As a Syrian prodemocracy activist living in exile in Silver
Spring, Maryland, since 2005, I feel a growing sense of angst, frustration, and
despondency when I listen to news from my home country and around the world
these days. I cannot deny the ugly realities I see, and I have to struggle to
find ways to keep myself going in the face of it all. Despair is surrender, and
surrender is accepting that things can never be changed. To me, living with
this belief is a far worse fate than the hell we have to go through to bring
about change—the desired change, the change that we deserve.
I don’t believe I am the only who thinks along these lines,
but I might be one of the few foolish enough—if that’s the right term—to
articulate their thoughts and share them, even as it means baring my soul to
the world and exposing myself to ridicule and charges of nihilism. For my
vision is often dark and somewhat off putting, at least at first glance, and
some, maybe even many, may not be able to immediately grasp what I am trying to
accomplish. But my point is quite simple: by acknowledging the incredible
difficulties of the challenges we face and the seemingly insurmountable odds,
the point is not to inspire despair and frustration, but to prepare those of us
who are willing to put our everything on the line for the barrage of heartaches
we are about to face.
As far as we know, life is all we have. It does not matter
how tragic it can often be and how its majesty and beauty can often serve as
cover for all sorts of existential dangers. Because life is all we have, the
fight to make it better, and safer—to extract justice, and assert our freedom
and our own creative potential—must surely be worth it. Some people can
reconcile themselves to the alternative that is surrender, but thankfully, they
are not the ones who end up making history at crucial junctures. The continued
survival of the human race and the progress it seems to have made over the last
few millennia seem to attest to that.
But setbacks do happen, and progress is always achieved in
the long run and is only detected when we compare a millennium or century to
the previous one. This is rarely sufficient to help someone who feels
despondent in the here and now remain motivated. Indeed, the activists rarely
live long enough to see the fruits of their labors, and they always have to
work in the absence of any guarantees of success or the promise of any
immediate rewards. The struggle—rather, the way of life built around it—and the
little sporadic joys and small pleasures it may occasionally bring has been
reward enough for the activists to keep going, irrespective of any setbacks.
I don’t blame people who decide to give up the fight at one
point because they have grown too tired and weary. And I don’t blame those who
didn’t even try to take up the mantle, because blame is always a useless
exercise. Personally, and so long as I have the energy, I prefer to focus on
moving on and facing the challenges, dealing with the setbacks as they come,
and starting over again when necessary. It will never be easy, of that I can be
certain, and this certainty is one of the few I have.
Moving on is always the right thing to do. And should I lose
the energy to do so one day, I will be gracious enough to admit defeat. In
truth, this may happen at any given moment now. After all, I am not getting any
younger, and I have certain internal demons with which to wrestle daily as
well. The combined struggle is taking its toll. Perhaps by publishing this book
I am, in fact, admitting defeat and passing on the mantle. But my admission
here is only meant to be understood in the personal sense. I will not fall into
the trap of generalization or of declaring the war unwinnable and the struggle
unworthy for all and sundry. That’s the kind of narcissism I cannot allow
myself to harbor. It has proven to be the downfall of many, and it shall not be
mine.
My outlook on life is rather dark. Perhaps even too dark. I
was often told I only see the empty half of the glass. But in truth, I never
really cared whether the glass was half full or half empty. This has never been
the real question for me. The real question we have to deal with in life, from
my perspective, is this: Does our basic humanity require the glass to be full?
Or, to frame it differently, can we feel that we are leading a dignified life
without having a full glass in our hand?
If the requirement for leading a dignified life calls for
having more water in our glass, then that’s a sufficient reason to fight. Who
cares how much water there is already in the glass if that amount is
insufficient? Who cares if there are no guarantees for victory, for getting the
glass full? If the need is there, and if it’s genuine, then the fight must
proceed. There are no acceptable alternatives to that.
