THE STORY OF SARA


AYAD GHARBAWI


CHAPTER 3: BEING AN ACTIVIST

  
Gradually, we become ever more radical in our burning quest to uproot every conceivable element of the corrupting culture of the oppressors.
  We soon started to call these oppressors 'Pigs', because that is exactly what they were: overweight, bloated, filthy animals who live simply eat and consume all day, and who love to live in their own excrement.
  The Pigs had to be removed, because you cannot negotiate with a pig.
  It was so obvious to me!
  Some people did, indeed, argue that diplomacy and negotiations were the way to achieve our blessed equality-based society, but that was pure idiocy to me; because, for Heaven's sake, a pig will remain a pig and cannot become an 'enlightened' pig! These criminals, who are creating poverty, and who are killing people, because they do not allow them decent health services, must be completely eradicated, or else, ordinary people will continue to suffer.
  One day I heard Tony give a speech in front of a huge audience: "There's no point in cutting the tail of the snake. No, you must go straight for the head, and that's how you **** it!" And there ensued roars and cheers, from the mainly young crowd. "And, if someone is trying to **** you, what do you do? Negotiate? Talk to them? No, you **** them first, that's what you do! That's who the Pigs are, my friends. They are out there killing you, and so many of you tonight are simply not even remotely aware that you are dying slowly – so, you must, first of all wake up, and realize that someone, somewhere, is draining out the blood of your life, and next you must identify the cancer that is killing you. So, who's the cancer?" Tony screamed, and the by now delirious crowds immediately responded with a thunderous and hate-filled, "Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!"
  "The Pigs talk and teach us about 'morality' and 'respect' and 'decency', and other subjects like that. That's laughable now, isn't it?! I mean, the blood stained mass murderer is teaching us etiquette here?!"
  "No! No!" roared back the audience. "**** the pigs! **** the pigs!" they suddenly and somehow instantaneously started to chant. So, I must correct what many people think about Tony, and that is, he 'invented' and popularized that phrase, '**** the pigs". No, he didn't; it was the audience that night who spontaneously came up with that really exciting and vibrant phrase!
  From then on, violence became more common along with the never ending chants – if not screams – of '**** the pigs!' Every day, and all over the country, the movement had flourished, and there were the most refreshing and gloriously destructive riots in almost every major city.

  It was at this time that I first heard a speech from Omar.
We waited for the man to appear, but he seemed nowhere to be found.
  My God, I heard from so many people that he was the most radical in the deepest sense of the word!
  Apparently, he made Tony sound like a child!
  He also had a well disciplined party – unlike Tony.
  Here was a place that I can find the ‘cause of my life’!
  I could work for Omar and that would be the point of my life!
  The thought thrilled me – because I was already a convert to their ideas, but with Omar, there was a real party that was actively fighting the government, whereas Tony and other leaders like him were independent activists, but with no party behind them.
    Then, Omar suddenly appeared.
  He was of medium height, average looks - but it wasn’t long before you noticed his inexpressibly burning, fanatical eyes!
  I was about a few metres from him, and I could feel the sheer intensity of passion and rage within those eyeballs!
  This man must have absolutely the words of truth, for no Man could look like that and be a liar!
And then he gently spoke:
  "**** the pigs, I hear you say. Well, that's not good enough for me. People like that make me yawn. And, I'm bored of yawning every day. We need more. We need to move on faster. I need speed. It's not just '**** the pigs', it's '**** the cops!', because the cops defend the Pigs and attack us every day; '**** the teachers!' because every teacher does nothing except to teach us with pointless information'. And, '**** every human being' who sides or serves the establishment!”.
  Omar’s eyes were literally able to stab right through your heart and soul simply by staring at you!
  I can well imagine that my reader will not believe me and will say it was because I was a convert to Omar’s ideas that I found his eyes to be so abnormally powerful – but, what do you say to all those people who did not like him, and who met him, and yet, they, too, all said that his eyes were profoundly piercing?!
  So, you see, reader, do believe me – it’s not because I was emotionally enthralled by Omar, that I am describing him to you the way I do!
  He had beautifully framed fingers – I don’t know why I noticed that!
  He had a rather longish nose – maybe, that was one defect in his face, but you hardly noticed that, given the other attractions in this man.
  And then he possessed the deepest, most guttural, and yet so sweetly melodic voice, that I had ever heard, and when he spoke, he simply entranced me – not to mention the thousands of others.
  Omar continued, beginning to raise his ragged voice:
“And, so I order you, tonight, and tomorrow, and every day, to fanatically and ruthlessly exterminate every visible sign, agent, artist, writer, philosopher, painter, sculptor, journalist, teacher, professor, lawyer, doctor, surgeon, banker, engineer, everyone who works in the mass media like the television, every film maker, every scientist, and every single employer and employee of the Pigs."
  The audience now simply shrieked the verb, '****! ****! ****!’ while Omar went silent, amidst this wild orchestra of hate being played out.


