2 OMER TURNS (All are meaningful)

 

 

Life and its options are not results of human creativity, but man is one of many manifestations of life's creativities. It is exactly like an election that gives you the freedom to choose between two candidates. You can choose to vote for Clinton, Trump or not vote at all. It is a freedom of choices between limited options… between staying in Iraq and moving to America… western absolute nihilism or eastern excessive certainty… absence of the meaning or its excessive presence… ugly truth or comfortable illusion…disenchantment or keeping the world as “a great enchanted garden” …Saddam Hussein or America, and America or ISIS.  

My parents were the Iraqi Romeo and Juliet. My father was Shia and my mother Sunni. At that time, there was no problem between Shia and Sunni until they had to accept a mixed marriage. My mother accepted my father's proposal on one condition which was to name their kids Omar if they got a boy and Aisha if they got a girl, and they got only me. Maybe she tried to show her family that my father was not against their belief, but her attempt did not work, and my parents had to move to a big city to melt in its diversity and escape the tribal traditions.

All life’s options are extremist, and I hate extremism wherever it is, but maybe we have to accept it as a necessary tool for historical development, as Hegel explained. The weird thing is that all these extremist options, in the end, are the same. What is the difference between Saddam, America, and ISIS? Saddam killed us in the name of nationalism, America killed us in the name of democracy and ISIS killed us in the name of God. All killed us in different slogans, but it does not matter what name was on the bomb that blew up your house.

Basra is where my eyes and conscience were opened... where Tigris and Euphrates embrace each other and merge into the delta… where human life started and where it will end, as Iraqis believe. Until now, the tourists visit this ancient tree that is called Adam’s tree, and believe it is where Adam and Eve went down from the Garden to the earth. I think if I were Adam, I would see a trap in every tree, and I would not come down from the garden tree to an earthly tree. However, sometimes I envy these people whose conscience docks on the beach of a belief smoothly.

How can you believe in anything when you find that there is no difference between all the contradictions of your life? All your options are alike, and they will take you to the same end? You would feel like you live in a meaningless becoming.

When I was four years old, my mother died, and when I asked about her, my grandmother told me "She went to God." I cried "Why did she choose to go to Him and leave me?" She hugged me "No darling! She did not choose to leave you. God chose her." That made me think about God as a rival who can choose while I cannot.

Three months later, I started kindergarten where the teachers told us that the room downstairs was full of mice, and they put the troublemakers there. Also, my classmates used to tell scary stories about this room. Their stories opened my imagination to all kinds of thoughts. I remember myself walking around this room and looking at it from a distance. I never came close to it. Of course, I was too scared to break any school rules. I listened to the teachers very well and asked about every small detail of all school instructions until I went to the elementary school.

There was no downstairs in the elementary school. Other students and I asked each other “Where is the mice room?” but no student knew. We asked the teacher: “Where is the mice room?” She did not understand our question. When we explained to her about the mice room in the kindergarten, she laughed “There is no mice room.”

“Do you mean you do not have a mice room in this school?” my friend asked.

“No, there is no such thing called a mice room,” she was still laughing.

“But they told us they had one in kindergarten,” I said in confusion.

“They lied to you,” she changed her laughing to a smile.

Lie? I could not believe that. They just lied! Adults lie?! Just to discipline us! It was not an easy shock for me. Since this time, I have never believed anything I did not experience for myself. I felt like I could not have certainty about anything, even God. Maybe my parents also lied to me about God, just to discipline me, so they told me that He created us and watched us everywhere even though we cannot see him. It was not easy to have doubts at this early age. I was not brave enough to deny God. Also, I do not have knowledge to prove or deny his existence, but I conclude to one equation which is that if He was real and would punish me in the hereafter if I did not worship him, but if I worshiped Him and then later, I discover there is no God, I will not lose anything. So, I continued to worship Him scared.

My friends called me a nerd because my asthma prevented me from many athletic activities. Also, being raised up by my grandmother prevented me from many social activities. Moreover, uncertainty was the thing I hated most in my childhood. It made me an introvert and bookworm. Most times, I preferred being alone watching TV and reading everything I could get my hands on.

