realize, is my other grandfather … and I clasp them both and as I do, I realize that both of them are dead, and so is Minnie, so is Miriam, so is everyone at this party … all of them are dead …
And, as I wake with a start, I wonder if I am too.
3 June 2011
Internet Down in Syria
As of last night, the Syrian government has closed down all internet service inside Syria. As far as we know, Amina is unable to update her blog. As soon as we hear more, we will share it.
2 June 2011
Another Syria is Possible?
The regime’s base continues to crumble. We hear about more and more Alawis even sidling away from the regime; Party members too (“BINOs” anyone?) are less and less enthusiastic about the regime. We always knew that; support for Assad was always a mile wide and an inch deep. We mouthed the words but we didn’t mean them deeply; we looked at Bashar as the worst option save for all the others.And we hoped and wished and fervently prayed that our gambles were right. Whatever else one said about him, he was better than his poppa, better than his uncle, better than his brothers, better than Saddam … right? Maybe next year, we’d have some serious reforms, maybe next year things would be better. He did keep us from being Iraq: Part II; the economy did improve, he was nowhere near as embarrassing as the rest of the league (King Playstation? The Laughing Cow? The King of Africa? The Twink Lover of the Pirate Coast? The Cuckoo’s Egg? Any prince of the Saudis? In that League, the Lion’s Cub was really the father of Ali!)
But … no longer … we stopped believing in what seems already a long time ago. I can even recall the moment: the afternoon of March 30, 2011.
Our protests began in January but they were small and nothing more but the protests of a handful of us, over-educated, idealistic ‘elitists’ if you will … and then they got larger in mid March and became national. The government overreacted. We had martyrs for our cause; they had blood on their hands. It was a national crisis. And they began talking about reform. Assad was to address the parliament and the nation, we were told; and all of us, whether we were with the regime or against thought ‘now is the hour when the Lion’s Cub shows that he deserves his job’. We talked of what he might offer, what path ahead and of reform …
And then he spoke … and as he spoke the whole nation sorrowed. There’d be no real reform, at best window dressing … and even that would e unlikely …
And the protest movement changed that afternoon; from then on, it was clear. We had no choice but to push ahead, no choice but to call for a revolution, no choice but freedom.
And the regime … pushed back and stuttered and floundered and killed. Everyday brought names of new martyrs and towns that were almost forgotten even here suddenly were spoken of around the world: Dera’a and Banyas and Tel Khalikh and Douma and Maarat and now Rastan … Rastan home of the world’s oldest working dam, Rastan by the Orontes, Rastan where secrets best unspoken might be found, Rastan is shelled now and joins the list of hero cities and towns that now stretch from the Tigris to the Sea …
The regime acts now almost as though it wants to lose. They are now going after sheikhs and qadis, the leaders of the religion, here, and making sure no Sunni does not want them gone, not one day but today. Farouk and Najah hang on but how long before they leave their offices? That “business class’ of Sunnis sides with the state no longer.
In Turkey, the opposition in exile gathered this week (the real opposition, one should note; the fake factions that exist only to line pockets or pump up egos denounced it); no unity statements full of surging pronouncements were made to sway the busloads of protesters the regime had had shipped in … but the shape of things to come emerges.
The New Syria will be a better place for Kurds. It will be a better place for Muslims. It will even be a better place for Communists. And one thing is becoming clear; we’re done with dictators and rule by strong men. No more generals, no more dictators, no more fake royal clans. We’ve learned to respect one another even when we disagree. Kurds and Arabs, Communists and Islamists working side by side … and Syrian Salafis? They are as likely to take power here as they are to do so in Tennessee …
The only thing keeping us from freedom is fear; not ours, we are not afraid, but the pathetic fears that impel the soldiers in Maher’s brigades, the fears that we will come for them in vengeance. And they act only as though they dream of that day and want us to. If they stand down, we will ALL be free.Another Syria is possible and we can see it from here.
I was a teen-aged idiot
When I was 18, I was an idiot in many ways. I was, or so my teachers told me, more than smart enough. I did well in school, had wonderful test scores. Everyone told me that I should apply to any university I desired. My parents told me that, wherever I was accepted, they would make sure that my tuition was paid and everything taken care of. I applied to a fair number of schools, including prestigious ones, and got into every single one of those, even the ivy league ones. My parents were pleased. If nothing else, I knew that when my father sat with his peers, the other old Arab guys, he’d be able to brag about ‘my daughter at Yale’ or at Princeton or wherever I ended up going. They’d have to settle with saying “my daughter is at Georgetown” or “my son is at Emory” (ours was the competitive world of immigrant families; I’m told the same sort of competitive bragging goes on in other little worlds).But I didn’t go to any of them. Instead, I opted for not even the best school I’d gotten into in Georgia. I was an idiot.
