An Ishmael of Syria

by Asaad Almohammad

  On my knees, I couldn’t help but remember these animals that underwent an experiment. I am not sure when it happened but I sympathised with the poor things anyways. It was when a group of scientists decided to electrically shock the unsuspecting creatures without giving them the chance to flee the punishment. They continued to be punished over the course of weeks, or months, I could not recall. Then, the scientists decided to change the conditions of the experiment, allowing the animals a chance to escape the punishment. They found that they just kept taking the punishment. From there comes the term, “learned helplessness”.

  There is another story I heard many times in Syria and Lebanon, in which any person with an operating cell in her or his brain can regard as fictional at best. The story goes that a French or British influential interior minister, actually I cannot remember his position, before the First World War wanted the public to revolt against the head of the state. He figured that he should humiliate citizens in order to elicit rage against the leadership. So on the entrance of each city he placed a number of guards and for any male citizen to enter the city, he should be fucked by a guard. A blow job wouldn’t cut it.

  The mastermind of the operation’s patience grew thin and he decided to check what was going wrong with his plan. Behind a long line of people, he queued. A fight broke out between two men. He thought it would be a good chance to incite anger against the leadership. He queried, “What’s up?” One of the men went, “the asshat left the queue half an hour ago and now wants his place back.” So, the man shook his head disappointingly. He thought, here I assumed that they’d revolt against the state but instead they are fighting for who gets to be fucked first!

  Except in my case, there was no scientist to reverse the conditions of the painful experiment at some point in the foreseeable future; there was no interior minister to stop the unwritten law of being fucked at every turn. I admit, in learning helplessness, I’ve been one of the worst students. Broken as the burning drops crept out as each couldn’t wait to catch the other; my voice was caught in my throat, I found myself choking up lines from old songs:

  Trouble...

  Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble

  Trouble been doggin’ my soul since the day I was born

  Worry...

  Worry, worry, worry, worry

  Worry just will not seem to leave my mind alone

  I am a man of constant sorrow

  I've seen trouble all my days

  I bid farewell to old Ar-Raqqa

  The place where I was born and raised

  For thirty long years I've been in trouble

  No pleasures here on earth I found

  For in this world I'm bound to ramble

  I have no friends to help me now

  It's fare thee well my old true lover

  I never expect to see you again

  Throughout the songs’ lines, my mind flickered the images of my brother’s disfigured face; Zain lying dead underneath his rapist and above a pool of blood; my second-youngest sister’s friend’s dismembered tiny body; the hole in the back of my cousin’s head; the Jordanian pilot dancing as he burnt; all the beheading scenes; the stoned women of Syria; the flies on the big tummy of the Somali baby. With every blink the images haphazardly repeated themselves. Suddenly, my mind started a game of fixation. All I could see was my mother kneeling and slapping her face with hands full of dry, brown soil; my father’s strong grip on my shoulder as he moaned; Zain mother’s animal-like keening; the Iraqi woman from the news, face to the ground, asking god where the fuck was he; the Syrian father carrying his dead baby looking up as though god was going to give him an arsenal of relief. Then, for some reason, all I could think of was the scene of Jennifer sobbing and asking me, “Why, why, why…”

  Refusing to submit to a state of helplessness, I stood with my arms stretched open, reaching a tree at each side. I pushed and howled as the ache rose in my chest. ”Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!“ I bellowed my desperation and rage. I released my hands and shouted until the vein on the left side of my neck almost exploded. “Fuck you Bashar, fuck you Baghdadi, fuck you Putin, fuck Ayatollah, fuck Nasrallah, fuck al-Maliki, fuck al-Qaeda, fuck Obama’s red lines of cowardice, fuck Ed Miliband, fuck SNC’s Muslim Brothers, fuck Jihad, fuck terrorists, fuck racists, fuck the Kardashians, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” I punched the poor tree with every fuck. My hands shivered and the red drops slowly departed the knuckles to reach the grass and the muddy soil. Out there in the jungle, breathless, the anger got slowly replaced by a smile. Slightly relieved, I thought, I cannot afford the whole day off.