In my teenage years, my equation changed. I felt like I was losing something by worshiping God. I lost my enjoyment of life, such as sex, parties and drinking. I felt like God limited my ways to explore and discover the world by myself, so I stopped worshiping Him or even asking about Him. I decided to enjoy my life, but the uncertainty kept hounding me.

“All are meaningless like chasing after the wind.”  Am I sure about that? No, even this nihilism cannot be certain. Man lost his certainty now, or maybe he never had certainty, but illusions. Moreover, the internet opened the floodgates of information to get mixed up and blur together. In line with this flood, we replaced all the value judgments like “certainty and doubt”, “good and bad” or “right and wrong” by personal opinions “interesting and boring”.

This uncertainty is like the heavy black smoke of oil wells burning. This smoke covered Basra for eight months when the Iraqi forces set fire in Kuwaiti oil wells while retreating from Kuwait. I was seventeen and Basra teemed with people who entered the city at the same time. From the north, fretful citizens came to inquire about the fate of their sons in the defeated army, and from the south, tanks and armored cars moved in one line carrying disappointed soldiers returning home. A huge black cloud covered all of them in a state of gloom and anticipation of what the days would bring.

It was dawn in Saad Square, Basra's main square, when a tank stopped in front of the enormous public portrait of Saddam that was hanging over the building of the Ba'ath party... Saddam party. When the tank stopped there, the others behind it in the line did too, and everyone paused and looked at it. The gun barrel turned slowly toward Saddam’s picture. People stretched their necks to look.  The gunner fired a shell into the picture. People looked at each other for a while in silence before they realized what was happening. They realized that their fear was an illusion.  Everything under these black clouds was uncertain except that shell, but nobody could see anything after it. When they passed their shock moment, they applauded. The soldiers acclaimed, "Down to Saddam" and people repeated, "Down to Saddam". They started to move even though they did not know where they should go or what to do. Whenever they passed any government buildings, they stormed them.

Shia called the religious leaders marājiʿ which means "references or sources to follow". How easy our life would be if there is a reference or source that has an answer for any question. We would neither be confused nor have an unanswered question. People like fast food restaurants where they get “take-out” food, so they do not need to cook. In the same way, they tend to depend on someone as a reference or source to think for them, especially if this one has religious, political or family authority. To keep his authority, this reference needs to magnify his followers by calling others infidels or traitors. Also, he needs to spread fear among his followers. Fear of poverty, enemies, hellfire. Day by day, these followers would be petrified, like a piece of wood. When they discover that their reference dictates their choices, their freedom to try different things and their right to make mistakes, they would rebel against him until they find another reference, because they became addicted to the life under such a reference.

We had neither electricity nor water since the American extensive aerial bombing campaign that started two and half months before and continued for forty-two consecutive days and nights. Those air bombardments did not destroy military bases only, but also civilian infrastructure, such as power stations, phone circuits, sewage systems, water tanks, towers and treatment centers. So, there was neither light to see nor TV to know what was happening. It was weird how people around the world were able to know what was happening in our land, but we could not. My grandmother opened the shutters to get any light from outside and closed the windows to keep the smoke out. The schools were closed and I sat on the couch beside my father. He put the alkaline batteries in the transistor radio and then moved the knob until he got the Iraqi formal station. I remember the zealous voice of the reporter when he said: “The Americans are out to get our president personally. They want to settle accounts with him because he challenged them. They consider him their only enemy. They do not know that their enemy is the whole Iraqi nation. After the Americans had failed to overthrow Saddam, they used their agents of traitor Iraqis in a conspiracy to create chaos in Basra.” When the reporter appealed to the honorable citizens to thwart this handful of rogues, my father laughed and he moved the knob to the “Voice of Free Iraq” radio station which was operated by the CIA but broadcast from Saudi Arabia. It was broadcasting a message to the Shia urging them to rise up and overthrow Saddam.

My father laid the radio down on the coffee table in front of him, and said: “Both Saddam and the Americans push us into a civil war.”

