On Olives and Sake

My last post was titled #FreeRazan. And today’s will be #FreeHussein, our friend, and Razan’s colleague at the SCMFE. The irony, that bloody irony!

Between them, many, faceless and nameless, have been detained, expelled and brutally murdered. Many that have not been given the honorary hashtag. Many that are being slowly broken in the dungeons of Syria’s own fascist incarnation. But make no mistake, we are by no means more free.

With every new detainee, our country, that idea of country, chokes a little bit more. With every new detainee, our own incarceration becomes a little tighter, and our exile a little less bearable. To liberate them is to deliver ourselves from this nightmare, and to bring back to this land its lifeline. Make no mistake, #FreeRazan, #FreeBassel or #FreeHusssein, all mean the same thing:

بدنا ياهن، بدنا الكل
We want them back, we want them all

***

Syrian Blogger Hussein Ghrer on Hunger Strike

We received information that Syrian blogger Hussein Greer began a hunger strike to protest his continued incarceration after spending more than five months in detention cells as of the date of this statement.

Ghrer was detained on 16-2-2012 in a raid on Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression’s office in Damascus by Air Force Intelligence – Mazzah branch. This is Ghrer’s second arrest; he was detained on 24-10-2011 and released on 1-12-2011 on bail and is still on trial.

We, Syrian and Arab bloggers as well as bloggers in solidarity with Hussein and his case, demand the immediate and unconditional release of our colleague in detention, blogger and friend Hussein Ghrer especially since more than four months had passed without pressing charges against. His four-month long detention far exceeds the maximum legal limits for incarceration without court referral which is set to 60-days according to Syrian law.

We also call for the release of Ghrer’s colleagues at the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression and all detainees and prisoners being held at security branches and civil and military prisons, especially those whose detention has exceeded sixty days. We condemn all forms of torture exercised by the Shabiha and security agents against the detainees and prisoners in Syrian cells.

Full statement here.

بالكاد تنفّسنا الصعداء بعد الإفراج عن زميلنا حسين غرير قبل أن يعود اختناق الغضب والحزن ليذكّر صدورنا بواقع القمع والكبت وعبادة الصّمت الذي نعيشه.. وردنا خبر اعتقال زميلتنا رزان غزّاوي.

رزان غزّاوي سوريّة بامتياز.. سوريّة بعملها المحموم للمرافعة عن القضية الفلسطينيّة وﻻجئيها في وسائط الإعلام اﻻجتماعي باللغتين العربيّة واﻻنكليزيّة، سوريّة بالتزامها بكل قضايا التقدّم والعدالة اﻻجتماعيّة والمساواة، سوريّة بوقوفها مع الأحرار في طريقهم لنيل الحرّية والكرامة.. رزان صوتٌ ﻻ يريد له الصمت إﻻ أعداء الحقّ والكرامة والعدالة والحرّية.

نطالب السلطات السوريّة بالإفراج الفوري عن رزان غزّاوي وعن كلّ معتقلات ومعتقلي الرأي والضمير والكرامة، ونحمّلها مسؤوليّة أي أذى قد تتعرّض له، كما نطالبها بكف سياسة القمع الإرهابي الرعناء بحق المواطنين السّوريين، وندعو جميع أنصار الحقّ والحرّية للتضامن مع رزان غزّاوي، معنا، مع سوريا..!

–مدونون سوريون

Every time I think of Syria, my mind eventually wanders to the sight of people who’ve finally found a voice of their own, marching in the dead of night with drums; chanting, singing and raising their fists in the face of one poster that has haunted and taunted them their whole life. The collective euphoria of that night still brings a sense of serenity over me.

Another scene comes back quickly; of a morning stroll in downtown Homs. The light and the heavy sun make my eyes hurt, but they can’t wash away the anger brewing at every corner of a city preparing to bury those who died the night before. The looks of defiance, and the anticipation of things to come. A feeling of gloom, only exacerbated by the bright sizzling sun. Everywhere you looked there were tanks, APCs, armed men in uniform, armed men in leather jackets and the people they were trying to terrorize. But you knew very well that in an hour’s time, these people will be chanting at the top of their lungs, and all the guns in the world won’t keep them quiet. For we have finally reached the end of this country as we know it.

