ConfusionConfusion
People don’t dream anymore. They don’t want change: neither do they want to change nor they wish to have a change in either social or personal sphere of their life. When addressed and debated, they either come across as pessimistic viewers or frustrated speakers; however those who are neither of them are taunted as confused — I believe I am one of them.
I have no regrets of being confused even though I am often taunted as being a member of an apolitical ‘minority at loss’ by a larger section of this society. Yes, I am confused and apolitical. Because I am left with nothing but choose between two worldviews, which stand poles apart and are represented by two extraordinary people: Obama and Osama (both are misters, of course). Thus I am confused because I have to, mind you that I just have to, choose between either of them — I don’t even have a choice of not choosing in the first place.
Thus I am at crossroads: if I stand by Mr. Obama and appreciate his promises to make this world a realization of the American dream, I am threatened, and likely, to be either killed at the hands of a suicide bomber or kidnapped by Taliban militants. On top of that, I will be condemned by right-wing organizations, while their not-so-friendly leaders will openly call me, indeed the most demeaning of all, liberal.
On the contrary, if I choose the other bloc, albeit Mr. Osama’s, the next minute I will definitely be either going down in a drone attack or picked up by local or foreign security agents who have been tasked with transporting me to a postmodern concentration camp, the facility of Guantamano or at Kandahar Base, where decency of modernity that Man once held high with proud for the past few centuries has been lost at a whim.
Therefore, I resign; I choose not to choose no matter what the consequence; I defy this vulgar choice that today’s world politics, designed for wars and famine, leaves me with. Because, on both hands, it’s just blood and bones alongside bullets and ballistic missiles. I don’t want it — all of it.
Still, I stand opposed to nothing but war and its most notorious terminology ‘war on terror’. Be it from any side, Obama or Osama’s, I stand opposed to it. Because both of them are running free and wild on this earth, delivering messages and smiles, with their respective weapons — their missiles, their suicide jackets, their allied soldiers, their suicide bombers. But I, like billions of other citizens of this world, am living a caveman’s life where fear is my primal source of companionship.
That they are free and I am not; that they have fun and I don’t; and that they are living and I will be killed by either of them has led me believe otherwise. Thus I oppose to oppressors — wherever and whoever they are — their deeds, their actions, their policies and their plans — whatever they are. Because they are all the same, the warmongers.
Then who is it that I am with? What is it that I want? What is it that I represent? Where are those who can stand up for me? Where are my people? Where are the dreamers?
To begin with I represent those who hate the sight and thought of blood and who are confused — yes, confusion is the first step towards progress these days. So this clan of people that I represent also has to wish and to dream besides being confused in the first place. They have to dream of a world; it’s going to be a world where peaceful resistance is the answer, meaning a dream of waging a struggling for a world where wars and battles, suicides and bombers, and most of all, Obamas and Osamas will be part of a later-century fairytales, likely to be loved by school children. Despite giving our stories a good read, those children will fear these days and wish these monsters, of wars and of terror, don’t invade their peaceful world as self-righteous attackers.
Thus I dream today as a representative of an alternate world for tomorrow. But how’s that possible? I recall I have been told to make a choice only from the given choices: yes, once again, between Obama and Osama, the representative of today’s split world. But I stand by neither of them and that they both operate in and influence the current system — the free market of all commodities including arms, oil and men — I am inclined to think if it is right to just stand up against these two individuals who now appear to be mere puppets of the very system they represent and live in.
You can clearly see I am confused, but I am thinking. And that’s progress.
Published in The News International (Op-Ed) in July , 2010.