  I noticed, that unlike Tony, Omar wouldn't gesticulate or move his hands at all.
  Actually, he just stood there, rock solid, like a statue while only eyes and mouth spoke!
  The man, I swear, looked like a 'human rock'!
  He was the absolute epitome of boundless hatred; of unrestrained defiance against the rulers ruling us!
  Yes, I do admit, and I hesitate to say so, but, yes, he almost did like completely maniacal – were it not for his self control and the beauty of his words!
  The audience relaxed.
  Omar waited until there was silence, and he continued:
  "Do you see the difference between what I am saying and what brothers like Tony say? People like Tony demand from us to uproot the pigs. But what Pigs does he, in fact, mean? Who does he mean, when he says 'Pigs'? He means the rich. That's it.”


  Now, Omar abruptly went silent.
  Tension.
  He was staring at us.
  I could feel that the audience felt nervous precisely because Omar was staring at them.
  Finally, he continued:
  “Can you imagine the limits of his intellect?! To Tony and his misguided followers, the solution facing the problem before us is simple enough: you simply wipe out the rich, and suddenly we have the beautiful society!"
  Omar was sneering, being utterly sarcastic in his voice and tone.
  "So is that it, Brother Tony? Is that all we need to do?”
  There, he stopped again, with a sarcastic, wicked smile on his face.
  The man’s body simply had no motion in it!
  I was waiting to see, if Omar would, at some point, move his body or his arms, but so far nothing!
  He continued:
“My goodness, I never knew that the gigantic problem facing us was to be solved in such a simple manner! But, no, you're being fools. Or, maybe you're fooling your selves. Either way, I don't know, and more importantly, I don't care, because, as I told you all out there listening to me,” suddenly, he began to scream with his rasping voice:
  “I'm a serious man, with a serious mission, and above all, I'm a man in a hurry!"
  Again, Omar went suddenly silent.
  I could sense, that he was deliberately teasing the audience, because they were obviously desperate for him to continue speaking, while he, would every so often stop speaking, thus adding to the tension in the atmosphere!
  The audience laughed, loving the biting sarcasm; obviously there were lots of rivalry and jealousies between the two camps, and so Omar's followers just loved to hear the buckets of insults being poured upon the followers of Tony.
  The mocking tone continued:
  "These fools are retarding our own path to victory! These followers of Brother Tony, are doing the dumbest acts that I have ever seen. I mean, what do you mean and what are you trying to achieve, when you have his followers going to restaurants and disrupting the place? I mean, is this what the definition of 'stupidity' is, or what?!"
  The crowd cheered: "Yes! Yes! Idiots!"
  "Listen here Brother Tony; I would like to say, 'it's all right, you're still young and you'll soon grow up'. But I can't say that. You know why?"
  The audience waited as Omar paused.
  He was staring at his audience.
  Suddenly, he erupted with his deafening scream:
  "I can't wait. Didn't I already tell you that? Didn't I tell you I'm a man IN A HURRY AND I'VE GOT TO DO MY WORK! DON'T YOU PEOPLE OUT THERE GET IT?"
  He roared, and the masses applauded furiously.
  "I don't have time, for children like Tony, and for his own little children, to stand in my way, and wait for them to grow up! I don't have the time, because I have an enemy out there, that needs to be completely, ruthless and fanatically exterminated, root and branch, do you now follow me?"
  "Yes! Yes! We follow!" screamed the masses.
  Silence.
  And then, Omar continued:
  "So, we know who Tony defines as the Pigs. What about myself? We must talk the talk of the brave. If you're scared, then get out of here. Why do I say this? Because this struggle requires the most ruthless behaviour on our part, and to be ruthless, you need to be brave, and to be rave means you have no fear."
  It sounded almost as if he were singing.
  Or maybe it was my imagination.


