Writings / Essays: Mathew Nashed

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An Exiled Poet

 

“Nobody can treat a man like a dog
If he doesn’t first consider him a man”
-Jean Paul Sartre

I was once told of a little boy who expressed the desire – which was, of course, a natural desire – to be free. But in an effort to protect him his mother would silence him: “Be quiet!” The little boy would reply and question simultaneously: “No one is here?” Trembling in her house, his mother would whisper: “Shhh, the walls have ears.”

On 8 September 2012, I had the privilege to speak with a Kurdish Syrian writer and, more importantly, a survivor of the ongoing war. His name is Miral Birorada. We met in a discrete neighbourhood that shelters numerous undocumented Syrian refugees in the Turkish town of Antakaya bordering on the Syrian city of Idib.  From birth Miral, like many other Syrians, has been the target of a discourse of suspicion. According to him, the Baathist regime often fabricated State propaganda framing the Kurdish minority as a group of people who yearned to separate from Syria. However, as Miral ironically notes, “It was this propaganda, this generalised and false concept, which actually separated Syrians from Syria.”  Prohibited from taking part in the public self-expression, Miral took refuge in writing. He says: “I began writing critical works that articulated the Kurdish struggle in Syria.” He freely expressed his narrative of Kurdish politics, but not just in order to place a higher value on Kurdish suffering, but to open himself up to the multiple narratives of others. It was for this reason, this sole objective that he chose to write all of his works in Arabic. According to him, “Art must operate as a connection, not disconnection, or else what’s the point?” It was not until he was able to trace his grief through the grief of others that Miral eventually learned to domesticate his anguish. He channelled his pain into literary works to relieve his pain. He used his anguish to combat despair.

During our conversation, I addressed the international community’s concern about divisions amongst the Syrian left, but before I could finish, he heatedly remarked: “I encourage civic resistance. I encouraged Alawites to resist, Sunnis to resist, Christian’s to resist, because for me, anyone who struggles is struggling for Syria.”

As far as the international ambivalence upon the rise of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is concerned, Miral emphasised that he was not opposed to the initial emergence of an armed revolution because many people were left with no choice but to defend their lives. However, his faith in the integrity, in the homogeneity of the FSA is wavering. Factions within the FSA, in his opinion, as well as the multiple advocates for international “support” have contributed to repressing the voice of unarmed revolutionaries in order to direct greater attention to armed resistance. This is at the root of – and has complicated – the national polarisation of the left. He further criticises the international press for abandoning the coverage of unarmed activists’ work. Moreover, the few oppositional fighters that I have interviewed all believe that there are absolutely no Alawite revolutionaries fighting within any FSA group. However, as Miral and others point out, countless Alawites continue to be tormented inside state apparatuses for their participation in oppositional protests.

This ignored reality has ‘legitimised’ a simplistic narrative, which portrays the Syrian conflict as a fight between “Sunni Islamists against tyrannical Alawites.” A more  complex picture and understanding of the evolving politics in Syria is forestalled. Not only does that reductionism abandon the fact that several Alawites are being tortured in Syrian prisons and hospitals for protesting against the regime, but as Miral’s life demonstrates, those types of media  chronicles also ignore the struggles of the multiple identities still struggling in Syria. Miral recollects his past:

I remember the first protest I attended in Al-Hasakah, I was accompanied by a Christian writer. Everybody involved in that demonstration shared a feeling that I still have trouble expressing on paper; it was a free feeling. But then the army came and arrested us, they stripped us of this feeling. Freedom is everything and they stripped us of our freedom.

After his arrest, Assad’s authorities placed Miral in solitary confinement for twenty-six days. In this tight allocated space he was fed a piece of bread and a glass of water during inconsistently sparse periods. In this secluded cell he was reduced to a Sartrean “nothingness.” He was, as Hannah Arndt once remarked, prohibited from having the “right to have rights.” The method of Miral’s torture indicated that his existence was reduced to that of the living dead:

They tied my right hand to my left foot, my left hand to my right foot, and then wedged an iron rod under my arms and against my chest; the guards call this method of torture the chicken.

While Miral was in this position, Assad’s guards would begin to beat him until either their amusement seized or their growing fatigue prevented them from continuing. For twenty-five days he was forced into the “chicken” position and when he wasn’t being persistently beaten, he was left to starve. His mobility was restricted, intolerable pain chocked the voices of his thoughts, and he knew what it meant to live in hellish conditions; hell, as  Miral’s story shows is more than just a religious construct; hell is a man made.

On the twenty-fifth day of his detention, Miral suffered a heart-attack due to constant  torment, the strain on his wracked body and a radically deteriorated health. The security guards transported him to the emergency room where doctors attempted to resuscitate his life. Miral explains: “You have to die before the authorities stop torturing you; a prisoner’s only saviour from torture is death.”  I asked him how he made sense of the world initially, after the numbing heart-attack which was responsible for his release. He humbly laughed: “My heart-attack was the best thing that ever happened to me.” The  heart-attack not only saved his life it also returned him to his world of creative expression or as he puts it, “After my heart-attack, I returned to myself.” Miral has come to terms with his humanity,  and the intensity of being interconnects with the intensity of becoming. It is this human form, a form all too human, which gives birth to a novel sensation.  Armed with words of sorrow, Miral liberates himself from distress:

I have no place other than pain
And some of the nostalgia
Eyes deflected, closed slightly
What tours the incurable memory of Kurdish rivalry?
Birth defects…
Maybe sickness…

On September 7th Miral and his wife received a letter from the Baathist regime stating that Miral has been found guilty of “treason.” If Miral dares to re-enter Syria before the regime falls, assuming of course that the regime will fall, he will be forced to spend six years in jail. The couple now lives in a nebulous state and exists in a limbo where their ‘status’ is defined by their ‘lack of status.’ If caught by the Turkish authorities, Miral and his wife can choose either to be directly driven to the border of Syria, or placed inside the pauperised conditions of a Turkish refugee camp. I remember the marginalised walls of their residence commanding a momentary silence; after its passing I asked Miral, “Is there a place for a displaced poet?” He replied, “Only in my speech and in my writing.”  At an early age, he found liberty through his self-expression and his self-expression found release through his liberty. Precisely because of the bottled passion of people like Miral and millions of other displaced and angry Syrians, I would advise that tyranny better listen, if it is not yet deafened by its crumbling walls.

2 Responses to “Writings / Essays: Mathew Nashed”

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  1. Are the sufferings of artists and other unarmed revolutionaries in Syria being ignored?

    Hearts out to Miral and others like him.

  2. Jayiyot says:

    A lot of people are getting ignored.

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