(This article was first published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)

Before I reveal to you my ambitious proposition to end human strife and achieve world peace, allow me first to share with you an unusual personal condition from which I’ve been silently, yet painfully, suffering for at least two years now. Today, I believe the time has come to speak out and seek counsel, and perhaps even find a cure. Although I know this is not a help-line for my ailments nor is it the right venue for such private complaints, I still feel the need to blurt it out in public. Maybe, just maybe, I would feel a little better somehow by talking about it. So please excuse my selfishness if you can, but here it is, my mysterious disorder: I cannot read, hear or watch the news anymore.

There it goes, off my beleaguered chest (I already feel some relief, by the way). As ridiculous as it sounds, I am confessing that I lost the ability to concentrate during what should be an important part of my daily life, namely those moments I used to dedicate to finding out from various media outlets what’s going on around the world. They say that a problem diagnosed is a problem half-solved, and I think I know exactly why this is happening to me. Although I’ve never been one with a soft heart, it seems that the sheer magnitude of violent deaths and human suffering in every story, in every broadcast and in every line of news, has finally overwhelmed me. I have finally succumbed to the ugliness of this world by unconsciously shutting down my receptors. As an involuntary reaction, my mind started to switch off completely in the face of unspeakable calamities. A defense mechanism, I would guess, is being triggered inside my brain to block out the mayhem. No matter how hard I try, each time I tune in to the news or browse newspapers on the internet, I crumble under the weight of an insurmountable depression that envelops me.

How many of you suffer from the same syndrome, I wonder? In one day in Iraq, for example, while digesting the report of the daily maniac blowing up the daily crowded market killing the daily dozens, we learn of American soldiers gang-raping a fifteen year old girl in her house and then killing and burning her with her entire family. Because I refuse to believe that our species can be so barbaric, for a fleeting fraction of a second I get the feeling that I would wake up from a terrifying nightmare – only to discover that these are true stories and that the images are real. Yet, in a streak of masochistic conduct, I persist in seeking that which eats away at the core of my soul. Out of indefatigable habit, I suppose, I keep following the bloody news and keep suffering the consequences, just like a moth drawn to the fatal light that will eventually consume it.

Although I stopped getting the paper editions long ago (mainly because their ink messes your hands), one glittering Saturday morning in Geneva, I decided to buy a few newspapers to re-experience holding them up and flipping through them while waiting to have my haircut. I see people doing it all the time, and it looks so normal, so human, so unnoticeably routine. However, by the time my turn had come and I was seated in the barber’s chair, I couldn’t for the life of me remember how I walked across that room, nor could I recollect where it was that I dropped the newspapers along the way. Wrapped in that cloth that you wear inversely like a straitjacket (yes, they have those in Geneva, too), I saw a different gloomy face in the mirror, one I could hardly recognize. I realized that I had lost focus somewhere between reading of the latest mass grave in Iraq, the latest family wiped out in Gaza, and the latest meaningless slaughter in some remote part of the world which I cannot recall right now. Even the small side stories were as ghastly as the major ones. There was no respite in the graphicness of death, and no time even to reach the sports pages either.

I found myself suddenly stranded in a surreal state of utter disbelief, staring at the scissors swinging over my head and imagining what it would really be like if its blades had been used to decapitate me. The skies outside were no longer as blue and uplifting as I had left them. Neither was my spirit as elevated as when I first hopped out of bed that sunny morning. Looking at the same mirror, I thought to myself, surely, the oblivious clients around me waiting for their trim could not have been reading the same news and casually pretending they were from a different planet? Unless, of course, they were, and I was stuck inside an endless horror movie, packed with weird alien characters. “Would you like to wash your hair?”, the voice came as I was about to stand up and leave. “No, thanks”, I mumbled, with my incredulity peaking as I glanced at the avalanche of morbid tales still plastered on the front pages of the papers I had just left behind. “Your papers, sir”, the lady said with a smile. I feigned a smile back, asking her to add them to the stack of Paris Match and Hola magazines scattered on the coffee table. I don’t need them anymore, I said to myself, nor do I need her straitjacket. What I needed most was my sanity. Escape, if I have to, and I was going to do just that. We all need to and we all do every once in a while. In my case, I just couldn’t take the news anymore, and I deliberately decided to get as far away from it as I could. I turned on my noisy engine outside, and off I ran like a coward, looking for a new ride and a new secluded mountain to hide.

Thinking of the Jordanian MPs who had walked all over our dead bodies by desecrating the memory of our fallen martyrs, I remembered a line from the movie that made Mustapha Akkad, the genius director murdered in the same attacks, so popular in the Arab world. At the beginning of this household epic, as prophet Muhammad’s uncle, Abu Talib, worried for his nephew – who had spent the last three days meditating inside the cave of Hira’ – the old man gazed at the hilltop, and with deep resignation in his voice, he expressed his trepidation: “I don’t know what it means… men see the world too well from a mountain”. I don’t know what it means either, and I don’t pretend to descend from these long rides drenched in revelation or singing words of wisdom. However, it dawned on me during one of these escapades that the true meaning of citizenship in any society can only be understood through appreciating the complexity of the two-way reciprocal stream of taxation and representation. European citizens love their countries and passionately cherish them because they know that they elect politicians and civil servants whose paramount obligation is to provide them with a decent level of public services, wherever these citizens may be located. In other words, they expect and do get something in return from their participation in public life.

