Between grief and longing

Mosab Al Nomairy

Syrian journalist and poet based in Toronto, Canada. He published a book and wrote several articles in Arab newspapers and websites. He is currently studying political science and NMC at the University of Toronto.

Three cities in three weeks after three years of hibernation in Toronto. Such a trip was necessary in order to realize the impact of travel on a person’s mood, nerves, and feelings. Traveling takes a person out of the tight cycle of routine, where they find themselves in capitalist cities. In routine life, you know when to sleep, when to wake up, when to eat, and how to get home. You see faces, road signs, and familiar scenes. Repetition makes things easier to predict, but it places weight upon things way out of proportion with their importance. Routine makes a person productive, but the repetition it requires envelops the soul in a cloud of boredom and coldness. It fuels a tendency to rebel against this monotony. 

Traveling is an exercise in nerves, a chance to let new feelings flow. It is a kind of training of the nervous system’s endurance, by exposing it to new types of fears. Traveling is a voluntary decision to be exposed to a special kind of existential anxiety that comes from exposure to unfamiliar eyes, to people whose reactions cannot be anticipated, and to trains going in unknown directions. However, this ordinary experience, which ordinary humans go through without thought or anxiety, may not be easy for one who lacks a deep sense of security. There are horrific ghosts swirling in their imagination related to airports, police, lost papers, and the panic at the possibility of a forgotten piece of weed in the bag at a checkpoint. 

Traveling is also an opportunity to reorganize the electrical signals of the heart. This results from meeting friends and having long conversations which cause a special kind of revelation, that of encounters and farewells which generate intense feelings that are rarely experienced in routine encounters. In our case, as Syrian refugees scattered around the globe, traveling to and meeting with distant friends becomes an opportunity to reflect on our reality – our destiny as people scattered by borders and occupied by our new lives. 

I am hesitant about how to write about this journey. I write this because I miss self writing, after a break (caused by preoccupations with study and work), because there are so many feelings and thoughts in my head, and because I miss the serenity of tapping on a keyboard and looking at the clouds in the air in a moment of contemplation. More importantly, I want to say something about our situation in the Syrian diaspora. This diaspora falters when trying to stand, because it realizes day after day that the horrors have not yet ended, the echoes of the massacre are still roaring in the ears, and that oppression is still hurtful, still robbing us, routinely, of joy. 

The questions that I think of asking are the following: How do we live in our diaspora? What forms do our social relationships take? What unites and separates us? I started asking myself these questions, which emerged before me amidst my travels. 

Resisting Genocide on the Sidewalks of Venice

My main trip to Europe came as part of the aabaakwad Festival. I was invited to the festival to recite some poems, after a long period of creative interruption due to covid. Founded by Wanda Nanibush and sponsored by the Art Gallery of Ontario, this festival brought together nearly 100 Indigenous artists from around the world. During the festival, issues of contemporary Indigenous art in the face of colonialism were discussed. Artists discussed the tools of art in the battle for space, representation, resilience, and recovery. There were many tears and laughter during this intimate meeting. Attendees gathered for the festival from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, and the Philippines. Many did not know each other personally, and gathered to get acquainted, network, and think about the present and the future.

It would have been impossible to be present in such an atmosphere without going through a deeply emotional and moving experience. Settler-colonialism exhausts every option in its process of cultural genocide of Indigenous people; we are familiar with the worst form of colonialism in the context of Israel today. The term transgenerational trauma developed in the context of the Indigenous experience. The historical oppression that they experienced and lived through was present in the conversations that the artists engaged in, over the course of three days. 

There were moments when I thought I had taken in more than I could bear. Those present were quite bold in talking about their harsh experiences, without reservation. Throughout, there was an immense sense of solidarity, support, and unconditional love. Despite their coming from tattered, torn communities, it was clear that they had decided to consider that what unites them is greater than themselves, and to give little importance to their differences and what divides them. I tried to compare their conditions with ours, the children of countries afflicted with dictatorships, militias, and occupations. I thought that, unlike us, they had a clear identity and a clear enemy, and had enough time to develop the tools of their struggle. This is in addition to obtaining global and local political recognition of their issues (which they had gained through struggle, as it did not come from the moral goodwill of the states that had oppressed them), yet their historical suffering has still not ended and continues until today.

I learned a lot from this meeting. I was amazed by the strong emotional bonds we were able to build with each other, by the warmth and emotional strength of Indigenous cultures, which are almost the antithesis of the cold and selfish capitalist cultures of the countries that dispossessed them of their rights. In the political/cultural sense, as a Syrian refugee, I thought that I had found my family. What concerned me was how little we knew about each other, us (Arab Spring activists), and them (who have been engaged in a longstanding historical battle against colonialism), despite the striking intersections between tyranny and colonialism in our respective contexts, and despite the similarity of our wounds, and our preoccupation with issues of identity, trauma, survival, and recovery. 

We need to learn about these experiences, because in countries like Canada, we need to learn about those who lived on the land before the country existed, in order to avoid being unknowingly drawn onto the side of their oppressors. In Venice, I realized that the most important thing we can learn from Indigenous peoples is how they have developed the tools for healing, solidarity, organization, and community-building, because, on our side, the blows are still fresh. We have not had enough time to understand what is going on. Being among the Indigenous community made me see Europe with different eyes. While gazing at statues and architectural monuments I was exposing myself, simultaneously, to beauty and pain. The more prestigious the edifice, the more I felt the pain folded in its shadow. After warm days in Venice, I left for Berlin, with many questions about public activism and the relationships that govern it.

