Damascus, here we come…..

Dear beloved friends

I am sorry for having not posted for more than a month and a half and for causing my friends to worry. I am in the middle of a major career move with what it entails of relocation, packing, moving, finding a new home and attending intensive and advanced training after training (don’t tell SC men7ebbakjis, they will immediately claim that it is some notorious subversive training). For a while, things got so intense and messed up that I forgot my multiple conspiratorial passwords and it took a while to find in what “safe” electronic place i had hidden them.

Writing next to the rope says “security solution”, writing on the water “the regime”.

Over the past fifty days, I also traveled through three continents, mostly for work related travel, made new revolutionary friends on the way, and reconnected with old friends. Not surprisingly, those whom I thought had something kicking in them, proved the gems they always were, and those who were always pretentious “resisters, rejectionists, or obstructionists” turned to be what they were: “pretentious”. I have seen many of those drive themselves up into fits of fake anger at the revolution, and watched them and read them as they pathetically tried to shine the bloody soiled image of the foolish buffoon, only to make themselves look and sound more vulgar, especially when they resort to using refined words and obnoxiously flawed and misleading “research“. I also met some of the icons of Syria’s new and real art and literary community. Some of whom I met during their tours, some during demonstrations, and some I visited in their humble refuges scattered over the three continents I traveled through. I met revolutionary hackers who now focus on the security of activists’ communication instead of rejoicing at hacking one of the regime’s propaganda toilets (not to say that they don’t have fun doing the latter), I met members of LCCs who were forced to leave Syria, spent many evenings with them, participated in their online meetings, and was elated to see that their spirit remains high, whether Asef Shawkat and his cohort have met their creator or whether they are now hiding in some dungeon echoing the foolish buffoon’s orders to murder and torture yet more Syrians and to scorch more of Syria in hope of turning history back. Non of that matters, the revolution goes on.

I constantly and persistently tried to write. I sat in front of the empty screen trying to collect my thoughts, to compose coherent essays or even paragraphs and found myself drawn to my private facebook page where I made some serious, but very short commentaries but still could not write an essay. And while the experiential intensity by which my life is being transformed on several fronts was thrilling, the situation in Syria was becoming steadily numbing to me as to most around me in the “external” opposition. As things settled into a chronic pain, everywhere I went I noticed that relief work has become the dominant topic, and for many an LCC, both outside and inside, it is now the primary and perhaps the only type of activity they are undertaking. True, it is a noble work, but the scale of scorching the criminal gang has accomplished in their fool’s errand to preserve the buffoon seems to have been calculated to preoccupy the revolution with relief work instead of political and revolutionary organizational work, which was one of the keys to the success of the Egyptian revolution. The regime continues to make humanitarian work dangerous as it goes on assassinating and jailing relief workers. A young hero, whose primary crime was smuggling bread to Assad-made disaster zones in Homs, was assassinated by one of the foolish buffoon’s snipers just a couple of days ago. There were many heated arguments about focusing on relief and the need to refocus also on the political and revolutionary organizational components, and there will continue to be as long as the murderous regime continues it wanton scorch earth mad dash.

More recently, I lost a member of my extended but closely knit family to a hail of bullets from the buffoon’s thugs. We now have a martyr in the family. My family has shown a great restrain, only attainable by those with an infinite reservoir of faith. I myself don’t have that faith, but I and the rest of the extended family were being comforted by the martyr’s mother, his sisters, and his brothers. I never knew that such incredible humanity existed in Syria. How can we, when artists and poets and for more than four decades have cowed to a state of intellectual atrophy, and more importantly into a state of domesticated house-pets. We had solace that the Martyr’s father has passed peacefully of old age, less than forty days before his son’s murder and that this proud man did not have to be broken by the regime’s message of hate that the thugs and their defenders have been spewing as they are scorching our beloved cities an hamlets. I watched and cried silently as none of my family members acted like the angry bullies one would encounter reading the comment section on Syria Comment, or like the semi-retarded regime-made opposition who protest the loss of lives but do all they can to prolong the misery as they extend one lifeline after another to this inhuman regime. My family was silent, tearful, and yet solidly cognizant that we finally are no different from most families in Syria,………….. one of our sons was murdered by the foolish buffoon.

I come back. I will write less than before due to my intense work schedule and other engagements. I come back exhausted, yet tireless, enraged, yet calm, pained, yet full of hope, and like one of my favorite Syrian poets said, I trust in Syria. Not Syria the mystic amorphous nationalistic and chauvinist concept they have been drilling into our psych for half a century, but Syria the people. How can i not, peaceful protests continue, …. the University of Aleppo shouted embarrassing the fossil aleppine intellectuals, lawyers are starting to act as they should, and the regime is more powerless than ever to stop history. Scorching Syria will not save them…. maligning our common folks will not make them look smart, and murdering our sons will not break us. Damascus, ….here we come.