***

The uprising is far from being a success. In fact, as tales of revolutions go, Syria’s is –and will be– the saddest one. Stuck between a hammer and a hard place; a manifestation of authority and power, so criminal that its first instinct was to take the country a hostage to its own delusions. And us, everyone who identified with this uprising, betrayed by our own inexperience and our own demagoguery that we couldn’t take back that hostage.

The obvious measure of success for the uprising, wasn’t the undoing of the basic structures of state, society and power, rather manipulating how they manifest themselves; hardly a revolutionary ideal, but the safest one, we were convinced, for a country with a brutalised and traumatised identity that still can’t accept the decimation and marginalization it’s been subjected to throughout the past few centuries. We failed miserably in that.

Inadvertently or not so much, we oversaw a meltdown in the makeshift state that is Syria, and now we can hardly put it back together. But in a sense, that’s what revolutions are for; to create, from a fossil, an ungovernable, unmanageable moment in time and space that is fluid enough to reinvent, by its own volition, a new image of itself. It’s good for history to trample all over our petty compromises every once in a while.

***

For the past fortnight in Tunisia, I was asked the same question repeatedly by everyone I met. It wasn’t about the courage of those who still choose to chant under a hail of bullets; nor was it about the brutality of power; all things these people knew first hand.

They asked, how is it possible for someone to defend an oppressor against its oppressed? I find the question unanswerable, especially if one tries to replace the morally, and emotionally-charged words. How could someone defend Bashar al-Assad against Ghiath Matar?

A guest-post at Joshua Landis’ Syria Comment.

***

It has been four months, give or take, since the beginning of the protest movement in Syria. Many pages have been written about the nature of this conflict, from many points of view–pro and contra. Aside from the propaganda being hailed from every side, there has been precious little investigative or analytical work being done. And even then, it inevitably wanders down the sectarian narrative as if that’s the only possible explanation for the uprising, and the subsequent stalemate. I personally believe that while the sectarian issue is of great importance to the discussion, it should not be the dominant line of discourse.

This is one attempt to explore a different facet to the conflict. It is by no means a comprehensive analysis, but an attempt to highlight an area that has not been sufficiently discussed with regards to its importance to the developments on the ground.

Read the rest at Syria Comment…

This post was written and sent to me by a dear friend in Damascus, who wishes to stay anonymous. I publish it as it is.

***

If you stop any taxi in Damascus, the driver would most probably be a member of one of the numerous internal intelligence bodies in Syria. These days, those recruited drivers are useful for the regime as a propaganda tool. They are ordered to keep the official and the unofficial radio stations on so that as many passengers as possible would be exposed to the official narrative.

Many drivers might open a discussion with the passenger. It would mostly end by criticizing the demonstrations and the demonstrators, or by depicting the Security forces and their brutal crackdown as heros. One driver passed by a demonstration in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad, one of the most unprivileged neighborhoods in Damascus, he described them as “animals without honor, they obviously appeared like they are not even from Syria.”

The animosity against “the demonstrators” is not as simple as some would think. It is systematic, discriminative and above all xenophobic. When the first demonstrations broke in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, the pro-regime supporters launched a campaign against its people. The first comment you would have heard from any pro-government supporter would be that “they are tribal and Bedouins, most of them are primitive weapons smugglers,” thus; presumably they deserve to be treated brutally.

And now that the demonstrations have spread across the country, excluding very few regions and cities, the accusations have escalated drastically. Usually, by the pro-regime media, all demonstrators are grouped in one category: greedy people who take money from outsiders so that they demonstrate and destabilize the country.

There is a considerable percentage of the population which believe these ideas. I had the chance to witness one argument between a young man and a woman who work in the same company talking about the demonstrators; they believe that each of the demonstrators take about 5000 Syrian Pounds (approximately 110USD) funded by external powers, namely the USA and Qatar. They also believe that the demonstrators take hallucination pills prepared and distributed by Al-Jazeera News Channel. The guy explained that this tablets make the demonstrators “immune” against physical and psychological torture; “Some of them laugh while they are beaten up, others don’t show any response” the guy said. The girl assured that in every demonstration there is someone atop of a building who sprinkles a stimulant material over of the demonstrators so that they become aggressive.” “The picture is clear now,” the guy said, “These people are willing to cooperate with the devil for a silly bunch of dollars. Now, there is no good demonstrator.”