Berlin’s Nihilistic Beauty

“The earth revolved around its cycle

The waves carried us from the calmness of the river

Threw us into the creeks of a strange land

We are separating between the fields of sorrow… and the fields of longing”

 – Amal Dunqul

Berlin evokes mixed feelings among its visitors, especially if they come from contexts similar to ours – us, the children of diaspora and murdered dreams. Berlin is one of those cities that cannot be simply understood or described. Figuratively and realistically, it has two layers of superimposed colors: the first is bright and cheerful, and the second is gray and gloomy. Meeting with Syrian and Palestinian friends in Berlin reminded me of what was self-evident and logical: we are not feeling well. The world continues to crush us. We yearn for peace and salvation. And love life. After the experience of Venice, Berlin was another stimulus to think about our relations as activists, and people engaged in public affairs.  

Visiting Berlin is a dream for Syrian refugees around the world because it hosts most of our remaining friends, relatives, and colleagues. The enthusiasm for visiting Berlin is fueled by the sense of loss of friends, which accumulates over the cold winters of exile. Berlin opens for its visitors the door of warm and intimate feelings, but it is also confusing and complex.

The largest community of actors in Syrian public affairs is now in Berlin, following an outflow of activists previously working from Istanbul and Beirut. It has the features of a pioneering, progressive Syrian diaspora, and it is possible to bet on its existence and to be led by it, despite the existential loss that characterizes it. In the Berlin momentum, attempts to seek a balance between individual salvation and collective salvation become increasingly clear. However, these two salvations may conflict with each other, due to the limits of the individual’s ability to assimilate and tolerate. 

In light of this balancing act, activists clump and form circles and groups of people who are in harmony with each other. Because of the intensity of the presence of activists and artists, Berlin has an exceptional public level of concern that distinguishes it from the rest of the cities and countries to which refugees have been displaced, but, as in the rest of these places, it is also characterized by the existence of the individual and personal battles that are fought separately. The massacre in Tadamon, the trucks of detainees, and the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh were the three events dominating the discourse. These harsh events were a subject for reflection and revelation, but they also showed how fragile we can be when we are exposed to all of this while our hands are tied. Excessive exposure, lack of resourcefulness, and limits of tolerance to events and people can partly explain Berlin’s “paralysis” and justifies why there is a resorting to display of self-healing or harmony with one’s immediate surroundings over anything else.

Yet in the dense, rich, varied, and boisterous Berlin crowds, I had reason to think of our relations to one another, as friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. I visited Berlin from Canada, where the Syrian presence is modest compared to Germany. Because of the modesty of this presence in Canada, we sometimes feel that we need each other and try not to shy away from social relations, unless absolutely necessary, and show flexibility in communicating as long as there are no fundamental differences in seeing things. In this general atmosphere, people who may not meet in other circumstances or places can meet and communicate with one another. 

In Berlin, I thought about what unites and divides us. I certainly do not mean people’s choices in who suits them, in terms of friends and social surroundings, but I am trying to think about what separates people, at times, in public affairs. There are valid political, cultural, and social considerations, whose role in shaping islands and divergent human groupings in public circles can be understood. I do not wish to belittle these considerations or challenge their legitimacy at all, but I am trying to think of considerations that are less valid than that, which can easily lead to estrangement, antagonization, and sometimes enmity, and make it difficult to randomly gather people around one table. Berlin prompted me to wonder whether considerations of this kind, coming from personal, sharp, and sometimes unthinkable positions, are final considerations, or whether they are observable and contemplative, at least in intellectually, politically, and morally compatible circles.

In Berlin I was surprised by the isolation experienced by some friends. Either because of being busy, or because of the discomfort caused by being in, or exposed to, some circles. It was clear that the general atmosphere needs some more kindness, consideration, and understanding for oneself and for others, so that it becomes easier to build strong and warm relationships.

We do not need much effort to explain how a concern, such as the Syrian concern, can crush its people and push them to lose, collapse, and exhaust their endurance. As children of this concern, each of us needs a safe space, a sense of inclusion, and solidarity. Many of us do not have perfect relationships with our families, and this world is too cruel for the downtrodden to live alone and defenseless. In spite of the overwhelming love I felt personally with friends, in Berlin I felt that we need a little kindness in our environments, where we won’t have our feathers plucked unless we have committed a grave moral error. Someplace where we do not live with the nightmares of condemnation over trifles. There is a tremendous psychological immunity, which we desperately need, that comes from a sense of familiarity, security, and common concern in compassionate and understanding circles.

Creating these circles will not be easy if we as individuals do not work on our own self-healing, and realize what we can and cannot endure or achieve. These observations and questions can be considered in Berlin and elsewhere. A large part of our tragedy stems from our lack of solid ties that can be fortified and built upon, and this is due to our collapse as individuals and groups. In an ideal situation, we might not be preoccupied with questions of identity, survival, and emotional balance, but the situation is imperfect and we are still trying. It may be useful to think about how much flexibility we can reach in building our relationships, and how much comfort we can provide for ourselves so that we can pass it on to others in the form of acceptance, support, and solidarity.

……

It has been weeks since I got back from Berlin, and I’m still hanging in the air, finding it hard to get back to my daily routine. This is a clear warning to those wishing to visit – indulgence in the Berlin chaos reprograms the nervous systems of those who live in countries where things are taken too seriously. We do not visit Berlin because it is a touristic and historical landmark, but because it is the princess of exile and the warm home of our dreams and comrades. We visit it and come back to it and obsess over it because someone who crosses the Warschauer Straße Bridge, drunk at dawn, becomes dizzy from the smell of urine, then thinks of urinating on all the bridges of the world due to Berlin’s nihilistic beauty that strikes the imagination.