Back then, I felt myself to be devout. I spent at least as much time learning Quran as I did on school work and poured my energies into what we called ‘dawah’, trying to spread the light of Islam to the unbelievers, trying to make myself into a paragon of Muslim virtue. Headscarf knotted proudly below my chin, I turned unplucked brows to the world and decided everything by what I thought would aid that.
I listened to no one else’s counsel. Even Hind, my mentor whom I called my sheikha, told me that I was making a mistake. But she was also, in my dreams, my heart’s desire and that was enough to make me refuse to listen to her.
After I’d sent out most of my applications and the first acceptance letters had trickled in, I went to see one of those first ones to reply. Agnes Scott College, the World for Women, was initially one of my ‘fall back’ schools. Twenty minutes from home by car and one with a steady stream of nice Arab Muslim girls attending. A cousin had already graduated from there after high school in Kuwait and there were a fair number of girls I knew who’d gone there.
I made arrangements with Dina, one of the sweetest Arab Atlantans of my generation, to spend a night in her dorm and see how I liked it. I arrived with my little bag and she showed me her room. Her roommate, she explained, would be gone so I could use her bed.
Where’s she? I asked.
The roommate usually stayed with her boyfriend. In his house? No, no, in his dorm room at another school.
I put my trust in God alone, I swear and am scandalized. So why do you live with someone like that?
Like what?Someone wicked.
Dena shrugs, she doesn’t see it that way. Their way is different than ours and leaves it at that.
We have dinner in the cafeteria and she introduces me to her friends. We go with some other girls to a lecture where a poet reads. I love it. Afterwards, we walk into town and have ice cream. I notice two women in the ice cream shop, holding hands, lesbians. Dena notices me noticing, tells me that it’s rude to stare (in Arabic) and that I shouldn’t judge them and not be so close-minded; it’s normal here. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I know that we’re in ‘Dyke-atur’ and all that that implies.
We go back to the dorm and I take off my hijab. Dena and I sit and talk with her dorm-mates and she and I teach them debke steps. We’re laughing and having fun. And I notice that two of the girls are holding hands and look at each other with love. And those two were the two I had been most ‘clicking; with. Kristin’s a French major and we’d talked about Flaubert (she’s actually read Salammbo, not just Bovary) and her girlfriend studies history.
When we retire and we’re laying in bed, I ask Dena about them. She tells me it’s no big deal, I shouldn’t be homophobic and let them be happy together.
And I start to imagine myself next year, here or somewhere else, living in a dorm, no family anywhere about. No one knows me; I make new friends. And sooner or later, I imagine, I’ll be looking at one of them and our eyes will lock and we will kiss and end up in bed. And then everything follows; somebody sees us and tells my parents who, if I’m lucky, simply disown me. Or maybe just ships me off to be married to some ninety year old monster or maybe they kill me and bury my body in the river … and even if not, the family has nothing to do with me, Hind and the Sisterhood expel me … and cut off from home and family, I end up on the streets, a broken wreck of a woman, begging for money to buy drugs or drink, and die in a gutter of some sort of awful disease, then comes Qiyamat and I find myself engulfed in the Fire, for ever and ever …
And it is all to clear and everything is obvious. In the morning, I realize, I can’t go away to college. I cannot live in a dorm. If I do, it’s obvious that I’ll destroy my life and condemn myself to the Fire. There’s no other way, I think.
“The young man and the young woman, alone in a room,” I recall someone telling me, “and the shaitan makes three.”
For me, though, I know, that, if I am not careful, the Shaitan will tempt me and me and a woman who isn’t so driven, we’ll make three with the Shaitan.
So, I make my decision that morning, before my mother comes to get me. I won’t go to Agnes Scott or Emory or UGA or Tech; I won’t go to Yale or to Princeton or Vassar or Smith. I don’t even bother finishing the application for Georgetown or for Harvard. I will go a school where I can live at home, commute from my parents’ house and not deal with Shaitan.
Of course, I don’t tell anyone why. I justify to myself and explain it in other terms. Here, we are building a sisterhood, of young women who will follow the Miss. If I go somewhere new, all my work will be over here and I’ll have to start from scratch. The family needs me, so does the Miss. I convince myself that it makes sense to go to a school full of headscarfed Muslimas who commute from their fathers’ houses. I tell Rania and she is enthusiastic about it. My sheikha and my family think what I’m saying makes sense – or at least that’s what they tell me.
