An Ishmael of Syria

by Asaad Almohammad

  AN ISHMAEL OF SYRIA

  Asaad Almohammad

  First published in the United States in 2016

  Copyright © Asaad Almohammad 2016

  Asaad Almohammad has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  ISBN 978-0-9974815-2-5

  Cover Image © Judy Almohammad

  FOR SHARON,

  WITHOUT A DOUBT IN MY MIND

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1 The Brand of Victimhood

  Chapter 2 The Leftover

  Chapter 3 Barricading the Roads to Jesus

  Chapter 4 In Racism We Trust

  Chapter 5 The Whore

  Chapter 6 God’s Narration

  Part II

  Chapter 7 Our Values

  Chapter 8 The Orange

  Chapter 9 Thief

  Part III

  Chapter 10 The Technique

  Chapter 11 Learned Helplessness

  Chapter 12 Homophobia: Questioning Empathy and Evolution

  Chapter 13 From Behind the Telescope

  Chapter 14 An Ishmael of Syria

  Prologue

  Petrea King preached that the pursuit of happiness is making us miserable. She claimed that our hunger for that emotion unveiled a pre-existing internal unease. Her thesis emphasised the illusion of this holy grail of human experience. She laid plausible arguments; uncovering the dangers of the mantra, I will be happy when…

  I’d believed in her logic; I’d lived by it. But on that day she couldn’t have been more wrong. For upon reaching his destination, a man with a past full of misfortunes can both taste the bitter drops of his sorrow and grin in triumph despite them. In reaching the desired end of his voyage there is an outbreak of joy. Even in a pyrrhic victory, a man of past and present tragedies experiences the sweetness of that elusive emotion.

  **********

  I was fully aware of having two left feet. Still, I danced from the door to the living room. I couldn’t care less about the disapproval in my housemate’s eyes. He kept on staring, while I gambolled closer to him. Seated on our only couch with his toes gripping the edge of the table in front of him, Sami needled, “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Feet off the table asshole!”

  “Stop, you sound awful. Are you on something?”

  I continued to belt, “Because I’m happyyyyyyy! Clap along if you feeeeeeel like a room without a roof! Because I’m happyyyyyyy! Clap along if you feel like happiness…”

  “You’re an even worse singer than dancer. Stop it man! Are you on something?”

  “Noo, noo, no, no, noo. Happyyyyyyy!”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “You mean what’s right?”

  “Why are you happy?”

  “I just am!”

  “Happy for no reason?”

  “No, but I don’t have to justify myself to you. Not tonight anyways.”

  “Just stop!”

  “Nope!”

  “Just so you know, your voice is annoying.”

  “I don’t care!”

  **********

  My exuberance dissipated later that same day. Mad as hell, I found myself haranguing my brother Nyhad. We were on a video call. Before that day, I hadn’t seen his face for over six years. The twenty-three-year-old was dumbstruck. I remember lecturing, “I am sceptical about many things. I don’t get the raison d’etre of faith. I doubt most people’s, if not everyone’s, altruistic drive to personal triumph. I don’t get hope or wishful thinking. In fact, I have come to assert those emotions as a most lethal and dangerous fallacy. Scepticism and cynicism, on the other hand, have been growing on me. For one thing, they serve me in repressing that hazardous state of hope. It’s the most destructive of all human emotions. It keeps us in the places we are frightened by the most.”

  Nyhad followed several moments of awkward silence with a pitiful look, wondering aloud, “What happened to you to be this way?”

  “What way?”

  “A man of no ambitions.”

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  The Brand of Victimhood

  For some reason, notwithstanding the alienation and utter rejection, I consider myself a global citizen. They say misery calls for company and I’ve always been a man of funerals. The companion of the misfortunate, until they are not! As a citizen of the world, it’s my instinct to keep the fallen and the suffering in my thoughts. The human brain fascinates me; its limitless bounds of empathy. You see, in my mind there is logic to it: do no harm, prevent harm, help, support, care for the harmed, face the harmer. My stupid idealist conscience considers sympathy, not pity, at its worst, the most basic and the least negotiable civil duty. Of course as a citizen of the world, I should strive to do more. That said, I am only a man and so I often do the least.

  I have to admit that I feel sad for Ban Ki-Moon. The guy is in some fucked-up shit. I think he cares but, like me, find himself quite helpless. It must take a lot of sleeping pills to put his burdened conscience to rest. Syria, Ebola, Somalia, Nigeria, CAR, Mali, Iraq, Rohingya, Ukraine, Yazidis, human rights abuses, ISIS, Hezbollah, Yamane, sinking immigrants’ boats, drug cartels, among other more or less pressing items. The man has to deal with warlords and dictators. The man has to pretend so he can get some shit done. He has to deal with genocidal maniacs. He has to deal with devils who almost always deceive him. His tenacity defies all logic. I guess even for a man in his position, denouncing acts of aggression gets tiresome.

