“About letting go, which I thought meant maturity.”
It was during one of my movie nights with my kids. A captivating song transported me to a version of myself from years ago—a person I now barely recognize. A wave of melancholy sweeps over me as I yearn to reach out to that younger self, but he remains just out of grasp.
In the intricate tapestry of life, certain decisions, often
made in the heat of the moment or the depths of despair, leave an indelible
mark on our souls. One of the most profound choices I ever grappled with,
almost subconsciously, was relinquishing my belief in love. This wasn’t merely
about distancing myself from romantic entanglements, but a deep-rooted
abandonment of an idea that had, for the longest time, been the cornerstone of
my existence.
Goodbye to Love
Love, in its many forms, shapes us. It provides hope in
bleak times, offers solace during despair, and paints our world in vibrant
hues. But when that very belief is cast aside, the world doesn’t just lose its
color—it becomes unrecognizable. My decision to forsake love was akin to
removing the compass that had guided me through life's labyrinth.
Without this anchoring belief, I found myself adrift. It
wasn't just about the absence of romantic partnerships or the lack of warmth in
casual interactions. The very essence of who I was began to fade. The joys and
sorrows, the passions and indifference, the dreams, and nightmares—all seemed
to blend into a monochromatic existence. Without love as my guiding light,
every experience felt dulled, every emotion muted.
An Expected Odyssey
Growing up, especially within the confines of a middle or
slightly lower-middle-class upbringing, there's a latent expectation. It
whispered promises that once the educational journey, especially the pivotal
university chapter, was completed, life would unfurl in all its grandeur.
Awaiting me was a world ready to embrace my potential, a stage set for my grand
entrance. These promises painted vivid dreams of love and life, shaping my
youthful hopes.
I belong to a generation that was used to hearing phrases
like: 'Tomorrow you'll be in college and conquer the world,' 'Just do whatever
you want after college,' or 'After college, you can love however you want.'
Twilight of Tradition
Back in the eighties and nineties, the shrinking middle class found the costs of education, private lessons, and necessities, coupled with the responsibilities of childrearing and discipline, increasingly difficult. Regarding repeating this for two children, my parents preferred to follow up on the less skilled child and leave the more skilled and intelligent child to the wind and the vicissitudes of life alone. The truth that I understood later was that their interventions were only to make things worse.
The ideas of positive parenting were not yet in vogue, and
it did not mean anything to parents at that time to teach their children more
than the concepts of right and wrong, and the concepts of halal and haram. Then
follow-up with a whip for those who spoil their mood. And children’s feelings
were not something that my father could pay attention to at all, but he always
mocked it.
Life in adolescence, for me as a teenager who suffered in
these circumstances, was like hell. I was waiting for the days to pass until I
was no longer “a minor”, the painful word that was thrown in my face every now
and then. I was looking for a way out of this house with all its surrounding
behaviors that I reject and sometimes hate.
Echoes from a Bygone Era
Throughout my social development, a notion quietly
infiltrated my subcon- indirectly mostly - that real life would be in the
university stage, and after that …? After that, I had no idea what could happen.
I had no idea how life could be after that, and what I would like to do after
that.
University life was a golden fantasy in my imagination and
in my mind, for then, I would have grown up enough, but I would also still be
young living under the care of my parents. And I could remind them that I am
about to become independent, so that the pressure of belittling me and my
feelings would lessen.
After the university period ended, life as it was in my
imagination ended with it. During college, I began writing poetry, embracing
love and the idea of living. I was enchanted by the notion of two people, a boy,
and a girl, from different backgrounds yet sharing the same dreams and life
vision, agree on a goal, and their fingers intertwine as they go on their way together
to repair what was wrong in their lives, vowing not to repeat the follies of
adults.
I fell in love with love itself, that miracle that unites
the disparate and the scattered ones, that brings hearts closer to each other,
that heals wounded souls, and fills the eyes of dreamers with hope.
All these thoughts converged on my perception of women. I
imagined the feminine as a mythical being capable of performing miracles. I
confess that this view lingered with me for a long time, and perhaps I still harbor
remnants of it today as I envision women as the true heart and soul of any
society, capable of molding it according to their inherent spirit and moral
values. I could never have imagined them engaging in the capitalist struggle
with men, vying for a place in a world that's as grimy and decayed as pigs
wallowing in the muck, merely to satisfy their hunger.
Capitalist Chains
Perhaps that’s why I was shocked when I discovered that
women want to be seen merely as men with a different physical form. I learned
that they simply want to step into the labor market and work in the mill like
men, all while failing to recognize the uniqueness of their nature and the
nobility of their spirit, which was meant to rise, move, and lead everything.
I know that this is a result of capitalism, the absence of
love in society, the need to secure the future, the loss of trust in others,
the urge to prove oneself, and all the other rubbish that surrounds me from
every angle.
Ironically, it was men who gave birth to Capitalism. the big imaginative perception that framed
existence, historical progression, and the dialectics of its movement with their
materialist perspective. They positioned materials as the sole determinant of
all else. Perhaps they were men who couldn't perceive the true essence of love
and comradeship. They failed to comprehend the paradoxical thinking that women
master, and transformed history into a linear, intricate, and winding path that
ultimately transformed people to mere shadows of forlorn perceptions.
A World Where Love Was Whispered
I, too, grew up in an environment where love was rarely
acknowledged, even ridiculed if someone mistakenly expressed their feelings.
