An Ishmael of Syria

by Asaad Almohammad

  “What can I call you then?” he demanded an answer.

  “Adam!”

  “I mean people who are afraid of Islam.”

  “Just to be clear, I am not afraid of Islam but of what political Islam might do to our country.”

  “There is a term, right?”

  “Yes, the word you are looking for is Islamophobe. And I am not.” Sami fixated on the word until he denounced his faith.

  The opposition in exile was another curse that the Syrian people had been enduring. Distanced, and equipped with their telescopes, they’d risen, claiming to be the motherland’s salvation. Scared into caves by the savage’s claws, they claimed the fruits of the blood-watered seeds of the free. From behind our telescope we welcomed the self-proclaimed liberators. The new elite were as conspiracy-driven, counter-intuitive, and exclusivist as the thug and his entourage had been. The short-sighted juveniles had inflicted their share of scars on those in the motherland and those behind their telescopes.

  The Syrian National Council had become our version of “Keeping up with the Kardashians”. The Council and its phonies had gotten under my skin, bringing out the worst version of me. The uncharismatic, incompetent representatives brought about yet another paradox to the word “leadership”.

  On the day Jarba was elected as president of the Syrian National Council, I had to do my due diligence on our new supposed leader. Sami had taken his position on the couch as though his ass was attached to it more than Al-Assad to his father’s throne. Using my speakers, the Lebanese comedy he was watching was so loud, people on the mainland would have had the right to complain. In irritation I asked, “I found an interview with the new SNC president. Would you like to watch?”

  “Not those idiots … I have no idea why they replaced Moaz Al-Khatib.”

  “You are right, you have no fucking idea.”

  “Why do you speak to me like that?”

  “Your former ‘president’ resigned in exile. They didn’t force him to leave. If you ask me, they should’ve ousted him earlier.”

  “Why? Is it because you are an Islamophobe?”

  “No, because he lacked the skill and the stomach to hold such a position.”

  “He was a real leader.”

  “Maybe in leading people during Friday prayers.”

  “You keep saying you aren’t an Islamophobe! Did you just hear yourself?”

  “I did actually. But for me to support someone, I have to know everything about them. First, your new god…”

  “I have a god, don’t insult me!”

  “I am not insulting you, but for me hearing you praising that naïve figure just reminds me of Al-Assad’s diehard supporters.”

  “He is not naïve.”

  “What do you know about him before the uprising? Do you know that he was the imam of Umayyah mosque? Of course it goes without saying that he is very conservative. Besides, we all know imams and where they get their Friday speeches from. A hint, they are informed and supervised by the same government he opposes now. I get it; he was forced to preach Al-Assad’s messages. I just have no clue how on earth his past experience qualified him for the presidency of the SNC…”

  “Just admit it; you hate him because he’s Muslim.”

  “I have been equally critical of all. And just an FYI, all of them are Muslim. The question is why you want to replace Al-Assad with a new deity. Listen, if you must know, on a conference a while ago, Al-Khatib advised Hezbollah to stop terrorising the Syrian people as Hezbollah fighters are Muslims and their blood shall not be spilled. To date, he has rejected labelling Al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organisation. He refused it although they represent al-Qaeda in Syria. That said, he still begged for international support. And when he couldn’t get that support he decided to resign. So tell me, how could he be any good for the Syrian people? He is one of the weakest men who has had any power in the history of this crisis. The Syrian brave men and women fighting that asshole deserve more than a naïve delusional imam.”

  “Go watch the idiot’s interview. I am sure you are gonna say he is naïve too as nobody is good enough.” Sadly, Sami was right. Observing me sighing he enquired, “What is it with him?”

  “He called Al-Nusra Front a group of apostles!”

  “Maybe it was long time ago.”

  “Even so, he lacks the intuition to hold such a position.”

  “Your standards are so high!”

  “Not actually.”

  “You have to understand that we will deal with the devil to oust Al-Assad.”

