To All The Freedom Poets Shouting In The Dark

“HAMAD DREAM OF 2030 IS NOT APPEARED YET IN BAHRAIN!...HAMAD YOU ARE A DICTATOR”  - from a protest sign at beginning of film

“I feel really alone. Whether it was a democratic country or an authoritarian country. All of them acted the same when it came to us. I discovered that my humanity is a subject of discussion. Should I be killed in the street or not be killed? Based on the interests of the United States or Saudi Arabia or other countries. It’s the killing of a dream.”

“When I’m sleeping, a lot of times I dream we are returning to the roundabout. To this day I dream it is there. I don’t feel it is broken.”

"This [facebook] page was a virtual lynch mob, focused on a 20 year old girl, named Ayat al Qurmezi. She had read a poem criticizing Khalifa and the King at Pearl Roundabout. The page asked thousands to participate in defaming her honor, and demanded her arrest and torture in prison. It wasn't long before they got their wish. Masked commandos broke down the door of her family home and took her to prison...After three months in prison, Ayat surfaced for this apology on state TV, which the family says was obtained by electric shock torture and forcing her to open her mouth while army and police officers spat in it." 

- from "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark" by May Ying Welsh of Al-Jazeera, the only journalists who stayed

Ayat al Qurmezi (read her BLOG)

"I have not yet finished forcing every candle of dreams (youth) on this motherland..." 

- line from the poem by Ayat al Qurmezi which led to her imprisonment, translated by Mohamed Al-mahroos

_________

I had come out of a bedroom, pajamas and all, to greet a few friends. Sitting patiently and in reserved calm is my wife and a local actor in town, sitting outside in the main room of my abode. I begin talking about recent books I’ve read. I start talking about a book on the subject of black history in the American South pointed at the presence of the actor, who I only recently became acquainted with. I continue to divulge in The Inconvenient History of Brazil, which I learned received the greatest influx of African slaves than anywhere else. She is sweet and doesn’t mind me carrying on. In another room, my brother and a friend are worriedly arguing about how to get to Los Angeles, specifically to have more drinks. Ignoring them, I saunter out of the house and find my way to a nearby bus stop. 

Small trickles of rain bear down on the fogged windows of the bus as we cross through a muddy swamp area. The bus driver is exceptionally personable and a great comfort, in total control. In mid-conversation, I ask to be dropped off at a local convenience store. The cold, wet ground feels like a vent of sticky moisture from the saturated soil. Immediately outside the door, three homeless Aboriginal people kneel prostrating outside the store entrance, while one of them, a middle aged lady takes to a free gift of exceedingly processed fast food. I enter, greeting the store owners. As I look out the window, I see a group of girls in beachwear catapulting themselves off a nearby roof for the humorous purposes of landing on a trampoline. I walk out to get a closer look. The first lands extremely short, the second a bit further and right on her spine. She gets up aching, only to watch a third catapult far beyond the trampoline’s distance. Her impact is felt with crushing intensity as she writhes in a split-second. Witnessing, one can immediately tell her thigh must be broken. I then enter the store again, and with uncontrollable laughter, we are outraged by the stark contrast between the different kinds of help needed around the store. 

_________

History

"To dream that you are reading history, indicates a long and pleasant recreation."  

Rain

"A powerful symbol of renewal and spiritual cleansing...Interpretation is contingent on your current circumstances as well as the kind of rain that is falling...Depending on the dreamer it could suggest a period of renewal and fertility (reproduction or creativity)." 

Help

"If you dream that you help someone, or someone asked you for help, it means that you will succeed without needing help from anyone."

(iDream)

_________

can you tell me why you want to lose your minds?

“is the mind not a functional device?

a stronghold of impurity, though weak as a right?

a vile desire entrenched in the quickening of race and drabness? 

or old as a tire-stretched din?"

shrieking at dawn with favored kids,

roped to the sound in time 

only for a moment

“to flesh out the wicked rot 

a spawn of loss and un-coped wires

fuming ghastly as the corpse 

that smoked wild smoke

and leapt to a magic unseen and disbelieved

except by the weeded out freak-smiling lawmakers at dawn”

the hopeless mold sweetens through an unearthly jail

round toxic commotion encircles in ash and loneliness

wakefulness opens to the sole breath of god

and waiting awhile for the noose tightened,

alas around the saviors brightened tooth shown under a restful laugh...

