8 May 2011

CNN tweets: Israel embassy carrying water for Asad

Good Egyptian source just back from Washington says israel is syrian regime's most ardent advocate with congress, Obama administration.

That may or may not be true; it's a rumor at best ...
but ...
if true, it is something that Syrians need to be aware of as one of (no, not one of ... THE) prime excuse that the regime has made for deferring democracy and clamping down on freedom is the national struggle; they claim that democracy is bad for the effort to recover the Jaulan and that all dissidents are undermining the national cause. They aren't the first regime to invoke national security as a license for denying freedoms and democracy and they won't be the last.

And the reality is quite different; Assad the Father and the Uncle could find military resources to massacre Syrians in Aleppo and Hama, Palestinians and Lebanese at Tel az Zaatar .... the Son can massacre Syrians in Banyas and Homs and Dera'a, right at the feet of Jebel Shaikh and the Jaulan .... yet the Jaulan is still occupied. One wonders ...

And if Michael Oren is actually calling on the US Government to preserve Assad ...
it undermines the lies of 48 years of freedom deferred.

What do we want?

The regime claims that they have no idea what we in the opposition want. I find that hard to believe … haven’t they been watching us, listening to our slogans, reading what we write? Do they have facebook?
Seriously, it’s spelled out there: "The solution is simple: Stop shooting at demonstrators, allow peaceful demonstrations, remove all your photos and those of your father, release all political prisoners, allow political pluralism and free elections in six months."
And for Asad? "You will be the pride of contemporary Syria if you can transform Syria from a dictatorship into a democracy. Syrians would be grateful for that, and it is possible to do"
But maybe they do not get it. Maybe it is too simple. Didn’t Emma herself claim in that awful Vogue article that they practice democracy inside the royal household?
Well maybe more specifics would help …

We want an end to dictatorship. We want free and fair elections. We want freedom.

We want the constitution changed: get rid of section 8 and the special status of the Baath Party. Abolish the National Progressive Front. Lift the bans on other parties and decriminalize all of them. Let them all organize openly and compete for votes and let the people decide … and all of them, no exceptions: Islamic parties, the Brotherhood, Kurdish parties, everyone – if a party wants to run on a platform of “Syrians for Israel”, let them fail at the ballot box!

Let us discuss how we can have the most democratic system for electing a parlament that actually governs; there are wonderful ideas that have worked in other countries that we can copy or improve upon …

Eliminate the way that the President is chosen; no more referenda with one choice but real, popular votes. And maybe, we might even elect Bashar …

And while we are at it, let us have a presidency that has no religious test; that the President is Syrian should be enough.

The people of Syria are one; we must be an undivided whole. Let us have an end to sectarianism … but not by fighting for dominance, not by arguing whether Ali or Muhammad or Maroun or Al Hakim or Kefa is the greatest but rather by saying that no single religious identity shall have prominence over any other, that all the religions will be equal and equally free … the state will not promote nor will it prohibit any view of God and will let the people worship as they see fit

And let us remove the icons and idols set up to this regime; take them down.
We want an end to repression; no more censorship of the press, no more restriction on what we read and we see and what we view. We are not children

We want an end to the use of force to suppress dissent; the right to protest and the right not to be afraid. We want an end to the imprisonment of people for speaking their minds. We want an end to torture and abuse. We want a society based on laws where no one is above the law and one law applies for all.

But above all we want freedom

Echoes

I opened my email just now … and what do I find waiting for me?
A message from my ex-husband … it’s been nearly ten years since we last spoke and nearly as long that we had any direct contact (though I have visited his mother on numerous occasions; we always got along famously … and she has always said she likes me better than him …)
Our last conversation was in an elevator, leaving an attorney’s office in Chicago.
“So you’re with Katy now, huh?”
“Yup.”
“I always thought the two of you were more than friends.”
“We were just friends until after …”
“Right.”
“Don’t believe me. But you were the one that cheated, not me.”
“You were always a dyke.”
“Maybe. So you and her …?”
“We’re getting married. She’s pregnant. At least she can do that right.”
“Huh, I guess we should say good luck, right?”
“Yes. Whatever.”
Anyway, that was years and years gone by … and the little I had heard since, he was married, had a couple kids (I’ve seen pictures; I have loved that they look like their mother – blond, blue eyed, not at all Arab ,,, must be embarassing!)
And today …
He writes me to say he is proud of me, that he knows I will do great things, that he misses me … and that we will all be free soon …
Damn.