  “Toppling Al-Assad and his entourage might prove hard, but possible. Inviting that cleansing ideology to the country is a bigger crime than the ones of Al-Assad; it will be impossible to eliminate them once they get it. I would say that ship has already sailed.”

  The Muslim Brotherhood through its gullible liberal front, along with Al-Assad, had paved the way to ISIL, Al-Nusra, and their Shiite counterparts to drag the nation to the gallows. Thinking about it, I had often found myself in limbo with no feasible options. The Syrian people’s pursuit of the Almighty in Command also had blocked fruitful debate; it had been either Al-Assad or his partners in the decimation of our unfortunate motherland. I had the habit of saying, “I seek someone who is willing to put the nation before her or his sect and ethnicity; someone with no innocents’ blood on their hands.” But even then I knew it was a dream.

  **********

  Far from behind our telescopes on whatever side of the war, we had been touched by the agony of our kind; some more than others. With the increasing suffering of my species, the world was touched too. The wealthy of the Gulf region were first to respond to the ache the war had brought. Through some written and unwritten laws, they branded us pariahs. The Gulf region claimed the authorship of the so-called “Arabs’ magnanimity”. Limiting or prohibiting work visas for the orphaned Syrians who had struggled their way out, the Gulf Arabs displayed their utmost “munificence”. Egypt was at times more or less generous in that sense. Of course, those fortunate nations in the West had to compete with the Gulf region’s generous initiative; some would say they were the first to label us the unwanted.

  When the terrorist regime’s infamous figures and institutions were justly sanctioned we, from behind our telescopes, were for some reason denied their services. From banking to health insurance we had been flagged. Dare we do the unspeakable, we would be confronted with a look as though we were audaciously unclean, needing to show regret for our heinous acts. Whatever one's purpose of visit, applying for a visa was the greatest of all sins. For some destinations, we were seen below the rejection’s threshold; it was a futile quest to fulfil the unwritten requirements for the sinister Ishmaels of my kind. With the mark on our foreheads reading “Abomination”, and in a state of unease we had found a bond. High and dry we knocked on many doors; some appeared to be the mirrors images of our own desperation.

  Sami, Yamen, Mustafa, and I had brainstormed, navigating the legal and illegal, and the grey area between both. In the pursuit of a homeland, we sought safety as a priority; we favoured the least insecure of all options. Far from the motherland and on an expiring stay by our unwelcoming host, anxiety rose in the quest of locating our next refuge. There was neither a legal nor a safe choice. There was a wilful departure to the hell the motherland had become; there were boats of death; and there was the UNHCR.

  The greed of human traffickers forced in us the most hazardous of choices, yet still a privilege for those who could afford the gamble. The four of us couldn’t come up with enough money to grant even one voyage. Begging the UNHCR to make our plight known to the gatekeepers of any land who are made aware of our existence would take more than half a decade. With the exception of Yamen, we were without a recognised partner; deemed to be the disenfranchised. We concluded that putting our lives on hold in this exile was our only viable choice; so we were forced to knock on that closed door.

  Only three of us were desperate enough to embark on a tr
ip to the Malaysian capital. It was a Monday. The guards of the UNHCR didn’t allow us in. We wanted to enquire about the procedure. When we asked one of those wearing a badge which said “I’m 1 who cares!” we were told, “Syrians only on Wednesday.” I pressed “May I…?” but all I heard was, “Wednesday.”

  On that Wednesday we stood by the gate for five hours before the Syrians were allowed in. It was so hot that Mustafa and Sami got sunburn. Lined up through the fixed barricades, we were sweating from head to toe. There were lines of Myanmarese, Sri Lankan; one was designated to those from the Middle East. There were Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians, Yemenis, and Syrians. The Somalis were the smallest group.

  We stood there for more than an hour before our counter opened. Standing in the middle of the line, hours had passed and we hadn’t sensed that our turn was going to happen. Sami asked the guy behind him, “Where are you from?” The guy looked agitated, even before Sami approached him. “Gaza,” he answered and continued, “What about you?”