In an afternoon BBQ, a friend of mine was having a chat with her friend whose father is a famous Baathist, the friend bended towards the grill and picked a piece of a lamb meat, he smiled and whispered in her ear: “Fresh!.. From Daraa.” Later that same week, a fifty year-old lady revealed to me that “all the demonstrators should be shot by an automatic machinegun.”

When President Bashar al-Assad made his famous speech in March noting that “you’re either with us, or against us”, an MP interrupted the speech telling the president that “he should not be the leader of the Arab world, instead, he should be the leader of the whole world.” All the MPs clapped and chanted for the life of president. Ironically, after this speech the term “global conspiracy against Syria” started to be widely used by the pro-Assads. They believe that Syria is targeted by the EU, USA, Qatar, and until very recently Syria’s strongest ally: Turkey.

In a Pro Assad rally, the supporters chant “if you do not clap with us then your mother is a Qatari.” To a lesser degree the same slogan is used but by replacing “Qatari” with “Turkish.” They even launched a campaign in order to boycott everything related to Qatar and Turkey. Listening to Turkish music is frowned upon by many of them, while a demonstrator stood in front of an ottoman building in Damascus and started shouting “Drown it! It’s Turkish.”

Alongside these new slogans used by the pro-Assads, the old ones are still popular especially “Allah, Syria, and Bashar only.” The Demonstrators have changed it by chanting “Allah, Syria and Freedom only.” The Demonstrators keep on assuring that achieving freedom is their main goal. But for the pro-Assads the word freedom puts a threat on the regime and is considered recently a taboo word.

In a park, a 4 year old child runs towards me smiling and chanting “Allah, Syria, and Bashar only.” I smiled and said, and don’t you want freedom? The kid responded automatically, “I hate freedom, and I only love Bashar.” I looked at his mother, she knew what I was going to say, she whispered in my ear “you don’t have to be angry at me, I did that in order to protect him from torture.”

Someone says, “I support the poor”, the other replies, “…when I come back home I’ll try to remind you again (through links) how I always did [support the poor].”

Childish Facebook conversations aside, the question of the poverty and oppression and how it drives our moral decisions in societies overwhelmingly dominated by class differences, is an important one to investigate. These are two accomplished people, intelligent, cultured, and certainly well-intentioned, but in their attempt to claim a moral posture, they fail to notice their paradoxical statements. How can it be that someone who is part and parcel of the paradigms of power and production that first produced poverty and oppression (and then their many reincarnations) claim to support the impoverished and the oppressed. The simple answer to that question is a categorical, “No, they (we) can not.”

***

(Do note that this not an attempt at a serious exploration of the subject. I am less than qualified, and less than eager to foray into such territory. These are only a collection of subjective observations, personal opinions and reasoning, and should be read as such.)

***

Class-based societies are as old as civilization. A natural by-product of specialization in production, the fluctuating prosperity it brings, and the paradigms of power and production that they entail. Religions and ideologies are the intellectual expression of these paradigms, and thus they are the long-term guarantor of their survival. All modern societies are class-based, to varying degrees and forms. This is a matter of fact of the world we live in. Another matter of fact is that poverty and oppression are two powers that feed into each other. Oppression reinforces poverty, and poverty reinforces oppression, so when we speak of one, we are speaking of the other.

Human civilization as it is, encourages and is based on the excesses of power and production, or “wealth”. A society that encourages wealth, is one that has to oppress with other face of wealth, poverty. We are born into a dichotomy that has evolved since the beginning of time. We do not choose which side we’re born into, and from our infant years we are raised to be a part of this dichotomy, to accept it, and consequently to reinforce the dynamics implied by it.

***

The class struggle is the most important of said dynamics. In fact Marx goes to say that it is the very driving force of social evolution and of history itself, “The history of all hitherto existing human society is the history of class struggles,” he says. This struggle, so far, has been internal to that same dichotomy. It shifts classes, and rearranges them, but always within the strict boundaries of the dominant paradigms of its day. Attempts to break these boundaries, and externalize the struggle in order to create new paradigms date as far back as time as well and Marxism is but one intellectual approach to the subject.

Since its articulation as a political and economic ideology in the 19th century, it has expanded to explore other dimensions of the subject. Situationalism, and existentialism are probably the most prominent social theories that are related (not entirely, and to different degrees) to Marxism. I shall not expand on that further as it is of marginal importance to our specific question, except to remind the reader that attempts to break the dichotomy we live in, while still unsuccessful, have a prominent place in both the material and intellectual realm.