What I Want

When this is all over, what do I want?
It’s a hard question to answer as the possibilities are suddenly huge. Doors that had seemed forever closed look like they are opening …
I’m good with languages; it’s, I’m told, part of growing up bilingual. Arabic, then English, then Arabic, then English, all of my life. Some things I do better in one than in the other; my Arabic composition style always bothers me as stilted and my Arabic language poetry is awful … (not that my English is great but at least I’m not completely embarassed) and I have a pretty good memory (not to brag; I think a life of sobriety helps … as well as all the time I spent memorizing Quran (I’m not a hafidh, but I would say that, by page count, I know half the Quran by heart (like everyone else, I started with the short surahs so I would say I know close to 90 complete))
Anyway … I had Arabic and English from childhood, learned French well enough to read in public school, a solid background in Latin and I picked up Spanish fairly fast … I like learning languages so I took Turkish classes, again well enough to get by … and I also studied enough Hebrew to read and sort of speak (once you learn the alphabet, it’s easy enough though Maltese is even easier)
Why Hebrew? Well, I had a crazy idea that it might be useful … and I might some day be a diplomat with need for Turkish and Hebrew …. Maybe even one day working in our embassy in Tel Aviv … or, thinking wildly, being part of the team that restores the Jaulan through negotiations …
I’d like that … I could see myself in such office one day, when the new Syria comes …
And I also want to get a Damascus Pride March started when that time comes; we could march down the Street Called Straight, and maybe the first year we’d be few but in a decade or two, it would be a festival …
I want also to write my short stories and finish my great book (A Thousand Sighs and a Sigh). I have ideas for more besides my own story … I want to write “Why I am Still a Muslim” and a book on great Syrian women … (any agents reading this?)
I want to travel and be with the one I love … I want to grow old together …
I want to be happy.
I want to live in a free country and I don’t want to have to move.

Thanks to Bin Laden …

The title is only half ironic … because I do owe him a debt. No, I’m not going to mourn him nor am I going to gloat over his death. I don’t like anyone getting killed (and you can hold me to that later on if I look like I’m gloating over certain deaths) and I believe in fair trials. I don’t actually object to the death penalty; I just believe in judicial fairness …
And certainly just like the vast majority of people around the world, I’m not sad he’s dead. As a Muslim, I hated the way he misrepresented our beliefs and damaged Islam, I hated the killings he did and the way he allowed others to kill eben more … as an American Muslim, I hated the way he turned my people into a despised minority and made us suddenly aware of real dangers to us … as an Arab, I hated that he gave the excuse for wars that have destroyed one country and that his followers have killed so many of us … as a Syrian, I hated that he and his followers made this regime look like a better choice …
But I am embarassed by some of these reactions; as an American, by the fools celebrating murder as a good thing and forgetting everything that makes America a great country in an orgy of bloodlust … as an Arab, by the fools in Najd, Gaza and Lebanon publicly mourning him … as a reader, by the way hasbara and propagandists use those fools selectively to defame entire peoples, whether Arabs or Americans (or both) …
And I’m offended as a Muslim when people commit crimes in the name of Islam just as much as I am offended as an American, as a Syrian, as an Arab, as a woman, as a lesbian, as a human when they do so … crimes are crimes and just because someone was a terrorist, a zionist, an islamophobe, a homophobe, a sexist, a racist, a miltarist, an occupier, an arab, an israeli, a new yorker, an iraqi … that doesn’t excuse killing them …
But, I still have a real debt of gratitude to Bin Laden … and it may seem strange.
Cycle back with me to September 10, 2001. Back then, I was approaching my 26th birthday. I’d been married and that had recently ended. I was trying to put together the rubble of my life. Since I was a freshman in high school, I’d had a fairly good inkling that I was attracted to women; I’d been terrified of it and felt it was something to suppress and fight against. I’d done everything I could to cure myself; prayer, self-mortification, marriage … none of them had worked. And the last had just ended dismally as I couldn’t even pretend well enough. If there was any thing not to be depressed about at that time, it was my friendship with an American woman, Katy … and I had a crush on her that I was terrified of (what if she thought I was crazy? Sick? Foolish?) I’d had erotic dreams about her … which were embarassing … and I had never dated and …. Well, you get the idea … on 9/10/01, I presumed that it would just be another stupid childish crush. My main hope was maybe I could one day get a decent marriage, maybe to some old Syrian man who wouldn’t care too much what I did … I had absolutely zero intention of ever telling anyone that I dreamed about kissing girls …