"So, who are the Pigs, you ask me? Simple. The Pig is a man, woman and child who has any Pig Attributes. What do I mean by 'Pig Attributes'? Very simple. Any human, who has in his brain, any idea, concept, believe and acceptance of any value from the rulers who rule us all. And, what are these 'values' that come from our dear rulers? They are ideas and values such as: there are the simple ones, like the belief in the right to profit, belief in the right of property, inheritance and so on. Then, there are the other beliefs, such as, belief in compassion for the rich, or cooperating with the rich or socialising with the rich. You follow?"
  The audience was silent.
  "That means, any human in our sick society, poor or not, who in any way, not only physically interacts with the rulers is a Pig himself, but also any human, poor or not, who has in his heart and mind, any empathy for the rich is a Pig himself, and so therefore, it follows – and I hope you people out there are listening to me – it means, therefore, that a poor human being who has any Pig Attributes, is a Pig himself, just like the rulers themselves. Do you understand?"
  Silence.
  And then he walked out.


  It was so sudden, because I expect a really screaming end from Omar, but to the surprise of everyone, he ended and simply walked out!
  But, I, understood what he meant.
  Basically, he was enlarging the definition of what it meant to be the 'enemy'.
  This struggle was now going to be infinitely more difficult. With Tony, the war was simple enough.
  We were 'right' while anyone belonging to the ruling class was 'evil' and that was it.
  Obviously, no member in the ruling class can deny that he's in the ruling class! They can even change their accents and their clothes, pretending to be poor, but there are computers and archives, such as birth certificates, school records, and it doesn't take long, to find out a person's origins.
  But now what Omar was proposing, that a Pig is any human being who interacts with the ruling class is evil.
  Also, anyone who has any thoughts that have any Pig Attributes (for example, being pro-ruling class), are also evil, and therefore, had to be eliminated.
  In other words, the poor can be Pigs as well.
  I loved that, because, I was never comfortable with most other left leaders, including Tony, who only focused their ire against the rich.
  To them all the poor were ‘blessed’ and ‘sinless’, and I knew, from my own background, that they simply romanticised the poor, probably because they themselves were all rich people who had never lived one day of their lives in poverty.
  With Omar, being impure, or sinful could be anyone in society – and, your background or class didn’t matter.
  That was far more logical to me!

But with joining Omar’s party, came other problems for me.
How were we supposed to ‘find’ a Pig, or an impure person?
  How can we be sure if a person has the Pig Attributes in his mind?
  It seemed ludicrous to me!
  I had doubts because as attractive an orator that Omar was, once you went home and thought about what he actually said, a lot did not make sense.
  I had so many ideas that contradicted what Omar had to say.
  For example, can’t we achieve our goals by peaceful means – rather than choosing the path of violence?
  And if we must use violence, then why don’t we attack military targets and not civilians?
  Wasn’t it wrong to target civilians and civilian places – like factories, farms, and shops?