Maybe the generation that raised us was ashamed to express love or unable to
love. It seems like it was a generation incapable of seeing anything beyond
themselves. My mother constantly searched through my belongings, afraid I would
get involved in typical teenage activities, like smoking cigarettes or hashish,
drinking with the wrong crowd. But the first time she discovered a paper on
which I had written some poems. Her face brightened and she looked at me in
astonishment as she realized what kind of teenager I was. She kept making sure
that these words were not written for a specific girl, then when she understood
that I wrote them for an imaginary girl I dreamed of meeting, signs of regret
appeared on her features, then mixed with looks of pity for years after. My
father hit me on the head and said: “What is this nonsense.” Then he continued:
“Go study something that will benefit you.”
From Ivory Towers to Trenches
When I graduated from college, I received the biggest blow
in my life path, and the ugliest period I have ever been through, as I entered
the army for three years.
The worst part of that period was not the physical effort,
although I did come out with a high level of fitness. It was dealing daily with
small-minded people focused on exploiting influence and power, with a racist
view of everything and everyone. As an officer, I had to interact with other
officers and senior leaders. I was not just a soldier living with his fellow
recruits and kept away from the ugly truth.
A Soldier’s Transformation
For a civilian young man who suddenly carries a military
rank on his shoulders and is thrown among officers who have lived the military
life since their youth until they became old men, it was like going from home
to hell, as the saying goes.
Imagine a world where military ranks have turned into ranks
in humanity, and not just a hierarchy of military skills and capabilities, but
also a hierarchy of your rights as a human being. This is the worst form of
exploitation of power and racism. You suffer from the condescending view of
those with higher ranks, so you repeat the same thing and psychologically pass
it on to everyone who is below your rank, participating in their practices.
Then you suffer from guilt and a feeling of inner dirtiness, and your
conscience kills you.
Shackled Hierarchy
When I left the army,
I carried its weight deep within me. In the following years, I discovered that
the behaviors I encountered in the army were not exclusive to that place but
were repeated – albeit to varying degrees – in the souls of all those I met. I
worked in different places, in government sectors, in private sectors, in civil
society, in activities and NGOs. The only difference was that some pretended
that these ideas and behaviors did not exist. Then you lift the veil of one of
them to find it lurking deep within.
Life Beyond the Ranks
The shocks came to me individually and in groups, and I
suffered from the disgusting feeling of loneliness. I am alone with my
thoughts, nothing resembles me, and nothing pleases me (as Mahmoud Darwish
says).
I was living in the kingdom of solitude by myself, as the
song says:
'A kingdom of isolation
And it looks like I'm the [king]
The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside
Couldn't keep it in, heaven knows I tried'
Gradually, I found myself unable to write poetry. I long for
the days when I was able to imagine and write, I try to write about love, but I
only write about hatred, violence, and shocks. I am unable to get out of the
mire and unable to see it from outside.
Between Passion and Pragmatism
At that time, I decided to give up on the idea of love. In a
moment of despair and anger, it seemed to me like a childish idea incapable of
doing anything, just the fantasies of a teenager looking for a way out, looking
romantically -to the point of bitterness - at things. So, I decided to give up
on love.
At first, it was comfortable. You are worthless and I am as
worthless as you, you are materialists, and I am like you, materialistic. Life
is just matter, as your god Marx and his followers of fools said. But the deep
sadness was accumulating inside me, and I suppressed it. Many years passed,
during which I gathered their cherished material possessions. But I found
myself throwing them to the wind, for I never had any respect for money, and
perhaps I spent nights, months, and years thinking about an economy that could
function without money, before I learned about the non-monetary economy, which
is quite different from what I imagined.
Revelations by the Bedside
I would take out my old papers and poems and feel nostalgic
for them, but I also felt free from them. Free from that period during which I
suffered so much. But I discovered that I had become another person. Someone
trying to find his way back to his old self, wondering in amazement how all
those years had passed so quickly.
Yes, I regret giving up on the idea of love because it
shaped my understanding of myself for many years, but I remember my father's
knocks on my head whenever my mother found a scrap of paper here or there on
which I had scribbled some part of myself.
Now, a quarter-century after those incidents, I sit by my father's bed - he is now over eighty - and we talk. He tells me about his adolescence and youth, how he used to go to the movies and then come back and write his thoughts and feelings about the film in his notebook, how he used to sit and draw the girls in college, and how he spent decades of his life immersed in love, sacrificing a lot for those he loved, for his sister, and for his large family, without any reward. In fact, he may have suffered greatly because of it and lost a lot. He sadly discovered the futility of these ideas and behaviors. And I was astonished to discover that.
Echoes Across Time
He doesn't remember blaming me for repeating what he had
done. But I understood that he hated me repeating his mistakes. He hated for me
to drown in a non-existent romantic world. And he wanted me to know the real
world as it is, with all its filth and crap.
Despite my understanding and appreciation of his choices, I
cannot find justification for what he did to me. I may feel sorry and sad for
his experience and for what life compelled him to do, but I do not find it
justifiable for him to turn against me, to punish me for what he had done, or
to vent his anger at life on a young teenager who knew nothing about life.
I asked him, "Why didn't you tell me what you were
thinking? Why were you harsh on me? Why didn't you tell me that you wanted me
to be strong?" He sarcastically replied, "Would you have
understood?"
Now I try to reconnect with a person I lost almost two
decades ago. I try to understand, from my perspective, his motives, and
thoughts. I try to rise above them, and I wonder: Was there wisdom in my
father's treatment of me? Or did he push me into another tragedy opposite his
own?
I look now at my son. I shower him with my love, and I talk
to him like a grown man even though he hasn't reached ten yet. And I wonder,
what tragedy am I leading you to, and how will you blame me in the future?