And then 9/11 happened. It was awful … as an American, as an Arab, as a Muslim, as a Human … it was a terrible day … I’ve written about it elsewhere: http://damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com/2011/05/september.html

I ended that when Katy arrived … because … well, we kept company with each other and I actually drank a little wine … I’d known that when she was much younger she’d ‘experimented’ with women and I asked her why she’d never hit on me, told her I had a crush on her … and we ended up dating and I came out …
And all because I was so freaked out and stressed out by the crimes of bin Laden, because I was honestly terrified of a ‘day of judgment’ against American Muslims and a coming war, I ‘slipped’ and did the one thing I was terrified of:
I kissed a girl …. And came out …
So, thanks Bin Laden for that, thanks for freking me out enough to be scared of other things besides the closet!

Reunion

This is a very short post and is squarely aimed at my friends and family who I know are reading this (and if they aren’t, those who are will tell them):
I’m still in Syria, not far from home … and I haven’t been arrested (obviously)
But far more importantly, I’ve moved to a safer place and expect to stay here a while … and most importantly, my father is here as well.
He’s looking good; he’s taking his pills and doing fine health wise (so relax mom!) and is as feisty as ever … we’re actually relaxing now and, our friends who are hosting us even are able to get BBC broadcasts … so we saw the newest Doctor Who episode (featuring the positively yummy Karen Gillan as a pirette … no details … SPOILERS!)

Monsters and Critics and Trolls

I’ve gotten a good bit of mail and attention the past two weeks via this blog, comments on posts and so on …
Most of it is wonderful; I wish I had the time and ability to send personal thanks to every single person who has been so awesomely nice to me, sent me good thoughts, publicized what’s happening here in Syria and so …
But there have also been comments and emails I’ve received that are not so pleasant … some I have ignored because I know that they are from mukhabarat and are meant to draw me out … and I’m not that stupid!
Others though … repeat regime talking points and worse; there’s a cyber-war on as well as one on the streets. They have hackers working busily to bring down hostile websites (I know of at least one friendly newssite where I might have drawn their attention; oddly, it’s now blocked in this country). They are hacking facebook and other social media. And they are all over every site spewing forth regime propaganda.
So I know not to get in arguments with them on my own site
I have also had numerous anti-Islam screeds posted here …
And I have a bit of a quandry … on the one hand, I have a strong urge to make point by point refutations of both the pro-Assad and anti-Islamic comments. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not shy about getting in verbal arguments! Not long ago, I was expelled from a science fiction list dedicated to one author’s works; I had picked one too many fights. On another list, I once shot off some ill spoken words when another member posited a scenario where the US had started a nuclear war to eliminate both Islam and the Arab nation and Damascus had been evaporated. I said, if I were in the US, I’d load up my gun and go out to shoot any Christian or Jew I saw. Harsh words … and said in anger but that’s the kind of talk first, think later person I am
(I am a lifelong SF afficiando – well, a geek in other words – and I have always spent too long on line … and a number of years ago, I was deeply disturbed by the pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias in both the genre and in fandom. So, I started getting involved in discussion lists, usually emphasizing my own Arab and Muslim credentials (it is far harder to argue in such circles for equal rights for Arab Muslims than for LGBT people!) and picked lots of fights …)
In other words, I don’t back down … even when it makes no sense.
So, with my trolls … I am so biting my tongue … and then it occurred to me to simply delete comments I disliked …
And then I found myself in a conundrum: I am fighting for free expression and for a free press … I am preaching that … how can I censor?
Thoughts?