I liked to listen to his comments about the news. He was a communist trying to fix the world, until he decided to take care of his small family. So, when he got married, he divorced the politics. But it seems like the politics did not leave him alone. After my mother’s death, he became more religious. He was not too old to marry again, but he did not. He told me “I could not see any woman except your mother.” I like this type of love story even though I do not understand its logic. It is exactly like the logic of transitioning from a communist to an Islamist. I really do not understand how one jump can take you from very far left to very far right. I am not sure why my father rejected his Marxist past and adopted the political interpretation of Islam, but maybe the success of the Islamic revolution in Iran and then the Iran–Iraq War made him review his thoughts.

My father was still listening to the radio when my friends Hassan and Ali knocked on the door. Once I opened it, Ali waved to me "Let's go!”

“Where?” I asked.

Ali came closer to me and said in a quiet voice “To join the uprising.”

When I did not reply, Hassan looked behind the door where my father was still sitting on the couch, “The marājiʿ supported it.”

I motioned to them with my open right palm toward the door behind me. “Come in until I change my clothes.”

“No! We will wait for you downstairs,” they said while moving toward the stairs.

I closed the door and I walked toward my room when my father stopped me “Where are you going?”

“We will join the uprising,” I said.

My grandmother came out from her room. “Are you going to bang your head against the wall?”

My father left the couch, approached my grandmother and put his left arm around her shoulder, “Saddam is not as strong now as he was before.”

She held his right arm, “The injured lion is surlier than a confident lion.”

He lowered his head down to kiss her hand that was still holding his arm: “If we will not do it, the Americans will do it,” and then smiled at me. "Do you think you are the hero and I am the extra? You took the words right out of my mouth. I was sitting there thinking about joining the uprising too, but you beat me to it. However, we cannot leave your grandmother alone. So, either I go or you go.” 

“They are waiting for me downstairs,” I said.

He smiled. “I will tell them that I am going instead of you?” and hugged my grandmother before he left.

My grandmother went back to her room, but I stayed in the living room and tried to open the window to see what was happening on the streets. My grandmother yelled at me: “Close it! The smoke is still there. It is not gone yet. Did you forget your asthma?”

I went to her room laughing “How can I forget my asthma?”

Her door was opened and she was sitting on her prayer rug reading the Quran. She said without turning her face from the book “If you had not forgotten, you would not smoke.”

I did not know how she knew. During this time, I was just smoking with my friends, but I did not bring any cigarettes back to our apartment. I tried to change the subject by sitting on the floor across from her and looking at her rug between me and her “You do not care to know what is happening?”

Finally, she moved her eyes from the book and looked at me “No.”

I thought she might not understand what was going on: “Why?”

She took her glasses off and looked in my eyes “What is coming will come. You cannot stop it.”

I smiled “Nothing will come by itself. Everything needs people to push it.”

Her voice became firm. “It comes only by God’s will.”

“Not our will?” I tried not to smile because I thought she might not like that when she was serious.

She looked scary when she said “God causes the causes. All that we do is to implement God’s will.”

I paused for a while thinking that she was deeper than I thought, “What about those who do not believe in God?”

“They implement His will unconsciously,” she replied in an assertive voice.

It seemed for me as she believed that we are just actors on a stage in a predetermined play. So, I challenged her “Do you think Saddam implements God’s will?”

“We would not appreciate our freedom and rights until we saw his oppression,” she smiled for the first time since my father left.

“So, you do not care if Saddam, marājiʿ or Americans rule us?” I restored my smile.

She smirked and turned her palms up “What is the difference?”

I did not understand her apathy, “Whoever rules, will change our lives.”

“Whoever rules, we will be still in our home,” she held my hand and continued “They just change those who do not know themselves.”

“Actually, we are lucky because our home was not falling down around us after all these bombings like other homes,” I smirked

“Death is another home. It is better than living other people’s lives,” she said before putting her glasses on and going back to her reading.

Maybe my grandmother was right and there is a meaning beyond our reason. We are free only in what we know and fated in what we do not know. It seems like knowledge liberates us; as Jesus said “When you know the truth, it will set you free.” However, as science progresses, we discover that what we do not know is much greater than what we know. Only the ignorants do not know what they do not know.