  
  There he stood; eyes blazing as ever.
  What makes eyes 'blaze' I wondered.
  They don't actually emit any light, do they?
  So how can one man have such penetrating, piercing eyes that go right to your innermost heart?
  Omar seemed to be made of steel.
  Or, maybe it was all in my imagination, as Sanji would always be telling me.
  It was his personality and also his body language: that stern, stiff way of standing, that seemed to be the epitome of defiance against the evil in the world!
  His whole body seemed to be chiselled from the purest marble; there he stood, this heroic rock, against the tyranny of the storms and the oceans that were crashing on him; and still, there he stood, not only in supreme piety, but also, there he stood, waging a struggle against these very dark forces of evil.
  He will rid our society and our nation from evil, and one day, we shall live in a truly happy country.
  This nation and its sad people, this nation that has so many miserable, poor and unhappy people, will soon be able to live free, happy lives, without the burdens and the shackles imposed on them by the ruling elites.
  He spoke:
"They need to be utterly, and without a shred of human mercy, be exterminated, or else, it is us, who will be exterminated! It is either them or us! We need to cleanse our entire body from these cancerous cockroaches. Don't you people understand? Call it '******', call it 'exterminate', call it 'butchering them' – I do not care; what I do care and what I need in order to breathe uncontaminated, fresh air,  is to surgically and methodically and blindly eliminate the very existence of every Pigs on our land! That is why we have no choice but to fight. The criminals leave us with no choice. If they surrender their corrupting ways agai

1) I am the half-pint of hope in a plastic cup, not the full litre of utopia in the bottle of sanguinity.

2) I am the cracks in the side-walk, not the perfectly paved path for positive people.

3) I am everything the fire left behind, not the half-salvaged items saved from the burning wreck that steals oxygen.

4) I am just a cigarette you put between your lips, not the romanticised fad people say it is.

5) I am the heaving through heavy lungs, not the clear inhaling and exhaling of oxygen through untainted lungs.

6) I am the awkward silence, not the deafening silence that people love.

7) I am the heart that still imagines the ghost of your fingertips on it , not the one that is covered with love bites and dark bruises constituted of unbridled lust.

8) I am the jagged path of unsteady thoughts, not the ebb and flow of consciousness.

9) I am scattered thoughts quickly scribbled in an old moleskin notebook, not sad love droning about his eyes.

10) I am mottled blood stains on bleached floors, not those oddly beautiful blood patterns you see in ****** scenes.

11) I am the static on the television which matches the thoughts in your mind, not the always-very-strong-signalled antenna on your rooftop.

12) I am a burning building screaming for help, not the beautiful luxury homes that are fireproof.

13) I am not flawless, I am the imperfections that are difficult to embrace.

Auto-annihilation is stupid,
It breaks hearts.
And ruins lives,
I hate that I was ever self-destructive,
I rue the day I became entranced
By its shadowy charisma,

While alcohol spoiled my life:
Poor Jo-Jo was right
To warn her cherished daughter
Of its insidious malignancy.
I was one of the felicitous ones
In that it didn’t entirely destroy me,

But despite its lack of glamour,
In comparison to
other more romanticised intoxicants,
It’s among the most lethiferous of drugs
That stole from me
What remained of my gorgeous youth.

Stamped, I said; don't you dare let go of my hand.
Until the day my breath and your hair turn silver.
Holding my jugular, I let you watch me undress daily
My love for you was bulletproof, but you're the one who shot me
What you don't know, is you missed the cavity
I romanticised the cocking and pulling nightly, murdering beauty.


I ran away from home, to sleep in a manger
I ran from a man, a man I never knew
Same genes, same jeans. Denim was my choice, and yours.
Rotten, like and old pair. Chromosomes.
I lay on your thick neck
The weight of a field mouse, tiny bones, pulled, curled in the straw, invisible to everyone but you
Your shoes always faced upwards
Walking the line where the barbed wire tore your chest
Your heart was a runway, our family horse, chocks away
Twelve stitches, those same twelve stitches in my mother's neck, at twelve years old,
Twelve years on and it's taking thirteen to heal


I learnt how to pick locks at eight years old,
A lost boy in the body of a girl, skin of a thistle, no ****
Purple and armoured
A chameleon soul, belonging to no one
No compass due north, a ***** needle
She said; 'Baby, you're like cyanide, and I liked you for that.'