  Chapter 12

  Homophobia: Questioning Empathy and Evolution

  Sleeping in a new bed has always been a struggle. I am also not the most tactile man on earth. The usual nightmares and the sleep-late-sleep-less routine had made it hard not to be self-conscious the first night in her bed. She also had to wake up early, at five thirty in the morning. Cats have never been my best friend. That fucker with the foot fetish couldn’t have been more annoying. There was also the surge of after-sex energy and the nicotine rush from the smoke that followed. It was our second time in no more than seventy minutes but it felt like I could do a full body workout routine. My brain was still at its normal functioning capacity; I could talk science, philosophy, politics, or anything. However, pillow talk was not my thing. Sheila by far was the smartest and most intelligent woman I’d ever met. I enjoyed talking to her and the more we talked, the more I came to respect her intellect.

  She gave me a look of permission to go for a smoke. On her enormous balcony, I got two of her fancy chairs and seated myself on the one to the right so the smoke wouldn’t bother her, should she decide to join me.

  On our first date she paid interest in my research. We talked art, psychology, aquaculture, foreign affairs, theology, philosophy. I wanted to know what she liked. She told me about what she disliked. I guess it was a mixture of evolutionary-subconscious-relational-compatibility signals and an occupational hazard. She was a researcher too. I have to admit that I believed in the notion that dislikes were as important, if not more, than the likes. And differences outweigh similarities in the pursuit of a lasting intimate affair. But still, her interests were part of the equation. I pressed on, getting them in the picture, though I didn’t get much to go on. We both talked. For six hours we talked. We never had a single awkward moment of silence, not any that I was aware of.

  My PhD lasted longer than I could’ve anticipated. My examiners lamented that they didn’t get the psychological or political aspects of it. One said that she wasn’t into politics and found any subject of that sort boring; the other internal examiner claimed the difficulties of following through without having any statistical background. The chairman wanted me to state that politicians from the American Republican Party were stupid! The external examiner had never heard of any research utilizing secondary data and given that I had never been to the U.S., regardless of the statement of the research problem, the selection of the context was not justified. I knew none of them were from my field, my supervisors included. I thought the viva was a session in which a candidate had a chance to defend some arguments; evidently, I was wrong. I was told that I was angering one of them. Another was showing verbal and nonverbal signs of annoyance. I was told to shut up and instructed to respond to comments in that manner. I had to listen to anti-American sentiments. I had to listen to nonsensical conspiracy theories. I had thought that as a candidate following a rigorous research methodology, valid scholarly justification was required once a notion was posited. I knew I had to suck it up like a man and wear a fake smile. My defence was four hours and seventeen minutes of self-restraint. I waited for half an hour so they could take dinner and then ten more minutes to get their verdict. Everything they asked had already been included in the research. Yes, I had to do some cosmetic changes, but nothing serious enough to be labelled as major or needing to wait for the minimum time until resubmission.

  It was a
lready quarter to seven. My second date with Sheila was set to be at six-thirty. I was already late. I was furious but I didn’t want to cancel. I called and apologised. I asked for more time and she was generous enough to give it to me. It was also rush hour; it took me ages to get through the bottleneck. I hadn’t slept the night before. My eyes were red and I looked like shit. I made it there nonetheless. To my surprise she had waited.

  I was not the most punctual man on the island but still I couldn’t help but feel like a douche for being an hour and a half late. I explained and didn’t excuse myself. She gave me a get-out-of-jail-free card. She claimed I could only get two. By the end, I had collected a full deck. By the fourth of July, we had been seeing each other for forty-two days. Through that period, I came to realise that she was too good for me and I was out of her league.

