ihath

I have a credibility problem. People don’t believe the things that I tell them. There must be something about me that makes people not believe me. It all started from a young age.

I was a teen, maybe 13 and I was spending my summer holiday in the Czech republic with my family as we did almost every year. I was hanging out with Tomash the next door neighbor kid. He tells me that when he grows up that he will travel to the US or anywhere in the west and become rich. I tell him that not everybody in the west is rich. I tell him about the homeless people I had seen on the streets of Paris. I tell him about how in the US some people are so poor they have to eat out of a garbage dump. I tell him about the prostitutes I had seen standing in the streets of Madrid. He shakes his head, “I don’t believe you, you are just saying these things.”, he tells me. I swear to him that these are things, I had seen with my own eyes and that not everybody that lives in the US is wealthy. “How come they never talk about these things on Voice of America?” he asks me. “You are making things up”. It bothers me that Tomash won’t believe me since we essentially grew up together. We spent many summers climbing on trees, playing hide and seek and sharing meals, you would think he would learn to trust me by now. You would think he would rather believe me than a propaganda radio station. To this day, Tomash continues to live in the same town and the same neighborhood he grew up in. Some people prefer the fantasy world.

Many years later, I was talking with a dear friend in Canada. Somehow we got on the subject of socialism. He tells me how socialism will solve all of the world’s problems. I tell him about my personal experiences in the Czech republic. How everybody hated the socialist regime. He mentions how he visited the Czech republic himself few years earlier, how under the socialist regime, streets were clean, no homeless people on the streets, no prostitutes on the streets, free health care and everybody he asked told him that they loved the socialists. I tell him that people told him that they loved the regime because of fear of imprisonment. That although you didn’t see prostitutes on the streets, prostitution did exist. I tell him how although the health care was free, each person was expected to pay a fortune in bribes to doctors and nurses if you ever expect decent care. I tell him how when my grandfather got sick we had to bribe everybody who came in contact with him to ensure that he would get adequate care at the hospital. I tell him how you could bribe almost anybody in the Czech republic. Yes! to a tourist spending just two weeks things looked just fine, even great. But to anybody who lived there a different picture would emerge. That is why I love the Russian movie “Burnt by the Sun”. It depicts a super happy almost dream like reality that is only interrupted for brief moments with little glimpses of awfulness. To me the socialist regime was exactly that. Everything was wonderful until you scratched the top layer. By the end of the movie your stomach is churning even though most of the movie is one happy scene after another. I also like the play on the words, socialism was often described as the “rising sun” by the regime. Surely, if the majority of people were miserable under such a regime it is a good indicator that there was something wrong. My friend is shaking his head, he tells me that I have allowed my brain to be corrupted by the capitalist and imperial propaganda. I want to tell him that if socialism was so great, why not move to one of the socialist countries, but I don’t, because I don’t want to offend him. Socialism was great, nay! wonderful….. on paper and as long as you didn’t live under it.

When you are an immigrant you invariably end up meeting other immigrants and you invariably will have the nostalgia discussion. The discussion where everybody goes on and on about how things were just perfect back home and how everything sucks in Canada. On one of such nostalgia talks I had, with my friend who is originally from Egypt. He starts with the standard nostalgia stuff: food tasted better back home, people are warmer and kinder back home … etc. Then he graduates to “Canadian society is a sick and depraved because of all the homosexuals” argument. I mention that probably there are just as many homosexuals in his home country of Egypt. My friend gets deeply offended and tells me that he has lived in Egypt of over 20 years and that in all that time he hasn’t encountered a homosexual not even once. My friend is certain that there are no homosexuals in Egypt, not even one. I tell him how homosexuality exists in every culture, through out human history. I try to argue that the only reason you never see homosexuals in the middle east is because no homosexual would dare be open about it for fear of prosecution. I tell him about all the famous Arab people in our history who were probably gay. My friend shakes his head. He tells me that there is no way there are any homosexuals in the middle east and certainly not in Egypt because of our superior religion of Islam. Islam protects us from the depravity that exists in Canada. He tells me that I have allowed my brain to be corrupted by western Christian media who is bent on discrediting Islam. I wanted to tell him that we the Muslims do such a good job of discrediting ourselves with our own idiocy, others don’t have to do it for us, but I don’t. I have already offended his national pride by suggesting that some of his country men might be gay. Plus we all just enjoyed the delicious fish dish he made for dinner, so it would be rude to insult him any further after eating his food.