So, as I was cruising the French Saleve mountain towering over Geneva, but climbing its other side which overlooks the beautiful city and lake of Annecy, I crossed through a tiny village that was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. Yet – and it was the first time that I paid attention to this particular observation – it struck me that the infrastructural development of the roads, the services, the landscaping and every other little detail in every little corner of this seemingly obscure spot on the map was simply astounding. Admiring the beauty of the perfection, I noticed a phenomenon that we so badly lack in the Arab world and which Europeans take for granted: that every remotely isolated square inch of rural Western Europe is as developed and nurtured by the state and its local authorities as the heart of any of its bustling capital cities. That’s why, I believe, you always detect this natural desire by the inhabitants to care for the land and for its surroundings, far beyond the boundaries of their private properties. This communal protective instinct is the healthiest trait any government can aspire to instill in its citizens, motivating them to assume that noble task of being the voluntary guardians of the realm. And such behavior flourishes in Europe not because Europeans are superior beings, but because they have realized that good citizenship is a mutually beneficial state of affairs, for them and their governments.

For example, these lonely villagers go through the trouble of adorning their balconies with such a breathtaking array of geranium flowers because they do feel that their village belongs to them and that their tax money visibly bounces back from a government system that caters for the well being of their community. That’s why they want their towns to look so pretty and do their best to keep them that way. That’s also why they will avoid littering their streets in as much as they will refrain from doing so inside their actual homes, because both physical domains are afforded the same affection and viewed with the same sense of ownership by their residents. Both spaces inspire the same attachment to a dwelling, a personal habitat, one that belongs to you as much as you belong to it, whether you actually own it or not. This domino effect of mutual concern between citizen and state, when it is multiplied throughout the land, symbolizes the real meaning of a homeland inside of which you feel significant as an equal tax-paying citizen, no matter what your last name is and who your relatives and friends are. This balanced equation is in my opinion the ultimate concept of a nation that you would want to safeguard, one that you would give your life to protect. That is also why this fact should be remembered by all those good men and women in Jordan’s recently sprawling committees, the ones seeking to inject into our people a sense of patriotic belonging by using various creative slogans. For such efforts to succeed, it is indispensable for us to bear in mind that the rights and duties associated with citizenship have to flow both ways. There is just no other way for this river to take shape.

Down to sea level, slowly but surely, reality sinks back in. News of our region is as unavoidable as I had left it when I took off, and it breaks my heart yet again. How many times can I bear this cycle in the space of 24 hours, I wonder? There is just so much injustice in our part of the world, so much misery and suffering, all perpetuated by overzealous fanatics from all faiths in the name of worshipping the same creator. If religion is indeed the opium of the masses, as Karl Marx famously opined, then the Middle East must be experiencing the dizzying nausea of a lethal overdose. From Jewish supremacist politicians who regard non-Jews as vermin, backed by evangelical Christians who can’t wait for the end of the world, to Islamic fundamentalists who think all Jews are descendants of pigs and monkeys, I can think of only one way to end this ancient squabble once and for all. I do believe that there are enough people like me on all divides who do not want to occupy other people’s land or drive them from their homes, and want to live in peace with peoples of all faiths and denominations, whether they worship the same God or worship nothing at all.

We have to stand up and be counted, because we are not the problem. The problem lies in the fanatics and extremists on both sides who are bent on exterminating each other. Therefore, I say in all earnestness, let them fight it out. Why not? Let those who believe in killing and death go to a neutral and far away desert and put themselves out of their misery. We just need to convince them that they need to conduct their battles elsewhere, not in the middle of our towns and cities, and we should provide incentives for them to do so.

For example, if there are indeed people living amongst us in Jordan who believe Zarqawi was a hero, I think our government should not persecute them at all, but should instead provide the transportation by airlifting them to a place where they can join their fellow madmen. In other words, we should shorten their quest for paradise as much as possible and do all of us a favor. I used to laugh with an Algerian friend of mine back in the early nineties when he used to advocate a drastic solution to the murderous upheaval in his country by criminals disguised in the robe of Islam. He used to say that Algeria has enough vast deserts to allow these sword-wielding butchers to set up an independent state of their own where they can have all the camels and tents they need to live in the stone age, if that is what they really aspire for.

Today, I don’t laugh anymore. We do need to take polls and we do need to ask people what they truly want and where they stand. If we can ultimately separate the advocates of a just peace and co-existence from the advocates of death and destruction on both sides, then as I said before, we have a problem half-solved. Thereafter, let those in favor of resolving human disputes through violence battle it out away from us. At our paid expense, if need be, they should be transported to a suitable battlefield. I will even pray for all of them to go to heaven, as long as they keep enough distance to let the rest of us live in peace. A crazy and idiotic solution, you’re thinking? Perhaps. But when in Rome – and if all Romans have lost their heads – then you have the absolute right to do as they do and start speaking their twisted, insane language. When the only currency in circulation are rusty copper coins of madness, who can blame a humble writer exchanging absolute folly for the semblance of wisdom? Yes, I say, let them fight it out.

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

Tags: iraq, jordan, media, philosophy, switzerland