I believe in madness
Holding your breath for sixty seconds, because you can
Like a bird flying into a windscreen voluntarily
Throw me into it,
If i'm going, i'm going,
Pull me down harder, bind my ankles to make a tail
Hit me harder, hit me until I find it acceptable to hit back,
No halves, of the halves that halve us in half
I'm all

the greatest lesson i learned concerning life was what Ezra Pound refuted... it came from Tao - and on that 86 bus heading to school i have learned it like an arithmetic rubric - my only lesson came from Tao, all my lessons came from Tao - from a Buddhist revision... the lesson? the only way to aid the world is to let the world forget you, and you in turn forgetting the world be. for that what speaks to the entombed heart, the heart of hearts when the mountain crumbles into rubble, and you're left picking your fancy until the diamond is found among seashells, before you the sea of time gnarling with gnashing of shattered teeth - shoo shoo shoo as if tiresome of the green-bottom flies who's spawn is readied overly... the *******... i can't call them anything respectable in African sensibility... the ******* at the back of the bus and the white harlots too... me in the middle sitting reading a book... Stendhal romanticised me, but Tao taught me reality... i know it wasn't the original Tibetan slit eye, it was Japanese... the only way to help the world is for the world to forget you and you forget the world... which i relearned reading Heidegger, who suggested i should be transparent in engaging with the world through concern (being there, or dasein), even a Heidegger apologetic in me turned into Ronin - Asiatic apathy is courtesy, European apathy is simply impoliteness - the latter has too many ****** expressions - i summarise my life with the anonymous Taoist monk who said these words... anti-celebrity culture, they burn like fire in my mind - they burn like fire in my mind - they are my mind - but i had to show him the European verbiage and the ferns of European thought to prove him right, and i did. Heidegger's concern became the ***** Berufung, soon the concern fizzled and was masked by wife and children - but better a Heidegger apology than a Christian one - what meditation can a crown of myrrh provide while being crucified? none! the Rastafarians keep singing about Babylon... the tree wise men came from that region... so the fourth magician... the four horsemen of the apocalypse? Melchior, Caspar, Balthazar, Jesus  it's still a profanity of the tetragrammaton - four horsemen, four canonical gospels... and that ***** that's Gematria - the undermining of all serious study - you can keep those Rabbis in the museum with Grecian  marbles to collect dust, as i mention Tolstoy and that passage from war & peace: pierre bezukhov - the freemason friend (chapter 13) - l'empereur Napoléon  (666) - l'empereur Alexandre - la nation russe - comte Pierre Bésouhoff - sub z for s (Chiral Gemini) - + de und le - le russe bésuhof = 671 - omitting e (incorrectly) - l'Russe Bésuhof - BINGO! - the orthographic gag - most Anglo never heard of such graphic, having never made auxiliary use of it - but i stick to the lesson in Tao - the world does not recognise me as acting in its fate, and will not remember me as even the hushed - i rather not remember it in whatever guise it might provide for me - the first lesson in Tao, is the last lesson in Tao - Stendhal might have taught me romanticism of the ideal heart of woman - but that one maxim of Tao taught me how to not hunger for women, as if i were the Paraclete - perhaps what Christianity wished for was a placebo of the Paraclete - given that so many already believed the other figure being extinguished in the wake of the 20th century - but in talk of religion, such is the limited vocabulary, and such the impossible task ahead, in that grand masquerade of identifying all with one, and one with all:
as an atom:
                                       omni
                          
                  omni           mono         omni

                                       omni                                  or

(around me everything, i must concentrate on myself)