  Sometimes I think there is a part of me that craves to know of the harmed, when unfortunate events unfold. Sometimes they keep me up at night; sometimes I have the usual nightmares. Though, being an exhausted workaholic usually has the power to put me to sleep. Eyewitness accounts are the most excruciating; of course, after those who went through the fucked-up shit first hand. Getting hold of the latter version of events isn’t that simple. Death, shame, honour, and fear, among countless reasons, are strong forces, preventing us from taking the bitter sip of their tragedies. I never miss victims' and eyewitnesses’ accounts of the horrors of war: raped underage girls and women, beheadings, summary executions, refugees’ hardships, suffocating babies. The aftermath of technology-based and motherfucking natural disasters often leave a deep scar and thus, I owe it to the harmed to help, assist, or care, to say the least. See, I know that I’m fucked-up real bad but it’s no excuse. I’ve been told that I cannot change shit, so I might as well stop torturing myself. My emotions are ridiculed and branded as childish. I have been told that the world has given up on my people. I have been told, and realise that on many occasions, I myself am viewed as an outcast by some of those suffering. I’ve been confronted and my answer is always the same: I care even in my most fucked-up moments. I care even when gates of shit pour open to drown me; I care because I am a citizen of the world. This citizenship is something nobody can give you; it’s gained by a force of will and keeping it is worth all the struggles.

  I have been told that I’ve always been this way. Maybe so, maybe not. What matters is that I intend to keep fighting for this citizenship. I know my limits but foremost I know where I came from originally. With that brand on my forehead, a reduced status is assigned, courtesy of the more developed world. Even for the most oblivious Syrian on earth, the look on the stranger’s face when you have to do the unspeakable that is apply for a visa to their country – subconsciously removes all sense of pride
. You are there and to their ears, being a Syrian sounds like you’re unclean, shameful, indecent; it’s like you owe the world an apology for your very existence. For I’m neither a submitter nor a hating retaliator, I acknowledge the boundaries of my existence; yet, I still care. I care regardless of the way they choose to reduce me to the brand that is the birthmark of the accident of my conception. I care less about what that brand signifies in terms of my character, potential, and intentions. For the harmed I care. For the real victims. It’s the most basic of my mandatory civil duties. Only in caring, am I a citizen of the world.

  I have to stress that my duties towards victims of all sorts, be it helping, taking their side, or caring, ends the moment their status becomes a bargaining chip. The moment the victim becomes a righteous sufferer. For in my short time on this planet, history and on-going affairs are full of those competing in victimhood. You see them recounting the horror their groups had endured, giving it more or less of a competitive edge. Its logic that I-suffered-more,-therefore,-I-need-something-in-return. But I am all for justice. The aggressors and those inflicting pain and agony on others must endure judicial repercussions. I am not denying the existence of villains who strong-arm the law. I cannot claim that the perpetrators of genocidal acts can always be charged for their psychopathic crimes. The world is a fucked-up place. I read a study somewhere; I guess it was on the competitive victimhood of the Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda and its role in delaying and preventing post-conflict reconciliation. Competitive victimhood doesn’t hide itself; you can hear it in the Palestinian-Israeli rhetoric. It’s there, everywhere! And somehow, it’s used to legitimise unjust demands, marginalise a group with connections to aggressors; even justify the elimination of innocent people.

  On the individual level, victimhood, by many, is recognised as some form of political experience. I am not making the claim that victims don’t have political experiences or lack the required skills. My argument is that victimhood in itself is not indicative of possessing the credentials to lead such central positions. For victims, my duties are to help, support, take their side, and care for them, not to reward them. For me victims deserve justice; the notion that a reward of any sort would erase their scars is the most ludicrous idea of all. Being a victim doesn’t define you or entitle you to anything but justice. It doesn’t give you the right to “cleanse” certain people from the face of the earth, it doesn’t make you righteous, and it’s not indicative of your expertise except for in the sociological and physiological senses.

  The lowest of all lows are the self-proclaimed victims. Competing in victimhood is one thing, but deceiving others, and maybe yourself, into the violation of the self is a grave abuse of many. It doesn’t take an expert in human motivations or much critical thinking to deduce its desired ramifications. Thinking of it, whatever the number of operational cells in their skulls there may be; victimhood appeals to them as a legitimisation tool. Beyond an instrument of legitimisation of the pursuit of basic rights, the self-proclaimed arrogantly and ruthlessly have the audacity to demand inflicting upon those, of whom their imaginary aggressors belong to, the endurance of their ‘suffering.’ For in them, being perceived to carry the bargaining chip of victimhood qualifies for the same privileges.