In my twenty something-year career as an activist, the only
real thing I have had going for me was, perhaps, my ability to be honest and
forthcoming with myself and others—to put myself out there in the thick of it
and bare my soul out, no matter the risk. In doing this, I was motivated
neither by bravery nor folly but by an innate inability to do things
differently. I can only do what feels right to me, irrespective of any
consequences. Now that is the sort of narcissism I had always harbored deep
within me and that I could never root out, come what may. I am more driven by
an inner compulsion than principle, and it is for this reason that I can never
claim to be good. And it is this compulsion that is at work here, forcing me to
share thoughts that others would deem inappropriate, to say the least. But are
they? Are they really?
Bear in mind in this regard that everything I have to say
is, in fact, intended primarily as a question. Even my seemingly vehement
affirmations. I also don’t make any attempt at hiding the glaring
contradictions that can easily be spotted throughout the book because, in a
sense, I am my contradictions—an observation that I believe might apply to us
all as well. We all are, in part, at least, the sum total of our
contradictions. It’s only by accepting this little-advertised truth about
ourselves that we can acknowledge our frailties and vulnerabilities and begin
dealing with the challenges they pose to our continued survival. Previously,
our certainties have served to hide our frailties and vulnerabilities. But this
cover has, time and again, proven too costly and useless to be retained. There
is no hiding our real nature, and there is no hiding from our real character
and the nature of our existence. It’s time we acknowledged that and began
dealing with the consequences.
Some might find this attitude of mine toward life and being
rather irreverent, and they would be right. But my irreverence has never
excluded me. In fact, I have always been the primary subject of my own
irreverence. I act and write out of a sense of deep irreverence toward
everything and everyone. Yes, even those I lay a claim to love. But I find such
deep and evenhanded irreverence to be…liberating. Perhaps after reading this,
you might come to feel this way as well.
Also bear in mind that, to me, respect and reverence are not
the same. I can respect, but I never revere. It’s one tiny step/slip away from
adulation/adoration. And I certainly could never do that.
I am an irreverent activist. And how could I not be? I am
the son of recurring betrayal and constant letdowns. Everything that I ever
believe in, no matter how critical my embrace of it is, turns out to be a lie
and an illusion, and all people who ever earn my respect, as few as they are at
any given moment, turn out to be as flawed as I am.
Every day, again and again, I have to start from scratch:
discovering who I am in this world,
figuring out the basic rights and wrongs of it, and determining whether
mine is still an actual living conscience and not some preprogrammed set of
instructions installed by the very people, notions, and forces that were
responsible for each of my letdowns. Then I have to decide again whether moving
on is still worth it, whether I am still worth it, whether I still have what it
takes to make it happen, and what my exact role in life could possibly be at
this or that particular stage.
More telling, perhaps, is the fact that I have to go through
all this, time after time, without any guarantees for achieving success or, at
the very least, making progress, no matter how infinitesimal, in any of my
chosen endeavors. Still, that’s really not my main concern, and this is
probably why I survive. More than anything else in life, I am concerned with my
desire to die while not engaged in any act of blame or finger-pointing when the
moment finally comes. I want to die while assuming full responsibility for
everything that I am and everything that I did—the good, the bad, and the
macabre of it. My conscience may not be clear then, and it is not clear now,
but I do not need a clear conscience to go on; I just need a functioning one.
Besides, how can a flawed being ever have a clear
conscience? And aren’t we all flawed, even if differently so? No one can go
through life with a clear conscience. Such a claim can only be reasonably made
in regard to specific instances. But the continuing untenability of achieving a
certain goal is not a good or acceptable excuse for giving up on it. We should
all try to have a clear conscience at every moment and every step, even as we
have to learn how to go on with it almost perennially stained.
Knowing all this, how could it ever be possible for me to
live without a heavy dose of irreverence wantonly coursing through my veins?
How could I avoid being an irreverent activist when irreverence, to me, is just
like testosterone and adrenaline—the very thing I need to make me feel alive?
Ammar Abdulhamid
Silver Spring, Maryland