And years go by and I realize that I was an idiot governed by fear. Yes, there were consequences when I stopped being scared of my own shadow and life was never simple, but becoming true to myself set me free … and all my imagined horrors never happened (we’ll see later about the Fire, I suppose) and instead I found unguessed depths of loving-kindness.
And if I could go back in time seventeen or eighteen years, I would tell my younger self to be herself and not try to be who it is that she thinks everyone wants her to be. I'd tell her 'you know that girl you like, tell her about it ... worst thing, she'll reject you and you'll move on. You’ll get over it and you’ll fall in love with someone else and she’ll be a better choice. Take the opportunities you actually have; you have ones that 99% of your peers would envy and you reject them. Make the best of what you have instead of running from shadows ... oh, and, Amina, eat more, please!”
1 June 2011
Testimony of Jasmine
My sex to your sex
Grinding in time
With sounds of the City
Stretched out belowUp on the rooftop
Our bodies entwined
You’re slick with my sweat
And the savor of your salt’s on my skinThe sun on my shoulders
My shadow across your breasts
Rising, falling with your breath
Calling my name, they beckonMy sex and your sex
We slip and we turn
Embracing and kissing
Tongues to our foldsJasmine’s on the warm breeze
And the scent of the rivers
Mixed with diesel, orange trees,
The spices and grilled meatsWe push and we pant
Your sex is so soaking
I delve and devour
And mine it is shakingYour lips sweetest embrace.
We shout and we shudder
Over carhorns and shouts
And join in with fervorAs the thundering call
Echoes from above us
And we shout out together
God, God is Greater!But I testify this
Nothing is sweeter
Than the message that goes
Your sex to my sex
Amnesty ....
Amnesty …So, the regime has decided that now would be a great time to make a concession:
They are saying that there will be an amnesty for all of us who have spoken out and acted out in opposition to them, not just in the ongoing rising but back, back decades. There will even be an amnesty for members of the Muslim Brotherhood …Which, I’ll be the first to admit, would have been considered by almost everyone a huge step forward just a little while ago.
But, it comes with a catch; we can all come out of the shadows, they say, and the basic structure of the state will not change. The Party and the National Front will remain embedded in power …
So, we’re going to reject it. They could have done differently. Back when it was colder, back when our protests were restricted to a small groups in Damascus holding candles, it would have mattered. Back when the news was coming from Tunisia and Egypt that Ben Ali and Mubarak had fled, they could have done so.
Back then, I heard of back channel talks between regime and Brotherhood. Not quite official on either side and the people doing the talking to each other here were such that they could have claimed that it was no more than a cousin visiting a cousin or bringing word from one sibling to another. “Plausible deniability” as they say if things came out and needed to be disavowed on either side; hardline Ikhwaan or hardline Baathis could be appeased if the talks failed and, if they had succeeded, Assad could have had his game changer. What I had heard was that, back then, what was being discussed was a legalization of the Brotherhood (or at least one wing) and it coming above ground here and joining the National Progressive Front. It would be a move akin to that done last decade by the Social Nationalists though probably more significant as the Brotherhood is far larger and more influential. Certainly, from a coldly pragmatic viewpoint, it would have been a clever move and, combined with the other reforms that were promised, it could have been a real opening. We might have had a ‘soft landing’ in this season of discontent.
But they mishandled that. They mishandled everything. Bouthaina came on television and said that we would have an end to emergency law, an end to secret trials, that the overreactions in Dera’a would be dealt with … and for a moment we really did think it might be so.
But they dragged their feet and hemmed and hawed while there was no stopping of the party’s gangs, no stopping of the mukhabarat and the special brigades in their killing. The rising spread …. Peaceful, peaceful, Syria was one … and as it did, the old guard of the sons of the dog and their militias went chasing dissenters, beating bystanders and killing, killing, killing …
And we saw that the end of emergency law was a sad, sad joke, that nothing at all had changed and they were as brutal as they’d ever been. If anything, they were simply more emboldened by the awakening of the Syrian people. They spread lies, they killed, and they began to lose control.
We meanwhile keep getting stronger. They still manage to hold on to power but it is slipping from their grasp. They fear the people awakened, they fear the army breaking ….
So they try and make concessions again and buy for time. But again, it is too little, too late.
Their Islam and Ours
I’ve been reading the comments posted on my blog and the emails that I have received. I’ve listened to comments and reactions I’ve received to my face these past few weeks when I’ve found myself as perhaps one of the better known openly gay women in Syria (though far from the most prominent, if we add those not publicly acknowledging their orientation!).And one of the consistent things that I have noticed is, as I have said before, that I have not received any friction from the religious. In fact, what I have gotten is entirely supportive.