***

The moral dilemmas arising from such an enforced, inhumane and unnatural struggle are quite severe. Especially considering that these are matters of fact to many of us, for we do not choose to which parents we are born. We violently deny them, we inhibit the thought, and we come up with different ways to reach temporary cease-fires, so to speak. Charity, empowerment and aid, modern words for a modern age, are nothing but temporary cease-fires. But they reproduce the same conditions that feed into that dichotomy. They reproduce the same classes, in different shapes. They dare not even attempt to touch the paradigms of power themselves, in fact they reinforce them. But they also serve to diffuse the pressure building up inside such a closed ecosystem. Something I believe, Guy Debord referred to as the “Spectacle”.

It should come as no surprise then, that all religions, and ideologies are products and guarantors of the survival of that dichotomy. Within their absolutism, they reinforce the absolutism of the “Spectacle”. They speak of the oppressed, their alienation and suffering in absolute terms and consequently they dilute the class-struggle into a struggle between classes.

***

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”

***

It follows that the only way to really help the oppressed, and the impoverished is to fight against this dichotomy. In a sense, to join the oppressed and the impoverished, because that is the only place where such a fight really happens. Only the proletariate can break this cycle, because it is the one class which exists independently from the paradigms it is trying to replace. The fight against this dichotomy comes from the bottom, and it entails the destruction of the bourgeois as a class and of all the conditions that preclude its existence.

Some will point out examples where evolutionary ideas reached high levels of social equality and suggest these examples as valid models to replicate and build upon (e.g. northern Europe). But they need only be reminded of the hefty price the rest of the world had to pay for that “evolution”. Thus, a revolutionary, rather than an evolutionary context is both necessary (to have the destructive power needed to evaporate the dominant powers of history and culture) and implied in the end-result.

***

So, where does that leave us with regards to our main question? Where does that leave me?

Like every true revolution, one is either with or against, there are no neutral grunds. It is not easy to admit to oneself to being on the wrong side of history. Nor is it easy to change it. But it is a choice one makes, and to make an informed decision means to accept the consequences that come with it.

Chances are, excluding some unforeseen twists of fate, I will die on the wrong side of history too. And thus I have to admit to myself that I am not prepared, personally, to abandon my place, my (petty) luxury, and the system that allows me such luxury, in order to take an active part in that struggle. At the same time, I also choose not to delude myself as to where I stand, and that is as much a conscious choice as the first one. Which means to be fully aware, at all times, that my own luxury (my internet, hot shower, subway, etc.) is the direct consequence of someone else’s oppression.

Having said that, I am also not prepared to align myself with self-delusional and self-gratifying movements, ideas and attitudes that only reinforce this dichotomy. I am not prepared to play an active role in the reinforcement of these conditions. I am not prepared to be a part of this modern reincarnation of France’s “mission civilisatrice”, regardless of its intentions.

This is the compromise I find myself in. Passive, painful and, eventually, self-destructive as it may be. My only consolation is the knowledge that when, and if, the march of progress, of history and of the proletariate, reaches my doorstep, I will happily walk outside and place my own head in a guillotine.

Incoherent Bullshit, is an old series from the blog, this fits in quite well. On the other hand, It may feel out of place, considering everything that’s going down back home, but then again, I am out of place. I’ll publish this when I get access to internet.

***

“How can we live without internet?” was my question 4 days ago. My internet (the word alone, is almost fantastical) was shut down a few days ago because I forgot to update my credit card information online.

I am 24, and in my own lifetime I’ve seen that last paragraph turn from the absurd, into the most banal of facts. Yet, reading it again now, and even though I know how true, and how real it is, it still sounds absurd. What bubbles we live in, is what I keep asking myself now.

***

Pierre suggested the other day that it may not be a great idea, for someone who’s hardly been leaving his room, to be reading Proust. I disagree. I think it may possibly be the best idea I’ve ever come up with. It may just be that he was writing for a certain breed, his own.

***

It’s absolutely insane. This life is insane. And I can not escape it. The days go by, and they go by, they add up to years, and my timeline in Japan keeps growing further. In a bed in a city in eastern Japan, I sit down and read Bo Ali Yassin, eat Belgian chocolates, speak with a woman half the way across the planet and read news of Syria. It’s insane, and I’m nowhere. The only place I could possibly be is Japan. But I’m not. I have little pieces of me scattered across the earth. Not even across the earth, but rather across the little optical fibers that transmit us as sequences of 1s and 0s. I’m nowhere, and I’m not stardust, I am 1s and 0s.