We are all Syria

I like to think of myself as a fair minded person. I know I probably am no more so than anyone else; I’m as much a product of my own upbringing and I know I have all the biases of my class, sect, race, religion, region, gender, etc … but I do try to think past them and try to see how others might think. I probably fail most of the time; I’ve never been anyone else but me so I don’t have any real experiential knowledge of anyone else.
Anyway … that said, I need to address something that has really bothered me:
The regime has arrested some of us and charged us with insulting Syria …

And … it just ain’t so. From where I sit, it’s obvious that those of us in the opposition do not hate Syria: we love our country. If that isn’t obvious to you, I don’t know what could be more so!

For me, this is a great country and ours is a great nation. In former times, we led the world: our people invented so much of what makes the world what it is (farming, cities, the alphabet … need I go on?) For thousands of years, we led the world and brought enlightenment to it. Ours is a splendid past.
But, we have in recent years fallen behind. We can blame others: trade routes change, Mongols, Ottomans, ravaged the country … and our first great national awakening was foreshortened by foreign powers (perfidious Albion and back-stabbing Gaul come to mind). But blaming others for our shortcomings only evades our responsibility for ourselves.
If we want to blame anyone, it is ourselves. We did not rise up as a whole and stop the invaders then; sectarianism allowed the Franks to gain allies here to rule … and when they left, we fought amongst ourselves and let loyalties of sect and city stand in the way of our great destiny.
Now, we must all work together to get beyond that and build a nation that will again amaze the world.
That is what the opposition wants.
I am a fair person; every now and then (very occasionally) I do admit error. But I hope I am not wrong when I say that not only are we motivated by love for our beloved bilad, so too are they. I believe, and it may sound almost like heresy to say it, but that the other side wants the same thing as we want: they also are patriots, loyal to what they see as the best interests of the nation and of Syria. They believe that they are truly protecting the country from its enemies, that our way opens up the gates of sectarian strife and war. I do not blame them for that; I too have seen the mess that has become of Iraq and how a great country was ruined. I too have thought that freedom can be deferred if it means security. But how far? How much are you willing to sacrifice for safety? And does not the sacrifice become self defeating?
We tell ourselves that it was foreigners who denied our freedom in the past and the threat of invasion has allowed them to deny freedom to ourselves more recently. The invader is not coming, though, and ours is not a nation of children. We need to free ourselves. If we want to protect our city or our sect or our clan, sometimes we must go forward on trust. And who better to defend those things than the collectivity of all of us?
We love Syria; you love Syria. Let us come together and make this the greatest country in the greatest nation once again!

حـماةَ الـديارِ عليكمْ سـلامْ
بَتْ أنْ تـذِلَّ النفـوسُ الكرامْ
عـرينُ العروبةِ بيتٌ حَـرام
وعرشُ الشّموسِ حِمَىً لا يُضَامْ
ربوعُ الشّـآمِ بـروجُ العَـلا
تُحاكي السّـماءَ بعـالي السَّـنا
فأرضٌ زهتْ بالشّموسِ الوِضَا
. سَـماءٌ لَعَمـرُكَ أو كالسَّـما
رفيـفُ الأماني وخَفـقُ الفؤادْ
عـلى عَـلَمٍ ضَمَّ شَـمْلَ البلادْ
أما فيهِ منْ كُـلِّ عـينٍ سَـوادْ
ومِـن دمِ كـلِّ شَـهيدٍ مِـدادْ؟
نفـوسٌ أبـاةٌ ومـاضٍ مجيـدْ
وروحُ الأضاحي رقيبٌ عَـتيدْ
فمِـنّا الوليـدُ و مِـنّا الرّشـيدْ
. فلـمْ لا نَسُـودُ ولِمْ لا نشـيد؟