I’m not entirely surprised; if anything, I feel confirmed in my own identity and identification with the religion. Yet, at the same time, I have seen lots and lots of talk of how Islam and homosexuality, Islam and democracy, Islam and feminism, Islam and human rights, Islam and so forth and so on are incompatible.
But that never comes from actual Muslims, neither directly nor by implication.
I’m not surprised. That was never my own experience of the religion. Our Islam, the religion that I was reared into, the religion of my fathers before me, the religion I personally embraced so tightly when I was a teen, Our religion was never like that.
Our Islam was diverse and beautiful. Our Islam was that of crowding into a mosque with people from all walks of life and feeling unity with them; of Eid prayers in America where immigrants from a hundred lands, children of immigrants, converts and reverts and so on and so forth … Our Islam taught that God had made us into nations so that we might learn from one another.
Our Islam was sitting at the feet of the Sheikha (our Islam has sheikhas as well as sheikhs!) as she explained that it was perfectly natural to desire other women; chastity was what mattered, not the object of desire. Our Islam discussed sexuality as a healthy and normal part of humanity, a religion for real people, not reserved for ascetics.
Our Islam was one where the religion taught that all, not all men, but all humans, were equal before God, equal on the Day of Qiyamat, where our sex, our nationality, our honors and our birth did not matter. Our Islam was a religion that rejected ideas of Original Sin and saw no one as Damned from birth; Our Islam was a straightforward faith, one that did not need to be reconciled with science as it was not opposed. Our Islam taught that one should seek knowledge wherever it might be, even unto China.
Our Islam was where my kinsman, a preacher in a mosque, railed against abuse of children and sexism; where the same man, close to the brotherhood’s innermost circles, urged me to reconsider my decision not to go to Christian seminary; ours was a religion that had no fear of other faiths for what fear has truth in honest debate?
Our Islam was a warm and loving faith, full of warm and loving people, striving to better themselves and the world. Our Islam knew it wasn’t perfect but strived ever to be better, truer to the teachings of God and respectful of all God’s prophets.
And then I heard about their Islam. Their Islam was not a religion that they had lived nor one that they even knew directly. Theirs was the religion of the worst aspects of orientalism and ‘othering’. It was the religion of us all, they told me, but it was also a religion of no one; it was an image of a religion based on the worst cultural practices of a few dozen lands muddled together and confused with the religion, of selected quotations taken out of context or wholly fabricated, of fantasy masquerading as reality.
Always, it was so. Their Islam was always the Other for the West; whatever they imagined themselves to be, we must logically be the opposite. Read 19th century Orientalists on Islam; it is decried for being a sensual religion, Muslims are attacked for being lax on homosexuals, Muslims are too feminine … because 19th century westerners viewed themselves as being virtuous and a lack of virtue meant tolerance of homosexuality, sensuality and so on. Now, the West prides itself for being anti-sexist and gay friendly; so we must be the opposite. Always, it was so. Little has changed since the days when Baligant was supposed to pray to Termagant and Bramimonde would be wooed from worship of Apollo after her ‘liberators’ had slaughtered the rest of the Muslims and all the Jews. We were supposed once to be too kind to Jews by the West when they viewed Antisemitism as a virtue; now we are supposed to lust for Jewish blood. Whatever virtue they admire, we will be seen as the opposite and the fantasy will continue.
Perhaps we could indulge in Occidentalism and imagine a wicked and monolithic faith that burns heretics and Jews to death, worships statues, handles snakes, insists on stoning non-virgin brides to death and killing those who tolerate mildew or have anal sex, that champions scientific ignorance, and is led by pedophiles? Perhaps we should go around insulting other faiths and spitting on their scriptures?
But that is not Our religion. That is not our Islam. That is not the religion I was reared in and that is not the religion that has embraced me, oddball that I am. I will not indulge in such childishness, tempting though it is. I will only do what I have been doing, speaking of what I know and what I have seen and what is simply true in my experience.
I will pray to the God who is beyond male and female, the God who is neither begotten nor begetting. I will not believe that hell is paved with skulls of unbaptized infants nor that heaven is preserved for the elect alone. I will go on rejecting that one tribe or nation is elect because of secret scrolls or having the religion first addressed to them. My God belongs to no nation; my God belongs to no tribe; my God belongs to no priesthood; my God is universal, just, and kind. My God and my religion are enough for me.
Qul ya ayuha al Kafirun, la a’budu ma ta’abudun, wa la antum a’abiduna ma’abud wa la ana a’abidun ma’abadtum wa la antum a’abiduna ma’abud lakum dinukum wa liya din. AMEEN
Monday 13 June 2011
A Gay Girl in Damascus
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