I’ve run out of Asahi, so here’s another Yebisu.

Five years on, and I feel more lost, homeless, and homesick than ever. I need no words of affirmation for the only words that matter, at least in this present state of mind, are my own, and I have none. I admire no one. The people I look up to, are dead. I am not sure whether I think too highly of myself, or too little of everybody else. It matters little, right now.

***

Imagination. Delusion. That great power we possess. I walk down the same streets everyday. I can hardly recognize any changes in scenery. Faces change, but the landscape, the photo, never does. I walk these streets and I suffocate inside my own mind. I think of school, of graduation, of plans, travels, memories and people, finances and work, of women and men. I suffocate and I keep on regurgitating all these thoughts. Placing myself in the world. Placing myself in my social, political, intellectual and cultural landscape. It crushes me. I feel a lump in my throat and I need to turn my mind off. I need to stop all these thoughts seeping into my brain. Only then, does it happen.

I find myself in another place, in another time, or to be more precise, in no specific place, in no specific time. With people that I know. But they’re not real, they’re how I believe they are. Reality is tricky matter, really. For I know they could not possibly be exactly how I believe them to be, but I also know no other way. So they are. I am with them, and we are having conversations we never had.

In the mind, you see, there’s no place for games, for the vain exploits of normal conversations. It is a place where all subtleties come with meaning, all subtleties have their corresponding body movements, where all words are heard and felt. Where a kiss is an orgasm and a knife is a scar.

The phone rings. A worried, and faint voice disturbs my flow of utter incoherence. But I need to write. I need to go back to that last paragraph. I need another sip of Yebisu. These times don’t come often enough, I need to savor them. Beer, and words being written, that is.

I can’t. Anyway, what I was trying to say is that these are times where I am truly happy. These are moments, fleeting ones, where I feel I’m real and not some character in an old woman’s dream.

***

I spent a week in China last March, did you not know? Well, I wouldn’t blame you. I, myself, only remembered it last week. Going through the photos on my camera, there were those of Zied and Maad, in China, of all places. We smoked, we drank, we laughed and we fought. Maad cut a piece of star fruit like you do in that fruit ninja iPhone game. We looked over the morning fog every dawn and then we slept until three in the afternoon. Then Maad left back for Latakia and I for Nagoya. It was the most absurd, and the most fitting, transition between Tohoku and Daraa.

***

What else is there to say? Between Godard and Proust, Foucault and Barthes, and between all the beautiful Francophiles that seem to surround and watch over my every step, I feel utterly and completely lost. Couldn’t someone sane put a bullet to my head and relieve me from this? For I, and they, obviously can’t.

Nagoya, 3 June 2011

I have not written in a very long time. The only interruption in this long hiatus came as a result of a (very) short-lived resurgence of hope. And a very misguided one at that. But I am who I am, I cling to the straws in face of reason.

Since then, the popular movement for freedom in Syria has turned into a crisis. Its central theme is no longer freedom, or reform, nor is its conclusion guaranteed within these elements. It has turned into a crisis of a Watan (homeland), a crisis on every level that used to define this place. A crisis of the social, the political, and down to the very personal.

Despite the hope, it is plainly clear now that no one in the country or beyond has the kind, or form, of power needed to find, let alone, force, a solution. However, there should be no mistake of who is the sole and direct responsible party for this. After almost 3 months, the moral prerogative was/is clear to see, and I will not delve further into that discussion. The reality, though, hardly ever corresponds to our moral dispositions. Certainly never in the context of monumental, and traumatic changes.

***

I told a dear friend yesterday that it is at times like this, not ones of personal tragedy, that I deeply wished there were a God. At least, I wished I believed in such a God. I wished, nay, longed, for a salvation from this cruel and devastating reality that is my own freedom. The freedom to make one’s own choices, and take absolute responsibility for them, and their consequences. But there isn’t such salvation, and I don’t believe in God.

***

What we have in essence is the implosion of these last 40 years. 40 years of a process of systematic dismantlement of society as an entity formed by the positive dynamics of power (be it, progress, war, production, etc.), into smaller ones defined by a zero-sum of negative power (interdiction, staleness, silence, etc.). 40 years of enforced alienation over a society that was already, at its infancy, a very ill one.