I must have the most corrupt brain in the world. Capitalist and imperial propaganda, followed by the western Christian corruption. I wonder if there any further corruptions I could possibly add to that. Why stop now? A corrupt brain is a terrible thing to waste.

When I traveled to Palestine with my husband, I met his uncle for the very first time. The uncle welcomes me with open arms. Hello, hello, hello he says. I hear you are Iraqi, I love Iraqis, I love Saddam Hussien, welcome to my house. I tell him that I hate Saddam Hussien, that Saddam is a terrible tyrant who has caused harm to his own people. Uncle says, “that is no good, that is no good at all”. He then looks at my husband and tells him that he doesn’t like me anymore. My husband responds by telling his uncle, “Yeah! but she is religious and fasts Ramadan”. I was religious at the time, it was before I renounced organized religions. The uncle responds by saying “your wife is half good then”.

I was surprised by how positively many Palestinians thought of Saddam Hussien. Many bought the idea that he is some big Arab hero who wants to liberate Palestine. I spend so much time telling people about the horrible crimes that Saddam committed against his own people, the fact that he used chemical weapons on the Kurds. I would argue that any leader who treats his own country so badly can’t possibly be good to any other nation. That Saddam’s support for Palestinians is nothing but empty slogans and efforts to boost his image. Most people would shake their heads and refuse to believe me, you would think they would believe these words considering the fact that they were coming from an Iraqi. I never understood the source of support for Saddam among the Palestinians, was it desperation? was it a desire to believe that somebody somewhere cared about their plight? Was it the fantasy that some powerful heroic leader would show up and give them freedom? Was it ignorance? My father in law, was one of the few people whose opinion on the matter shifted. After many discussions, between him and I, on the subject I would hear him arguing with his brother and other friends telling them what an awful dictator Saddam is and that they shouldn’t pin their hopes on him. I was very flattered to hear my father in law use the same arguments that he heard from me in our discussions. I have the coolest father in law in the world. He is the “salt of the earth” kinda guy. The fact that he had only 4 years of schooling makes me admire his ability for critical and objective thinking even more. For an uneducated man, he has more wisdom and smarts that many educated people I know.

The real surprise came when I joined the local anti war crowd in Vancouver. There was a quiet support for Saddam among some individuals. I was frequently criticized about my vocal denunciation of the Ba’athist party. I was told that I am playing to the hands of the pro war gang. I was told that I wasn’t being committed enough to the anti war ideal. It was implied that I was a traitor. I was told that the crimes of Saddam were exaggerated in the media to support the war. I heard one person say that Saddam was the only world leader who dared fight imperialism. I would argue with people and tell them just go and talk to any recent refugee from Iraq, I guarantee that you will get nightmares for weeks. I would quote amnesty international reports on human right abuses in Iraq, I would mention history books and personal accounts. You would think that people would believe an Iraqi on such matters, you would think that the activist community would have an open mind. People would just shake their heads and tell me that I got it all wrong.

To all the people that send me hate mail, telling me that I got it all wrong on my blog, you might be a bit surprised by how little I argue back and by how little effort I exert in attempting to convince you of my point of view. It is because I have learned the following lessons the hard way.

1. People believe what they want to believe.

2. The majority of people don't want to know the truth, the want to know things that they already know.

3. The vast majority of people are too emotional to form opinions based on objectivity.

4. There is nothing I can do, absolutely nothing, to change the view of somebody who is not objective.

5. I can’t even change the mind of a childhood friend what make me think I can change the mind of anybody else.

To the rest of you reading this blog, consider yourself sufficiently warned. I have a credibility problem, I had it all my life, you should take everything you read here with a grain of salt.

There is a way between voice and presence where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens. With wandering talk it closes. .... Rumi