For three days, my father left in the morning and came back at night. Before bed, he would tell us what was going on that day. Like most Iraqis at that time, I was very happy, excited and full of hope about the future, but my father was more concerned when he came back home that night. When I asked him about that, he said: “There are two steps in any revolution. The first step is to destroy the old regime, and the second step is to build a new one. What I saw in the streets was disharmonious individuals without leadership… mutinous soldiers, communists, Islamists and even disaffected nationalists. Some of them are just starving because the food is very expensive now and not everyone can afford the black-market prices. All of these groups desire regime change, but how, why and what after that? I do not think they know, and if they know, they will not agree. They attacked police stations, the Ba'ath party’s headquarters, government offices and military bases. They already took control of Basra without any plan for what is next. They opened the prison, let the prisoners out, murdered some government and Ba'ath party officials, looted some shops and government officials' houses and set the other ones on fire.”

“So, what were you doing all this time?” my grandmother asked.

“The marājiʿ asked us to protect the houses and shops,” my father replied.

Why are we -the humans- very arrogant? We call what happens a coincidence if we did not plan for. Cannot we imagine a non-human plan? These rebels did not choose to be born in Iraq in the time of wars, but they chose to refuse the choice that was chosen for them. Because their refusal was not planned, it became a coincidence or others’ plan. However, there is no coincidence. Either you plan or you will be planned. I did not plan to be in the bathroom at the same time of the explosion. So, who planned it? My neighbor, Satan or God? Of course, I had the choice to decide how to react and deal with what I did not plan, but I did not think about my options. Actually, my body reacted unconsciously, maybe because others’ plans are traps most times.

On the fourth day, I was sitting my bottom half naked on the toilet when I heard an explosion. I stood and opened the window to see what was happening. But I forgot the explosion when I saw our neighbor in red lingerie cleaning her bathroom. I closed the window but I kept a small area open enough for my eyes to follow her body bending over the toilet and her buttocks gyrating while rubbing the bowl. My right hand left the window and went down to hold my penis stroking then squeezing. I moved my butt to push my penis into my hand with her gyrating buttocks until I heard my grandmother calling me. Startled, I quickly closed the window, washed my hands and penis, put my pants on and left the bathroom to find my grandmother at the door looking at me “Did you hear the explosion?”

I took a deep breath, “Yes. What was it?”

“How would I know?” she replied to me as if I asked a stupid question, then looked at the window and cried, “I am worried about your father.”

“I will go to find him,” I put my right hand on her back.

“No!” she yelled before taking a deep breath “And then he will come while you are not here, so he will go to find you!”

She was too agitated to read as usual. I turned on the radio on the official Iraqi station where the reporter said “After patience, his excellency president Saddam ordered the presidential guard forces to thwart the traitors and eliminate their chaos. Now, presidential guard tanks are surrounding the traitors in Basra.”

“Tanks?” I shouted, “The rebels had only pistols and machine guns.”

I changed the radio to the “Voice of Free Iraq” whose reporter was screaming, “Resist! Resist! Saddam will leave Iraq, if you can resist his guards. This is his last attempt. To be or not to be.”

I thought the news would calm her, but she could not handle their lies and asked me to turn the radio off.  I hugged her and then we sat on the couch as still as statues until we heard a knock on the door. I ran to open it.

How hard it is to see what you are too scared to imagine. It was my father leaning on his friends Ahmad and Ibraheem as the blood covered his face and all his clothes. My grandmother jumped up crying while I asked “What happened? What happened?”

“Do not worry! It is just minor injuries. Thank God,” my father said loudly when his friends were laying him on the couch.

“What happened?” I repeated my question again but it seemed like my father did not hear me.

Ahmad started to cut the clothes around the injuries and Ibraheem put his right hand on my shoulder “I think he temporarily lost his hearing. The explosion was too loud to handle.”

“Explosion?” I shouted.

“Thank God,” he continued “Your father was not too close to the blast, so it only left him with minor injuries in his face, shoulder and leg. Do you have a first aid kit?”

After they had cleaned my father’s injuries, they took him to his bed and put a piece of cotton in each of his ears because we did not have earplugs.