  If progress in life was measured on the basis of your achievement and self-realisation, I was in no way Sheila’s equal. Maybe I was only smart enough to realise how intelligent she was. Finances aside, she was in a stable place in her life. Sheila also gave to those in need. She had volunteered in Africa for two and half years and spent some time teaching in Nepal. She spoke French and had a master’s from some posh school in the UK. If I had to brand her, I would have to include liberal, independent, strong, hard-working, sophisticated, tactful, and supportive. She was all that and more. The woman had a stable job, could travel anywhere, and was able to make future plans. Finances considered, well who am I kidding; her rent was double, if not triple my income. I was out of her league!

  That said I had learned not to make a decision on anybody’s behalf. That was their right and I could not take that away. Without any exaggeration, I opened my closet to show her my skeletons so she knew what she was getting herself into. Things were going so fast and so well, the thought of losing it all scared me. We were so fucking compatible. We communicated and came up with every possible scenario. We decided to give each other a chance. Well, she gave me the chance! I had no reason to doubt that she accepted me, with all my baggage. Still, I was overwhelmed by the skeletons of my past. However, it was her decision and I needed to let my guard down to have any chance of living.

  Her intellect aroused me in ways I’d never experienced before. I could say what I wanted without having to explain it or dumb it down. We didn’t agree on many issues but I was liberated from misunderstanding with her. And I craved for any conversation. Conversations often were the foreplay of longer debates. And the debates were more sensual than anything I’d ever experienced. And I liked and yearned for the experience. And with greed I wanted to get more and more of it. And the experience aroused in me anger and fear. And the anger was directed at my helplessness in my endeavours to put my skeletons to sleep, or stop them from growing, to say the least. And my cynicism of her resilience in facing the shithead of my skeletons scared me. And the chorus of my doubts called for building higher walls to prevent disappointment. But the experience was overwhelmingly fulfilling. And the sensation became an addiction. And my addiction urged me to topple the walls. And willingly I made myself vulnerable. And I thought, it was a small price for that high.

  **********

  Sheila loved to host and she was a generous one. She was a good cook too. Even as an expat, she maintained her national traditions. For the fourth of July, she invited four friends of hers. Suzan and her husband were on the list. On our fourth date, Sheila had wanted me to meet some of her friends. I think she wanted me to be vetted by Suzan. Knowing my evaluator now, I would trust her opinion too. Before going to the expatriates’ dinner, I was feeling somewhat intimidated. Suzan and Matthias, her husband, were from a social class that I have come to label as “smothering”. I wouldn’t be able, even in my wildest dreams, to associate with people who had achieved that much in life. It’s not that I have anything against people of different classes but rather the relativity of personal status. Competitive creatures, human beings are! I put myself on high alert, knowing that I was being vetted and, well, having to socialise with people of high intellect. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to have such acquaintances. Nothing aroused or excited me more than being challenged intellectually. But still, I was being vetted by people from another planet. People who only see my kind after our boats have capsized in the Mediterranean before making our way to their countries. People who would, at best, look at my kind with pity. And I hated pity. But I was there and I chose to be there and I thought, while self-conscious, I have to keep my cool and keep an open mind.

  The small talk was not that bad actually. In fact, I enjoyed it. At the same table, there were a number of people, of whom Suzan was the most interesting. Sitting there for an hour without a cigarette, I knew I needed a smoke to continue keeping my cool. I gave Sheila a look and graciously told her of my desperate need for a smoke. Suzan wanted to smoke too. She told me on our way out that she wanted to talk to me. Out of the restaurant we started to inhale and exhale the smoke rapidly.

  “So Adam, how did you find the dinner? Sheila told me about your research. It sounds interesting!”

  “It was good. Well I am glad that you think it’s interesting. My examiners beg to differ!”

  “What are you actually trying to do?”

