Words are never accurate enough or sufficient to convey anything of what they are meant to convey. In this they are indeed like chopped-up memories and remembrances – always divorced from their original context, always victims to the inadequacies and particularities of the one in which they are vouchsafed unto the world. Yet, words are all I have to tell you who I am. How can you ever really know me then?
Month: May 2004
Happiness & Fulfillment
Happiness and fulfillment are not things you work for, but things you stumble upon in your aimless wanderings through life. Even the illusion of having a purpose is not a guarantor of happiness. Our souls, it seems, are forever destined to be restless and will only find fulfillment in death. Will happiness be waiting for us there? Can anyone really tell?
The Dead Weight of History
What’s one to do with the dead weight of history and demographics? No, I am not about to embark here on some elitist complaint against the “ignorant masses,” or the “mob,” I am merely referring to the all-too real problem related, in part, to the confusion surrounding issues of identity and belonging, and, in other part, to the sheer pressure that population explosion exerts on the basic social services that a state should provide in order to survive in this world (its survival being of major importance to the wellbeing of at least the majority of its inhabitants, if not all).
Are we all racists now?
Or, to be more precise, have we always been so blatantly racist? If the events in Qamishly and Darfur prove anything about the Arab peoples, regimes and intellectuals included, is that they are far from being immune to racist stands. More so, we seem to be mired in them, immersed to the neck, in fact, but we are too numb, too absorbed with our feeling of victimhood, to pay attention, to notice. Apartheid, genocide, and slavery, especially slavery (how could we so conveniently forget about our history with slavery?) are not foreign crimes, as we have always contended. We are as equally guilty in this regard as everyone else. Continue reading “Are we all racists now?”
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 