- excerpt from "Why you want to lose your minds."

Egypt and Iran: Two Lingering, Unforgettable Dreams

Two Dreams remain tightly etched in my memory, their content is also woven together within the intricate fabric of our now stirring collective mind, struggling to feel the common breath burn on the backs of our billions enslaved by poverty, war, greed, corruption, hypocrisy, malignancy, and on and on.

1)

I am within the house of my formative years, the beginning of schooling. It is a small house, cornered in an older, character neighborhood embedded in a seaside forest. The basement beckons me inside, yet I forget the actual content of the basement, except for the stairway down. Underneath, there is a flooding, a cesspool of oceanic imagination, swelling and swiftly carrying me into its drift. I see light from outside filling spaces marked by life and activity, those areas not reaching the natural light are dusty, dank and unused corners, filled with heaps of abandoned material. I find myself, as if swimming towards the light, to escape the basement of this house, and this memory.

Emerged, I swim across the surface of a great lake. The water broths and foams beside me, a plethora of life makes itself known beneath my feet treading the water. Then, a great lash as if from the lake floor catapults into the air a fantastic protrusion of flesh from a mythical beast, a loch ness of sorts reveals itself, yet does not harm me. I suddenly begin to see another side to the lake. All of a sudden I am carried in, as if involuntarily by a sweeping undertow.

I reach the other shore finally, though disfigured with fatigue and the nausea of being spun throughout whirlpools of fear and fascination within a lake of dreams. I am at the foot of a great cliff mountain springing up along the back of a cold-looking fortress. Next, I am unconscious, being taken to another basement. In this basement, I feel as if I am in Iran, the waters before me and the landscape prior to my incarceration reminds me of a very recommended film, called the "Lover's Wind" about the ancient civilization of Iran and natural landscapes of Persia. The film's incredible story about how it came to light should be read in complement.

I am imprisoned with other Iranian people, we are to be tortured. The basement windows along the edge of the roof resemble those of my childhood home, only now there are bars and the places of darkness are filled with mirrored rooms stretching as if infinitely, occupied with other prisoners, all of whom wear eyes of tortured pain.

I imagine the blithe reception to this childhood home, returning to its driveway, the neighborhood feel, the flowers and summer air, the large stones to sit on and the humming insects over the plain grass.

2)

My wife and I are in a room that resembles an actor's dressing hall for a theatre. We maintain an air of prestige, as actors or members of a theatre will. The mirrors are lit on their frames with gaudy light bulbs and the rest of the room feels turn of the century French, similar to the era in which Cairo, Egypt's downtown core was built from the ground to honor the architectural culture of its French colonialists.

We step out, led by an eager individual, who masked, invites us to walk with him on the street. As soon as we step out, we are in the midst of Cairo's Abbasia neighborhood, essentially the core of downtown, including Tahrir square and Muhamad Mahmoud Street, the current center of the crisis.

I know this street, this was where I saw a concert by El Tanbura. The mud of this unpaved road is not smooth, it has large bumps and divots, making even walking in it a curious adventure at times. The local youth walk down its narrow lane barefoot, smiling and wondering with mysterious humor. The foreign presence is immediately detected and is a center of fascination which equals my fixation with the imperfect dirt road ahead.

We move out into the street, I find myself edging into a crowd of demonstrators. We are suddenly in the thick of a mob of protesting Egyptians in Cairo's ongoing clashes with police. I feel gripped with fear at having my wife with me. I am separated from my beloved by the zing of a tear gas propeller wafting smoke and the sonic punch of a rubber bullet passes by me following. In the middle of demonstrators and police, I stand crouched low to the ground, reaching out to my wife. Rubber bullets and tear gas continue to rain throughout the quaking ground zero of protest in Egypt.

Skimming past abandoned riot police shields, I grab my wife's hand and we run into a dimly lit government building. I feel I have walked into Trostky's room in Mexico City, there is murder in the air eternal, a chipped skull and stray bullets encase the ambiance with a suffocating, dead air. We wander the halls and rooms only to find remnants of assassinated officials, burned intellectuals, tortured youth maimed beyond recognition. It is a breeding ground of hate. There is no escape.