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 her

But 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 war

So 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 disobeyed

Now 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 tongues

What 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 blood

At 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 made

Of all that they’d left to us
And that we squandered for a day
Of roses and fancy silks
And dancing on their graves

On Qasiyoun, the Prophet stood
Looked down and said “not yet
Not now for me is paradise”
And rightly turned his back on us

From where the sacred river poured
From vales already ancient then
And spilled out on our plain

And 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 king

We turned our patrimony
Into basest currency.
Sold our mothers off
As slaves to men from other lands
And smiled happy to be

And 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.