  “I developed this brand of sorts. It is inclusive of two blocks of emotional experience, namely, the implicit and explicit. I also study the impacts of a number of forces on the dual dimensional construct. The main thesis is that the brand is predictive of voting behaviour. Furthermore, being able to elicit changes in that variable is posited to influence one’s choice of candidates. Now, the findings suggest a high predictive power. Its development also accounts for a number of ways to elicit changes in the dual dimensional brand, and thus, voting choice.”

  “In other words, manipulation!”

  “Yeah, more or less.” We drifted from one topic to another; from sleep health to sexology. Before going back to the restaurant, Suzan noted, “Sheila is a great woman!”

  “She is,” I replied. Suzan was Sheila’s closest friend on the island. Sheila considered her to be her support system. She was the person to seek in times of crisis. A person equipped with amazingly sophisticated reasoning and who had acquired an undeniable ability to disambiguate the roots of complicated conflicts. Or at least, I thought so. This was my impression of her and the more I heard from and about her, the more I felt that I was not alone and that there were plenty of my kind out there. For in being an abomination of existence, or having that perception of one’s self, a man cannot help but have some sort of confusion and anxiety at meeting one of his kind.

  **********

  I was excited to see Suzan again. It had been a while since we met. Sheila knew all her guests’ dietary preference and made sure all were met. Over dinner, the conversation flowed across a range of topics. They say no news is good news but while that week had been so bloody, it had also marked a win for civilised societies around the world. The supreme court of the USA had voted for marriage equality. Suzan was excited by the news and congratulated the American people for finally recognizing such inalienable rights. I was distracted by something and found myself hearing Suzan talking about those who had to undergo sex change operations, despite not wanting that specific change of identity, so they wouldn’t get punished by their governments.

  I added, “For those living in countries like Iran, many resort to this option without necessarily wanting to be identified as men or women. Shadi Amin, a political activist who fled to Germany, talked a lot about gay and lesbian ordeals and having to undergo sex reassignment surgery with ‘little real choice’ in the matter…”

  Suzan, studying me, “How on earth do you know about that? Not many have interest…”

  I found myself out of my comfort zone. I didn’t need to lecture anybody. I was liberated and accepted, yet this unfamiliar situation was unsettling. Anxiously, I interrupted, “Well, I do!”

  Sheila clarified, “that’s Suzan giving you a compliment!”

>   I got the compliment but I still I thought, how on earth did a guy from Ar-Raqqa, now the de facto capital of ISIL, develop such a view? On a subject where I often show the sharpness of my fangs, it felt weird to have a shared belief with everybody at the table. I recalled the two occasions on the patio of my usual café. I remembered my forcefulness and aggression during the first and my fury during the last.

  **********

  At a simpler time when worries were merely material, I went to the café to read the papers. Jamal, my Iraqi friend, soon joined me for a smoke. He was a world-class conspiracy theorist. The fact that I kept up with the latest socio-political events had always been a conundrum to him. For to him, in conspiracies lay answers to the most complicated questions of all, be they political or theological. As shown through that map of the least sophisticated logic, all roads tended to lead to the Mossad.

  In the mantra of shared hatred and placing the blame on Israel, our cowardice to face the barbarity of our heads of states was replaced with a divine purpose. Contemplating the manifestation of the eradication of hatred I often concluded, the entirety of the Middle East’s theocracies and dictatorships would be replaced by total anarchy. We would be left with nothing, as our brotherhood of hatred was the only bond known to us. Enculturated in the malarkey of that demagoguery, forces beyond our control and comprehension seem to deceive us into a less harmful and satisfactory logic as opposed to placing some blame on ourselves and thus, having to act to reverse that state of affairs.

  The blind faith in some half-assed conspiracy theories lines up with the logic of having to believe in something with no questions asked. It gives us peace and comfort. As simple as I was, I found that resorting to this absolute nonsense was the root of all our problems. It was a road of willingly-learned helplessness, for no action could make a difference, thereby no action was needed. We might as well have bent our backs with our hands stretching our ass cheeks, waiting for any perpetrator to penetrate us.