                                                        ­      nihil

                                         nihil             omni          nihil

                                            ­                  nihil  

(around me nothing, therefore i must encompass it all)

whatever the answer, i sought, and found mine,
it was in Tao, and nowhere else.*

there's never a talk of transparency
in politics - politics isn't
about transparency - it's about
the vaguest and the foggiest -
you all should know this by now -
but ado with George Orwell's double-think,
or simply doppelgläuben -
you believe to disbelieve - that's what the
doppelgläuben does - if religion be the ******
of the masses, then engaging the masses with
politics is engaging them with
hell-raisers - diluted alcohol from 40 to 15%.
no wonder they're ******-off being prescribed
status quo placebos;
politics was never about transparency, all those
near the pigsty troughs know the motto:
you scratch my back, i scratch yours.
the electorate think this applies to them
also true between their daily squabbles, but it doesn't.
doppelgläuben: you believe to disbelieve;
and of course we want objectivity, we want
cages after all... Darwinism is perfect for
an objective expression, which is why poetry
is sidelined as Loser St. -
we all want perfect abs and the opportunity to
sell yogurt rather than Mongolian Yurts
in swimwear shorts... but how long will this
Siberian talk of rationality serve the mammalian heart?
how long will objectivity given Darwinism seem
sensible to keep? are we at the butchers' or
reflecting on life? raw meat, maggoty meat, well done?
we all know that the majority of us are losers,
but drilling this in will never allow us to
speak objectively... well, it will... like in Munich,
an 18 year old lashing out from what he heard
his father being called: Scheiße Auslander -
this is the rational benefit of objectivity so keenly expressed
in argument - which is why so many people have
turned to poetry, but they don't yet see that
the ****** was worn for much too long -
and given democracy, they get lost in the whirlwind
of so many people feeling the same.
hence? Tao lesson no. 1 - aid the world by the world
forgetting you... and you in turn forgetting the world
so the world can be best aided, and you kept free
without minding the c.c.t.v.

I washed my hair for the first time in three weeks and
learned to stop walking on tiptoes
                I am the bitter taste at the back of your throat.
Some nights, I turn on every light in the house and sit awake picking skin
from my chapped lips
               I am full-circle and puncture wounds.
I wanted to be the girl to wear her heart on her sleeve but
my armband was embroidered with a *******

I was misinformed. Romanticised.
There isn't romance in 4am shudders, in skin stuck to the teal sofa or the sweat between my
shoulder blades. In yellow stained fingers nicotine or black stained lungs tar.
For protection, I tried pouring a ring of salt - and found myself
sitting cross-legged on the floor
rubbing salt into my wounds
           No ritual can protect me from myself.

Decoupled from my conscience of subjective discernment
The necessity for personal authority over impulse
Vs an instantly gratifying road to distraction
Journey of wilful blindness
Consequential destination deferred
But upon arrival lies the choices
To decouple, To adjourn
Or to confront the demons towards which my back I have turned
Self-romanticised truths to whom before I have spoken
Yet despite a colourful history our personal promises lay broken
Under the rug
Etched into the bottom of a bottle
A chasing of tails
Ignorance long forgotten
A cycle indeed
But of downward trajectory
Gratefully, the bottom of which yet to be met by me
But somehow graced by others
With stronger character than I
A slippery *****
An exponential decent
Over which I now maintain a watchful eye

I can’t remember when
I last wrote a poem with a pen
Writing once romanticised
now has been exorcised

From touching tablets or touching keys
magically
words begin
appearing on a screen

Organised as I wish
edits in an instant
easily erased
replaced or placed elsewhere on the page

A literary light show
based on binary play
then sent off to cyberspace
until another day

To me she is a name and an image,
the moral to my good intentions,
A face to a feeling of my own invention.
She's a lingering lie in the back of my mind.

Fingers and lips stand highlighted
as ghost-like etchings in my abbreviated memory.
Romanticised moments of your hip-bones tremoring
on Winter nights, alone and together in the dark.

Our long lasting days in-doors
played out like "the way things ought to be",
with the most perfect view of the movie
through faded strands of hair

These days, your girls make you up unfamiliar,
Indian ink applied over the original sketch,
the shivering girl brought down to match,
a floating feather dipped in black and
made part of a Hot Topic handbag.

And even now I wonder if the dripping wet girl
with the stiff shutter smile
ever even existed, at least,
the drunken emo kid staggering on the cobbles whispers rumours
she was mown down by telltale scripted kisses and silent exchanges.

So she remains a name and an image,
a memorial for better or worse,
an epitaph that eases the hurt,
the difficult first album of my heart