  Sami replied, “Syrian. How long have you been in Malaysia?”

  “I am here for a week and I leave in twelve days.”

  “Where to?” Sami asked.

  “I work in Qatar. My friends told me it would be faster to do it from here.”

  Sami couldn’t hide the surprise on his face, “You have a job in Qatar!”

  “Yes, I have been working there for almost four years.”

  Sami looked at me and whispered, “Do you believe it?”

  “It is what it is.”

  “Would you come here if you could get a visa to Qatar?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Me neither,” Mustafa replied.

  The two guys in front of me had their family seated elsewhere. I thought the Syrian guy’s mother and a Palestinian dude’s children and wife should be spared the strain of queueing. When I brought it up, all parties agreed. I struck up a conversation with the middle-aged Syrian, “Where exactly do you come from?”

  “Baba Amr, Homs.”

  “Oh, I’m really sorry.”

  “We are lucky to make it here.”

  “Why Malaysia, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “It’s okay. My friends’ son promised he’d find me a job in a Syrian restaurant.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Not actually. The owner hasn’t paid us for ages.”

  “I’m sorry to hear…”

  “That’s not all. When we arrived here, he promised to get us work permits. We paid half of our salaries for a year to cover the visa cost. He held onto our passports for more than a year. After several months of no pay, we wanted our passports back so we could look for jobs elsewhere. He kept delaying until we fought with him. Our passports had been with him all along!”

  “Fuck that shit! I am really sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just our luck.”

  “You keep speaking in plural?”

  “My mother worked there too. It is not enough for one of us to work.”

  “I’m sorry. Is that all your family?”

  “No, I had a wife.”

  “I’m really sorry. Can I ask you what happened?”

  “In Baba Amr we saw what hell looks like. Constant bombardment! Bombs all the time and everywhere. There was no water supply and no electricity. Nobody could leave or enter Baba Amr.” Hearing him sniffling and about to choke up, I put my hand on his shoulder. Observing us, the Palestinian guy sneered, “You Syrians… It’s not even four years yet. We have been enduring this life so long that it’s become normal.”

  A younger Syrian in the line interjected, “Sure! Even if all our people are killed we’re still less.”

  “We have been waiting for years and now you are the UNHCR priority. You haven’t seen what we have endured.”

  Avoiding the confrontation of those competing in victimhood, I turned to my fellow countryman, “It’s hot in here isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s like working in a Syrian bakery.”

  “Ha, ha. Yeah indeed! I guess if you'd known, you wouldn’t have worn long sleeves. He responded by pulling the collar of his shirt down, unveiling severe burns from his collar bone running down what I could see of his chest. He clarified, “My arms are burned too. They are from the night I lost my wife. I am lucky I have no children!” Dumbstruck, I felt my rage before I realised my guilt. I thought, if any of us was deserving of a chance, it would be this man; not the guy working in Qatar, Sami, Mustafa, or me.

  **********

  My family had strived to keep me in the dark of their horrifying ordeals. They had their reasons: those far removed from the agony shall not be burdened with the ache of the suffering. I had to wait for my sister Heela’s slips of the tongue. Over the years there had been a lot of those. Before things went south, I would talk to them few times a year. The conflict changed everything. My father had become all upfront emotionally. He wouldn’t miss a chance to state, “I am proud of you son.” On occasions he would say, “I love you son!”

  Two years after March 2011, Al-Assad regime loyalists were easily overrun by Al-Nusra. The al-Qaeda affiliate had enjoyed the help of a handful of other groups. If anything Al-Nusra should have thanked Al-Assad for abandoning the city and the Syrian National Council for being in bed with them at that time.

  Heela was in touch with our family more than I was ever able to be. She had more friends in the city. She had spent a year after graduation in Ar-Raqqa and left before Al-Nusra had been overtaken. I was proud of her. Made by Hazem and Warda she grew to be a strong and independent woman. I still remember our conversation after she made it to Turkey. She claimed, “I was smuggled across the borders like Mexicans making it to America.” Hearing that line I couldn’t help but ask, “Where have you seen Mexicans making it to America?”