  **********

  After things went south in Iraq, a number of Iraqi Shiite terrorists abandoned the “protection” of Sayeda Zainab’s “honour”. One might think that the woman was a spiritual leader of some sort. But the fact of the matter is that most of Shiite terrorists justify their aggression in terms of their victimhood. Extremist of the sect have long cultivated support and recruited fighters on the notion of shared misery. I strongly stress that I cannot apply this logic to the global Shiite population. It is rather limited to organisations like Hezbollah and Filaq Bader. Their rituals are centred on keening their lost. They moan and hit their own backs with chains to show grief. It’s their claim that a caliphate ordered the killing of one of Ali’s sons. Their fights from that point onward have been to avenge the killing of that son. Sayeda Zainab was the daughter of Ali and the granddaughter of Muhammad, Islam’s prophet. So you see, the lady is long gone. How on earth can you defend the honour of the dead? How does it justify the killing of thousands of civilians? I cannot submit to the rationale that a man who got eliminated unjustly and for whatever reason, makes a whole sect of victims – righteous victims, I might add. Foremost, how and on what fucking planet does it makes the killing of innocent children, women and men a divine duty? Not only deceiving others and themselves in calling themselves victims, but also competing in victimhood, using it as an inner justification for the most horrendous of all crimes. I am not saying that all Shiite are supporters of those lunatics’ aggression – though I have to admit, I haven’t once heard them denounce the savagery. What I have heard is a denial of these groups’ involvement, or the placing of blame on Sunni terrorist organisations.

  I choose to believe that there are Shiites who denounce the radicals in their midst. That said, the Sunni population, to a large extent, brands as terrorists those involved in heinous acts of aggression in the pursuit of intimidating other sects or other faiths. It’s easier to reason with the non-self-proclaimed victims. For in the absence of that mentality, actions toward a peaceful and just society are for the common good. Of course this is with the exception of those preying on hatred, as for them, nothing is more dangerous than a life that is just for all.

  I remember this time when I provoked the utmost rage in Yamen. He had contacted me days before his arrival on the island of Penang, though I had never met the guy in Syria. I didn’t pick him up from the airport but my apartment was his first destination. He asked me for a prayer rug so he could compensate for the number of missed prayers. “I am not Muslim; can I get you a clean towel instead?” I offered. Yamen opened one of his bags and got what appeared to be a wrapped rug. He placed a small brick on his rug and prayed without folding his hands. There it is; he is a Shiite, I realised. I might be wrong and politically incorrect but I deduced, supporter of Iran, Al-Assad, Hezbollah, and Hamas, righteous, entitled. I knew that I should strive to neutralise my implicit prejudices.

  That was in August 2010. I hoped I had misjudged him. Unfortunately though, it turned out I was right. The memory of me eliciting rage in him is still vivid. I voiced my disgust, “Fuck them and fuck their forty-fuckbag-whores!” It was my way of denouncing an act of terrorism in Iraq. He frowned and his tone couldn’t have sounded less disciplinary, “Don’t insult my religion!”

  “Come on, how is that insulting? Are you telling me that fucking lunatic isn’t a terrorist?”

  “Don’t call them whores!”

  “I see. So which one angers you more: my ‘insult’,” I made quotes with my index fingers, “Or the asshat who killed more than seventy people?”

  “They are not whores!”

  “I am intrigued! But our tone is quite loud and there are a lot of people around.” I pointed to the café patio.

  Yamen was not confrontational. In fact, he would give anything to avoid a confrontation. He had this mysterious desire to be liked. He was one of the most narcissistic characters I had had the pleasure of making acquaintances with. Nonetheless, he fixated on proving me wrong or at least taking the opposite side of any argument on which I had a stance. So there we were, sitting together. It was long before the Arab Spring became a term of interest. I lit a cigarette. As I exhaled the smoke, I asserted, “I have to be blunt with you. I won’t be diplomatic. I will say what I believe. I won’t patronise you or lie to you; you are too smart to recognise when I bullshit.” The last sentence was a diplomatic tactic to put myself on the offense.

  I continued, “Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah are both terrorist organisations; both are sectarian and both intimidate people for their political agenda. That said, the governments of Syria and the Islamic Republic of Iran are involved in terrorism by proxy.”

  “Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation, but not Hezbollah!”


  “Why, is it because al-Qaeda is made up of Sunnis?”

  “Hezbollah is fighting Israelis!”

  “Indiscriminate shelling, kidnappings, attacks on embassies, intimidating Lebanese; I wouldn’t use the term fight. I would say terrorise. Besides, training extreme Shiites from Iraq; fuck man, who knows of the atrocities they wrought when they got back to their country?”

  “So any organisation against Americans and Israelis is a terrorist…”

  “That’s not entirely true.”

  “They hit themselves to attack Muslims!”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The twin towers were an excuse to take Afghanistan’s gas. They did it!”

  “I see. How do you know that? I mean, based on what?”

  “There are companies that examined the towers; there is even a book on it.”

  “Please give me the title of that book and show me how you got these companies’ reports.”

  “Do it yourself!”

  “No, you are using arguments which I believe you either heard somewhere or made up…”

  “They are real!”

  “I see, on the hinge that there are reports and many books pointing the blame on Americans, I will continue this line of questioning. I am not saying that they are to blame; by the way, I am just entertaining your argument.” I put my laptop on the table and asked him to look up his sources. He struggled for almost half an hour. Finally, he referred to some book. It was open-source and you could get it for free. We scanned through it for a while. Bored and with my intelligence severely insulted by the contents of that fiction, I broke in, “So conspiracy theories!”

  “I don’t know!”

  “How do you believe in something, when you have no idea of its validity?”

  “You believe in something and I choose to believe in something else. Why the double standard?”