When they left, my grandmother gave me her prayer rug. “Pray for your father,” she said and then went back to her room. She knew that I had not prayed for the last five years. I laid the rug down on the living room floor where there was no light except the moonlight that infiltrated (filtered) through the windows. I took my flip-flops off and stepped on the rug evoking the position of reverence. I did not feel fear like I used to feel before but I did not feel love either. I felt an emptiness like I was praying to nothing. I thought my worry about my father would connect my emotions with the prayer but it did not. After I had finished, I saw my father in his bed looking at me. When our eyes met, he pointed to me to come.

“Do you want something?” I asked while standing at the door of his room.

He smiled “I still cannot hear you. I just want you to listen to me.” His voice was fatigued, so I sat on his bed and he continued “If there is a thin rope between you and God, do not cut it.” I nodded while pursing my lips and he continued “God willing, you will be at college next year. I know you want to study literature like me. It is a beautiful hobby, but when you plan for your future, you need to understand that the future is about science.” I smiled while nodding again, and he smiled “Goodnight.”

I bowed to kiss his head “Goodnight.”

On the following day my father regained his hearing and his friends came to check on him. My grandmother made tea and asked me to take it to the sitting room where my father was sitting with his friends. I put the tea tray on the coffee table and sat with them.

Ahmad took a sip of tea “Today, the presidential guards occupied the main roads, and then they began to fire.”

Ibraheem said “Once they suppress the revolt, they will enter the houses, kill and take people away. They have already started to arrest people.”

“So, what do you think?” my father asked.

Ahmad returned the tea cup to the tray “We think you have to leave Iraq.”

“You want me to leave my mother and son?” my father asked again, but in a censorious tone.

“You can take them with you,” Ahmad exclaimed.

“No. I cannot. My mother is too old to take this risk and Omar is going to college after this semester,” My father shook his head.

“Well! You will leave them, but now you have the choice to leave them to prison or to another country.” Ibraheem replied in a steady voice.

Ahmad moved close to my father “The presidential guards had taken pictures of our streets before they began to fire. We are sure your face appeared in their pictures since their blast was shot toward you and …”

Ibraheem interrupted “Even if your face did not appear in their pictures, they will suspect you because of your injuries.”

“I do not know why you became pessimists,” my father leaned against his seat.

“The Iraqi division who came yesterday went through the Americans’ lines to get to Basra,” Ahmad stated.

“Why did the Americans let them go through?” my father wondered.

“That means they gave Saddam the green light to suppress the revolt,” Ahmad replied.

“Why?” my father kept wondering.

“Americans prefer a military coup not a revolution that ends with the marājiʿ rule.

They do not want a religious government in Iraq, especially if it is Iranian-backed.” Ibraheem responded.

Three days later, my father left with others to the Iranian border in a minibus. His friends were right. The presidential guards' tanks fired on the houses and civilians, then the soldiers began a brutal offensive and massacres against civilians. They occupied the streets, invaded the houses and arrested many people including the marāji. In Sa'ad Square, the soldiers poured gas over a group of bound people and set them on fire in public.

The national police came to our house to ask about my father. When I told them “He is not here,” the officer asked me “Where is he?”

“We do not know. He has not returned since last week.” I replied.

He had looked to his soldiers before they pushed me away from the door and entered to search everywhere in the apartment and throw everything on the floor. When they did not find anything, the officer looked at me and my grandmother “You have to report to us any contact with him.”

The flame of the uprising had been completely extinguished before Ramadan. Schools were reopened and people had to return to normal life as if nothing happened. Because our apartment was not close to the river, our neighbors dug a well to bring water up from the subterranean streams. Every day before we broke our fast, I took a bucket to fill it from this well. The water was not clean enough to drink, and later we knew that even the river was polluted when the sewage leaked into it and dead fish floated on the surface. So, there was no other option besides the well except dying of thirst.

How many times in our lives do we feel that we have no options? When our will is suspended, we lose our freedom and humanity and survive like animals.

The summer had not started yet, but it was very hot when I was walking through stinky mud puddles that had filled the streets since the sewage systems were destroyed. While my bucket was dripping water and my body dripping sweat, I thought maybe the anarchists were right. If we can run our lives in that way, why do we need a government? This government did not give us anything in return for our taxes but suppression (oppression - repression - subjugation).

