From a sleepy provincial town in northern Syria, a working-class poet conquers the Internet
‘You think you’re Baudelaire?’ she says to me.
I ask: ‘Who’s Baudelaire, a poet? / fuck / history created them, these people /
Homs is more important than Troy.
And Abdel Baset al-Sarout1 is braver than Guevara.
And I am more important than Baudelaire.’
She laughs. She thinks I’m joking.
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I am Aboud Saeed the asshole / every time I see a tap, I turn it on / if I find a bolt, I loosen it / and if I hear the call to prayer, I turn up the music / when my shoes are covered in mud, I look for clean marble / every time I see Shakira’s ass, I make fun of my girlfriend’s nose / and for every woman that deletes me, I unfriend five men in return.
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Is the God who created Paris Hilton the same one who created me?
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In Manbij, the teenagers Google ‘Israeli sex’. They think Israeli sex is somehow different. Of course, this is a consequence of the anti-imperialist resistance.
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Let me say it again: ‘My mother’s plastic slippers are more important than the General Women’s Union. More important than Nawal El Saadawi’s books,2 more important than Khawla, daughter of Azwar,3 more important than Shakira’s ass and more important than women who pose nude for some political cause. My mom has never been to Tibet, she’s never worn a bikini and doesn’t know how to sit on a toilet. My mother, who blushed and didn’t know what to say when my girlfriend asked her:
‘How do you do, Madame?’
My mom wears plastic slippers that are more important than all the political causes in the universe.
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I wonder, is there less death on Twitter?
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Sometimes I think about creating a Facebook account for my mom. But I hesitate; I’m afraid that her spirit might be corrupted. Or that maybe even she would learn to pontificate and grow ideals. So I tell myself she should stay as she is, a free spirit. She should keep saying whatever comes to her mind, without censorship, without anyone coming and correcting her spelling and grammar mistakes. She should stay as she is. She can’t distinguish between Shi‘ism and communism, and she doesn’t really need to know that there is lipstick that costs more than a thousand lira.
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And so we recently discovered that revolutions are only possible in countries where there is already a certain degree of democracy, and where certain freedoms are respected. Revolutions can only work against heads of state who respect their people, at least a little bit.
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Before, I used to open the chat window and choose the prettiest girl online and tell her:
‘I love you.’
But now, my mother opens the same chat window and chooses a girl according to her mood and sends her mean icons, like the one with its tongue sticking out, or the other one with the open mouth like a hungry worm, or the pink one that’s supposed to look like Satan.
My mom doesn’t read or write, but with these faces, she can also tell what’s good and bad. And that’s why she’s never clicked a smiley, a flower or a heart.
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To all those who are still wondering who Aboud Saeed is:
I am Aboud Saeed, living in Manbij, where girls don’t go to cafés and where the tallest building is four stories high.
Every time I ask my little nephew to say ‘Allahu Akbar’ he answers: ‘Shame on you.’
In school I always sat at the back of the class.
I went to university because I wanted to meet a girl without a headscarf who had a mobile with Bluetooth. She called her mobile ‘Catwoman’, so I called mine ‘Meow’. Still, she did not care.
I work as a smith, which means the hammer, the bolt and adjustable wrenches.
I sleep in one room with my seven brothers and sisters. I don’t have my own dresser. So, I hide my secret letters in the chicken coop. Sometimes a hen lays an egg on the sentence ‘I love you’. And a few times it happened that they took a shit on ‘goodbye’.
My mother doesn’t know how to cook lasagna, and until last year she thought a croissant was a fancy dish that you eat with a knife and fork.
Every night I dream I am Hannibal Lecter with the brain of the girl I love lying on the table in front of me.
On the bus I always sit across from my neighbour, to watch her, and I’ve never seen an airplane except for fighter jets.
I steal electricity from the nearest pole, and my Internet is paid for by an upper-class girl.
The kids in my neighbourhood tease me about the mole on my forehead, and my older brother doesn’t believe me when I tell him I’m a poet. While my cousins, if they knew, would make me the laughing-stock of the town.
I have a pencil that I scribble with sometimes, and I sharpen it with a knife.
The last blue, expensive pen I had was a present, and it burst in my shirt pocket.
At weddings I always sit near the singer, at funeral services I am the person who serves the bitter coffee, and in cafés my table is the one the waiter always ignores.
I am Aboud Saeed, I caress the neck of the beast inside me so that it may grow like a blind wolf
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Translated from the Arabic by Yusuf Sabeel, Sandra Hetzl and Nik Kosmas
1 Abdel Baset al-Sarout, the Syrian football star and one-time goalkeeper for the Syrian national team, is so beloved nationally that over Skype he has led demonstrations in other cities. Al-Sarout has survived four attempted assassinations by the regime.
2 Nawal El Saadawi (b. 1931), the Egyptian author and feminist, physician and psychiatrist, has written numerous books concerning the situation of woman in Islam. She is a vocal and active critic of female genital mutilation.
3 Khawla, daughter of Azwar (b. ca 700), lived in the time of the Prophet Muhammad and led various battles as a warrior.