A Gay Girl in Damascus
An out Syrian lesbian's thoughts on life, the universe and so on ...
6 June 2011
Update on Amina
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
Knowing no boundaries
Borders mean nothing
When you have wings
My heart and my soul
Long to follow and soar
Out over mountains
And deserts and seas
I have no wings
And earth presses in
Wrapped in a sheet
Forever to lie
Weighed down by dirtclods
Never to feel
Wind on my wings
Sun on my back
Soaring and flying
Freedom is coming
Here am I wanting
To know it one day
Still Sunni After All These Years
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
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.