Marxist thought holds that capitalist systems, by their very nature, rather than by design or intent, apply the proletariate to the forms of suffering and alienation that will bring about their demise. A similar analogy could be made here. The raison d’etre of the Baathist rule in Syria (Baathi, is no longer used in the ideological sense, but rather in the historical one, and to differentiate it from other forms of totalitarianism) was certainly not the destruction of the social dynamics of the state, rather the reshaping of these dynamics in order to preserve a favorable status quo in time and space. But nevertheless, the new dynamics that were established brought, within them, the demise and eventual implosion of this status quo. That much is clear.

While the implosion of a capitalist society under the slow (or explosive) advance of the proletariate, will bring about, in the short term, a sort of inversion within the same society, the implosion we’re witnessing now will only burn the once-fragile competing clay entities into hard stone. The fire raging in Syria is much like the fires that raged through the palace cultures of the Bronze Age, and left us with the fire-hardened clay tablets that provide the only historical evidence of that period.

Whether we (or anyone, really) can stop that fire, before society is completely ossified along its fault lines, or not, is a question I should leave to the better informed amongst us. But to venture a little into the realm of probabilities, I personally do not think so. Barring, of course, another traumatic implosion within the four active principles at this stage (namely, the regime, the protestors, the silent observant majority and the outside world). None of these elements seems vulnerable, at this stage, for such a possibility.

***

Needless to say, I am not a historian, nor a political or a social scientist, and these are but my own personal readings on the situation. I do not write them here because I claim any objective quality to them, rather the exact opposite. They are here because they reflect the moral choices I have made, and how and why they came about. They can be interpreted, based on what will come about in the future, as either an admission or an escape.

Since March, I have asked myself many times, what is it that I have left in that place? Why is it that someone who has admitted many a time to his complete disillusionment, and alienation from that place and its people, why is it that he feels, so much more than any other time, as part of this present, and the future to come? How has this not completely burned down any dogmatic and childish residue of this place inside of me?

The only rational answer I could find (as of yet) is one of —dangerous, one has to say— curiosity. For better or for worse, I have a chance to be part of this history for the first time in my short life, and for all I know, that chance may never come again.

These are excerpts from a lecture by Michel Foucault titled, “The Art of Telling the Truth” (1983). In this lecture he discusses several themes appearing in Emanuel Kant’s texts, “What is Enlightenment?” (1784) and “The Conflict of the Faculties” (1798), including Kant’s ideas on the constant progress of mankind, and the signs that can prove such a disposition.

I chose these excerpts, because they might help us realize what an unmistakably historic moment we live in right now. The trauma of the Revolution, and the fear of what’s next, are so enormous as to completely blind us to this fact. These might be sad times, but they are great ones as well. Our collective memory as the post-Naksa generation is taking its first real shock and whatever the outcome may be, we will never be the same again, as people.

***

… A sign of what? A sign of the existence of a cause, of a permanent cause, which, throughout history itself, has guided men on the way of progress. A constant cause that must be shown to have acted in the past, acts now, and will act in the future. Consequently, the event that will be a sign: rememorativum, demonstrativum, prognosticum. It must be a sign that shows that it has always been like that (the rememorative sign), a sign that shows that things are also taking place now (the demonstrative sign), and a sign that shows that it will always happen like that (the prognostic sign). In this way we can be sure that the cause that makes progress possible has not just acted at a particular moment, but that it guarantees a general tendency of mankind as a whole to move in the direction of progress. That is the question: “Is there around us an event that is rememorative, demonstrative, and prognostic of a permanent progress that affects mankind as a whole?”

You have probably guessed the answer that Kant gives; but I would like to read to you the passage in which he introduces the Revolution as an event that has the value of a sign. “Do not expect this event,” he writes at the beginning of paragraph VI, “to consist of noble gestures or great crimes committed by men, as a result of which that which was great among men is made small, or that which was small, made great, nor of gleaming ancient buildings that disappear as if by magic while others rise, in a sense, from the bowels of the earth to take their place. No, it is nothing like that.”