  “American movies.”

  “Movies are always real!”

  From Syria, Heela had managed to secure herself a scholarship in Slovakia. Unaware of the curse put on our kind, she applied for a visa through the embassy in Ankara. She was asked for the impossible and when we made it possible they were left with no choice but to flat out reject her. However, with the little cash she had, she made it to Egypt, a country very conflicted on who Syrians are. My kind had been welcomed in earlier times, then labelled and treated as outcasts thereafter. During the good times, she enrolled in a master’s course with a full tuition waiver only to discover that the autocrats could take back what the theocrats provided. She worked hard all the time but in that nation it was like prising a baby from a vicious lion’s fangs. Heela had the lead on reaching out to people from the city after Al-Nusra claimed ownership. Outraged by her naïve friend, she vented, “The idiot is happy! She told me that it felt like the day before Eid.”

  “How come?!”

  “Apparently, they prayed as though it was.”

  “Yeah, use the mosque to get your word out.”

  “Exactly!”

  Before the savages established their court of injustice, I’d managed to reach my father. Over the phone I asked, worried, “Is everybody fine?”

  “We are fine son; your mother, sisters, and brothers.”

  “What about your brothers?”

  “Son it’s full of darkness here. With their beards and masks, they are going to fuck this godforsaken city up. They are taking this town to the stone ages.”

  “What about your brothers?”

  “The day Al-Nusra entered the city your uncles stopped the fight. It was another version of Al-Assad. It was fight for me or death. They just brought their culture of death with them and now it has to be everybody’s code.”

  From Heela I got to know of the dangers and costs that my younger sisters had to endure so they could go to school. I had been aware of ISIL’s ban on female education beyond the fifth grade, but I had been kept in the dark that they had to take one of the deadliest routes in the entire country. The upside of this torment was that they had something to fight for. I know for s
ure, I would have surrendered to a state of endless depression, should I have sipped half their agony. Hearing my discouraged tone, my sister Samar deflected, “Brother you've got it all wrong! You’re hearing the bombs and saying ‘Fuck.’ Deir ez-Zor has better network reception than Ar-Raqqa. You see, I would go every day just so I could hear your voice.”

  “Fuck off!”

  “Without your help, I wouldn’t even have this chance.”

  “It’s the least…”

  “I love you brother.”

  “I love you too.”

  My father’s salary hadn’t been enough to survive on; two loaves of bread per head for ten days was all they had. Before getting married, Solaf, who was four years younger than me, spent her monthly pay check on the rent for the family’s apartment. She too maintained the rule of keeping me distanced and in the dark. She had the guts and the tenacity to go to work until the day ISIL, on the basis of their terrorising misogynistic faith, prohibited this defiant woman from putting a roof over her family.

  Movie heroines, or villains for that matter, would use the line that everybody talked before they would have to resort to enhanced interrogation techniques, which is anything but enhanced. Maybe being a teacher herself was the straw that broke that strong camel’s back. Escorted by Nyhad, one of my brothers, she rode the bus to the school in the remote village she was assigned to. He had to wait for her every freaking day. After all, he had nothing better to do. Al-Assad’s fighter jet had brought his institute to rubbles a semester ahead of his graduation. Without his files and threatened by the arbitrary recruitment of Al-Assad’s armed forces, he was left with no choice but to accept his fate. Solaf and Nyhad saved some money walking from the terminal to home. The fastest way was through Ar-Raqqa’s clock square.

  Having noticed the crowds around the square, they walked head down. I think my mother passed the term to Solaf who described it as “ISIL’s plays of horror.” The man was high enough that passers-by couldn’t help but have a glimpse. He had been blinded, his chin anchored to his left collarbone; dried blood stretching from his right eye to his neck. Solaf froze in terror before collecting the strength to pull her trembling hand to keep the savages from smelling her fear.