I was going upstairs to our apartment until I saw the neighbor, whom I jerked off in the bathroom, talking to my grandmother at our door and holding a dish which meant that my grandmother shared with her what she cooked. I froze on the stairs looking at her for a couple of seconds before I looked down and continued up the stairs towards our apartment, “As-Salaamu ‘alaikum!”

“Wa ‘alaikuma Salaam,” they responded.

I was wondering if she knew that I had been watching at her and she complained to my grandmother. 

At the door, my grandmother stopped me. “Do you know that your uncle Mustafa, the husband of your aunt Fatimah, was arrested last week?”

“Yes, I heard that” I looked at the neighbor, “Sorry to hear that.”

My grandmother took the bucket from my hand, “Go back to the well and fill her bucket.”

I took a deep breath, “Of course.”

For a month, I went to the well after school, and filled two buckets of water until the electricity and water started to operate again intermittently. I looked down on the ground when I gave her the bucket. Only in the bathroom, I looked at her body, but I never looked at her face until one day when I went back home after school, she was sitting on my grandmother’s bed. Once I unlocked the door, she looked at me, “Omar, you have to take your grandmother to the hospital now.”

My grandmother coughed while she was laying down on the bed. “No, I will be fine. It is just a regular cold...”

Fatimah interrupted “No, it is not.” She looked at me again “She has had a fever and a headache since morning. Also, she has vomited twice until now.” She did not give me chance to say anything and started to move my grandmother from the right side and mentioned to me to assist her from the left side.

“Where are your kids?” I asked her while I put my grandmother’s arm around my shoulder.

“Their Uncle took them to spend time with their cousins,” she replied.

At the hospital entrance, the nurse pointed out to us to go to a hall that was full of small beds. We walked between the beds looking for an empty one until another nurse waved us to a bed, “Come here! Come here!”

“It is not clean,” I moved my eyes from the bed to the nurse but she laughed “Just lay her down here until the doctor comes.”

There was no seat, so Fatimah and I stood around the bed. Fatimah cried “Why did God choose this type of life for us?”

My grandmother held her hand and recited from the Quran “Certainly, We will test you with some thing of fear, hunger, loss of wealth, lives and crops, but give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere, and when disaster strikes them, say, "Indeed, we belong to God, and to Him we, will return."

I looked at my grandmother and thought “If that's what He wants, let's confess our failure and let Him end this miserable (terrible, horrible, awful) test.”

During minutes of silent, my grandmother dozed off. I think Fatimah noticed that I could not be still. I was walking back and forth until she said “Your grandmother said that you want to study medicine next year.”

-          Yes.

-          Are you grades good enough?

-          Yes.

-          Why medicine? To be rich?

-          To understand the human body.

She got quiet for a while and looked down before she said “I am sorry you did not have the chance to know your mother. I did not have this chance either. I moved to this building when I got married. It was four years after her death but everyone in the building was talking about how great she was.”

I looked at her when I asked her “have you heard anything about uncle Mustafa?”

She smirked “Whoever they took, they hide behind the sun. Even demons cannot find anything about him.”

We had stayed there for two hours before the doctor came and he did not exam her much before he said “She has malaria.”

“Does she not need a blood test?” I asked.

The doctor smirked “Do you see all these patients here? All of them have malaria. It became epidemic now.”

“What can we do?” I asked again.

The doctor wrote a prescription “Try to find this medicine for her.”

When we went back home, Fatimah stayed with my grandmother and I went to the pharmacy to buy the medicine, but they did not have it. I went to another pharmacy and they did not have it. At the third pharmacy, the pharmacist told me “Do not even try! You will not even find an alternative.”

I did not give in to his attempt to make me despair. I walked two kilometers to find another pharmacy. When this pharmacist also told that he did not have it, I asked him “Do you have any alternative of Chloroquine?”

“There is a big demand on all the medications for malaria. So, they are very scarce now.”

My father refused to join the uprising with him because we cannot leave my grandmother alone, and before he left, he had told me that “You are still teenager, but you are the man of the house now.” However, what is manhood if you feel complete inability? What is the humanity if we cannot even survive like animals?