… One cannot carry out this analysis of our own present in those meaningful values without embarking on a decipherment that will allow us to give to what, apparently, is without meaning and value, the important meaning and value we are looking for. Now what is this event that is not a “great” event? There is obviously a paradox in saying that the Revolution is not a major event. Is this not the very example of an event that overthrows, that makes what was great small and what was small great, and which swallows up the apparently secure structures of society and states? Now, for Kant, it is not this aspect of the Revolution that is meaningful. What constitutes the event that possesses a rememorative, demonstrative, and prognostic value is not the revolutionary drama itself, not the revolutionary exploits, or the gesticulation that accompanies it. What is meaningful is the way in which it was welcomed all around by spectators who did not take part in it, but who observed it, attended it, and, for better or for worse, were carried away by it. It is not the revolutionary upheaval that constitutes the proof of progress; because, firstly, it merely inverts things, and secondly, because if one could carry out the Revolution again, one might not do so. … It is not then the revolutionary process that is important, it does not matter whether it succeeds or fails; this is nothing to do with progress, or at least with the sign of progress we are looking for.

… On the other hand, what is meaningful and what is to constitute the sign of progress is that, around the Revolution, there is, says Kant, “a sympathy of aspiration bordering on enthusiasm.” What is important in the Revolution is not the Revolution itself, but what takes place in the heads of those who do not make it or, in any case, who are not its principal actors; it is the relationship that they themselves have with that Revolution of which they are not the active agents. The enthusiasm for the Revolution is a sign, according to Kant, of a moral disposition in mankind. This disposition is permanently manifested in two ways: firstly, in the right possessed by all peoples to give themselves the political constitution that suits them and, secondly, in the principle, in accordance with law and morality, of a political constitution so framed that it avoids, by reason of its very principles, all offensive war.

Michel Foucault, “The Art of Telling the Truth” (1983)

What happened in Syria spells the end of an era. The 1990s, the longest decade in Syrian history, has finally ended. It wasn’t only the heroic cries of freedom by the people of Daraa that spelled the end of this decade of silence, but also the bullets that were to meet them. One of the hardest parts is over now; many walls have been broken inside of me and many other Syrians that no force can restore. The only way from hereon is forward.

Whatever will be the outcome of this coming week; be it an unprecedented crackdown on dissent, or the promised “reforms”, the biggest achievement of the protests has already taken place. This collapse of all the red-lines we’ve been taught to accept and maneuver is a matter of fact. On the street as much as online, people seem to have an urgency about their country, a real one. One that tramples over every individual, symbol or mantra of the past.

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It is then of utmost importance to start a real debate on how to move forward. How can we turn this volatile situation into the real opportunity it promises to be. How to heal the wounds and how to deal with the remnants of those dreadful 1990s. It is also important to start this debate now to preempt any attempt to put the cat back in the box. Whether you believe the regime’s promised reforms are genuine or not, is irrelevant. For even if the regime had the will, they evidently lack a way. The intellectual bankruptcy of this regime is most clear in its choice of spokesperson-Mrs. Buthaina Shaaban-and her clumsy gaffes and hesitant answers to the media. But it is not Mrs. Shaaban’s fault, for after all as she herself explained, she’s but a representative of the regime.

It is also of great importance because a reform of this scale can not be a simple government directive. It is an all-inclusive effort that all of us need be involved in to succeed. We need to provide creative answers to the questions facing us tomorrow. Detailed answers to the real pressing problems. What is our vision of the next Syrian state? What is our vision of its economy, society, culture, politics and how do we get there? What do we do with the Mukhabarat? How do we rehabilitate them? What do we do with the enterprise of corruption that has seeped into the very bones of the Syrian state? How can we reconcile with the past? How do we define our new citizenship?

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Each of these questions breed a thousand more, and each of these will be debated fiercely. And so it should. Because if we don’t, no one will. We all need to contribute to this discussion, but extra effort must be demanded from the Syrian intellectual elite. They need to lead the process of revitalizing this society, they need to step up to the plate and provide answers and ideas. They’ve been forced into the passive observant mode for too long, and now they need to reclaim their part in our moving forward, and for this they need to put extra effort. We owe this to all of those who have fallen for a moment like this one.

A lot of things may remain vague at the moment, but one thing is clear: Change is coming. First and foremost through the Syrian people. Whether the regime wants to tag along or not, it’s their choice.

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I will sign off with this wonderful tune, by the ever-wonderful Samih Shqeir, which he dedicates to the people of Daraa. I wish everyone a better tomorrow.