Myth No.5: We will slaughter each other

2005/03/23 Myth No.5: We will slaughter each other When it comes to the future of Syria, there are two and only two visions circulating between people and analysts whether here or outside. We will talk about the second one in the next post. (If we are still free then)

The first glorious vision for this country is that by external banging (aka American army), or internal explosion we are going to fall into chaos and civil war and start slaughtering each other similarly to what happened in Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Of course on a much bigger scale since we beat anyone else with the number of sects and stray groups that live on this land. The fear of civil war is so indigenous to our heads it makes many people scared of even mentioning any topic that they think it touches our sacred presumed unity. To the extent that many comments were left here accusing us of being cowards and stirring trouble by ranting the way we do. One genius even suggested that we will lead the country into civil war if people start talking like us. When I told Karfan about that, he threw me out of the door and chouted: go back right away and write this apology:

Karfan does not think we will ever fall into a civil war, but if it happen, then he personally apologizes in advance because the reason for that upcoming civil war will not be the hatred and distrust we feed our children with towards other sects and groups, it will not be the disrespect and humiliation we have been taught and treated with by our governments, it will not be the shitty internal and external situation that our great successive leaders led us into since independence, it will not be the long years of segregation and negligence of many groups and sects away from the main cities, it will not be the history of sectarian and religious trouble we had since the books can remember, hell it will not even be the Zionist-Imperialist-Neoconservative conspiracy this time! It is going to be the sole fault of the miserable Karfan and his blog-writing friend!!! Go bang your heads into the nearest wall if you don't like what we write, said Karfan.

That is what our great leaders have been drumming up our heads with since birth: "How to self-believe and be self-convinced that living like a silent sheep is actually better for you". They have invented this civil-war fear and "national-unity preservation" bullshit so that no one would think of opening their mouth. We are not allowed to talk about anything that is considered controversial in our society. With a fucked-up society as the one we have, this leaves us few topics to speak about, and that is exactly what most of us speak about usually: girls talk about cooking, and guys about masturbation.

What is wrong with ranting and complaining about something different? Or is it only alright if we complain about our TV not being like the Lebanese one or about the expensive prices of cars, or about the bad taste of rice these days? Nine hundred years of living next to each other and still all what we know about each other is a bunch of lies that are regurgitated from generation to generation. We have a great unofficial and official policy of uprooting sectarianism and tribalism: Ignoring their existence!! Well, they are not going to go away by just shutting the fuck up. How can we uproot something without knowing what the heck it is in the first place? Most of the rest of us know about Martians more than they know about Kurds or Druuz who have been living here for thousands of years. What is wrong about complaining that our fathers "failed generation" spent sixty years loosing their Don Kichotian wars and chasing dreams while forgetting to make us know each other better and build us a solid identity?

Karfan wisdom is: The first step in fixing something is BITCHING about it!! Knowing and exposing the problem is half the solution. Ignoring it or pondering silently about it, will only leads to what we all saw happened in Kameshli city couple of months ago. We think that we can not bitch about anything serious or even mention anything serious because we might stir the sleeping monster of civil war and social trouble. That is what we have been conditioned to believe, especially when it comes to the main issue of Alawi-Sunni question.

This is Karfan's idiotic interpretation of the events: When our Eternal Leader "King Lion the 1st" was growing up he probably believed that he could get his ass on top of the presidency chair with the help of his Baathi friends and followers. But soon after he realized that not enough people are buying the bullshit of Baathism, he turned into finding a bigger pool of followers: his sect the Alawis. Our fathers then found this as a chance to get rid of their seven hundred years of segregation and being treated like semi-human beings, and they helped him up. Soon after, they noticed that instead of building a real secular civil society in which they and other minorities can guarantee being treated equally by our Sunni big-brothers, he and the gang around him were more concerned in building their own bank-accounts and influence. When he noticed that he is risking that many Alawis are starting not to buy his bullshit, then he resolved into convincing them that if they do not side by him, their historical depressors, the Sunnis, will kick their asses back to the top of the cruel mountains they once came from. The stupid Muslim-Brother gang helped him in his mission by hunting down every single poor Alawi they could get their hand on. The "White Knight of Tadmur" helped even more by doing the same to the Sunnis. ("King Lion the 1st" 's brother: White: because he always wore a white stupid tuxedo suit since he was kicked out of the country, Tadmur=Palmera is where the Tadmur-Prison, famous for the dirtiest torture techniques, once was located. That is where he, one day, felt so merciful and decided to relief some thousand prisoners from the torture agony: by executing them).

Generations from each group grew up convinced that the others hate them and want to feast on their blood at the next chance they might get. And of course our Eternal Leader and his gang lived happily in the meanwhile.

When the death of our Eternal Leader was announced, Karfan and many of his deluded Alawi friends in Damascus did not go to work in fear that their Sunni coworkers would jump on them and beat the shit out of their living soles. That is what we have been told, that they will slaughter us or beat us and kick us back to the mountains. So Karfan took the sharpest kitchen knife and barricaded in his dirty little illegal half-built house on top of one damascene hill. But nothing happened!! No angry Sunni crowd, no beating, and no one was asked to go back to the mountains. It was all a lie! But hadn't we all, from all sects and groups, believed this lie, the chances of "King Lion the 2nd" to be the next king of Syria would have been less than the chances of Karfan becoming the king of Luxemburg. We were so full of this civil war fear shit that everybody shut up and listened and clapped to his caricatural Inauguration Speech!

Let us rant, what is your problem? If you do not like our fucked-up opinions then write down yours and let us read it. When we learn never to distrust the other no matter how much we do not like their opinions, we will never have civil wars. We will only have a civil war and social unrest if, and only if, we convince ourselves that we are going to have one. Shutting the fuck up will not save us from civil wars and ranting and bitching will not start ones.

On a different note, Karfan believes that all people here are also so Karfaneh (disgusted) of doing anything, to the extent that they will not even start a civil war. It is a good thing to be that disgusted, after all.