A PREMEDITATED HISTORY OF THE GULF
A REVISIONIST HISTORY OF SOME OF MY MEMORIES LIVING IN THE GULF AND MIDDLE EAST AS A TEENAGER. THIS IS NOT ESSENTIAL FOR YOUR EXPERIENCE BUT IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT MY DISCMAN BACK THEN WAS STRICTLY SPINNING GANGSTER RAP, SO WHILE YOU READ THIS WEEK'S EDITION I WOULD ASK THAT YOU IMAGINE THE MUSIC PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND, ALONG WITH THE BLISTERING EASTERN SUN AND THE REFLECTIVE WESTERN SKYSCRAPER. THANK YOU. (SHOUTOUT TO LLOYD BANKS IN THE VIDEO).
What need is the school of its desert?
I walked through the heavy, revolving metal gate. Directly in front stood a Light Armored Vehicle (LAV) with a ninja turtle crouched behind a mounted machine gun. The long chain of bullets cascading. Rambo. The soldier and his machine pointed directly at me. The vehicle was parked, its driver was stolid, and everything everywhere was bleached with the Arabian sun. Lawrence. The machine gun’s nozzle staring straight at me. One by one, a line of kids filed in through this heavy metal. The long chain of bullets dormant in their deadly promise.
This was my first (and last) time entering an American Navy base. The process was arduous. Even though I attended the American School which was, not physically but essentially, connected to the Base, I still had to provide exorbitant amount of proof before entering; passport, birth certificate, parents permission, visa status. All this for a school trip to go bowling. Maybe the island, back in 2001, didn’t have bowling alleys which the Americans approved of. But everything about our school was excessive. The tall chain link gates on the perimeter, the fortress-like structure, the Marines posted throughout; lightly patrolling, still at entrances and exits, checking for bombs underneath school buses and parents’ cars. The whole school felt like a sequence of checkpoints, a conformity to Western force inflicting safe and free education. I didn’t think this at the time of course. One gets used to the Americans. Excessive in their show of force, in their projection of self. We all went along with their game. Counter Strike.
Bahrain School. Yes, the American School which had ties to the American Navy Base was called Bahrain School. Unlike the Brits, the Americans learned a valuable lesson: Make sure that your architecture and bureaucracy is that of the place, intentions be damned. The British School in Bahrain was called… The British School of Bahrain. The optics are foreign, colonial. However the Americans understood that Bahrain School, in name at least, had no ill intention of Western imposition, it was safeguarded by optics. We are Bahrain, me, you, everybody. That was until one arrived to the campus which resembled tepid and rich US military control. Except, instead of camouflaged soldiers and LAVs, hundreds of children marched here.
We studied American history, American government, we were taught by Americans; English, Geography, Language, Science, Mathematics. It was a very good education. All the royal families sent their children here. A pot of Bahraini Royals, Affluent foreigners, and the kids of Marines who came in mixtures of lower middle class America. Devout Christian, City African American, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Fred Durst, American Pie.
I was home sick watching the 9/11 coverage. I didn’t understand what it meant. It felt stupid. These dumb Americans missed the airport and flew into the buildings. It wasn’t long after the Middle East was being attacked. The Middle East, all of us, were responsible. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait. We were all barbaric fundamentalists. That is unless you belonged to the sweet gated off, machined Navy Base, that rigid order. Without it, we would all be lost in Islamic Bitterness, in Unruly Desert.
On MSN Messenger, after exchanging ASL with a girl living in America, she asked me Do you go to school in tents in the desert? I told her we don’t ride camels to school in Bahrain, I told her in Bahrain there is so much oil people don’t pay taxes. She asked Do you know where Bin Laden is? A long pause. Then, with indignant bitterness, I told her that a Bahraini could buy you and your whole fucking family so no, we don’t know where Bin Laden is.
Our teachers were incredible. Our basketball team was average. And our reputation was privileged, foreign, fake. The Falcon is a symbol of the Gulf. Naturally we were The Bahrain School Falcons. Our mascot looked like that of an American College University; Purple and Gold, with a cunning smirk. Foghorn Leghorn. We had lockers like they do in movies. And a cafeteria, a gym with bleachers. All that time, I never once saw a real falcon. We only went to the desert during bomb threat evacuations. Sitting still and cooking, waiting. I would have preferred to spend the day watching a falcon jump off his owner’s glove, run into the sky, far, high, then return slowly, his wings wide and straight, landing back on his owner’s wrist. The sharp talons digging in. The bowling was fun I suppose. There was a Taco Bell. The American kids told me it was a big deal.
27.5.24
FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS!
Devastation set in when George W. Bush got elected to a second term. We didn’t believe it could happen. Everyone at the American Community School of Beirut was depressed, in disbelief, we refused to accept the four more impending years. More and more. More Marines, more Bombs. At the Palestinian refugee camp a mother said, what? who? Ah yes well the Americans, it doesn’t matter who they choose. They hate us. It was difficult to argue with her. I ended up playing soccer with her kid for a while. His father was killed by one of the Israeli airstrikes. His uncle and grandfather were missing. His sister was shy and mostly drew in the corner. Barak Obama came with Hope. Then he armed the Saudis with every tooth and fist. She was right, the mother, she was simply right.
DJURO PUPOVAC
We all thought Anne Frank was stupid. Her diary was boring. She had an imaginary friend, Kitty, so every entry began with Dear Kitty. A teenager, she wrote about boys, her crushes, her friendships, quarrels with family. Teenage banality. Yes, I understood why her diary was important. I understood we were close in age. And I understood that we were learning about the Holocaust. I could imagine the horror, the despair, the hollow hopelessness of her plight. Serbians, Slavs, too were disseminated that time. I have heard similar stories. Dismissive, I didn’t care for her teenage fervour, her young and immediate humanity.
Our American history teacher, Mrs. Houser, had a pet hamster in class, Spike. He had the biggest set of balls on him. He would repeatedly sit on his ass, spread his legs, and scratch the absolute fuck out of them. This was astoundingly more interesting to teenage boys. However, in the last year of Anne’s diary she becomes more reflective. Accessing skies beyond her age. Questioning humanity, wanting to be accepted yet acknowledging the violence it brings. She was German and wanted to remain German, yet Germany rejected her. What to do with such unrequited fellowship? We hadn’t been back to our village then. We didn’t know what state it was in, imagining the worst. Our house was in tact. Most weren’t. But none of us went back there. We imagined all of our stone houses, our shops, the school, town and orchards, we imagined it all dilapidated, broken with the ugliness of Man’s spirit. We imagined our neighbours either hated us or were hollowed by war. The ones that survived.
Tanya Savicheva kept a small diary during the siege of Leningrad. Only jotting down family member’s deaths as they occured. With no food or supplies coming in, people perished in slow and quiet fashion. Zhenya died on December 28th at 12 noon, 1941. Then her sister, grandmother, brother, uncle. All dead in sentence. Later she would omit the word died and just write, Uncle Lesha May 10th, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, 1942. Then finally, her dear mother, Mama on May 13th at 7:30 in the morning, 1942. She didn't have the pencil nor the paper, the energy nor the will, for more. Her question for Man's value of life came in the form of basic fact; a chronicling of events as they were, stripped of God's intention or reason, from the handwriting of a malnourished Girl. With no one left, Tanya’s last entry was simple, The Savichevs are dead. Everyone is dead. Only Tanya is left.
Tanya would live long enough to be rescued but soon died of intestinal tuberculosis.
She was 14. Anne was 15. My great-uncle was 19.
My wish is to one day erect a stone for him in our village. He kept no diary.
THEY WISHED FOR A LAZY AUTUMN IN MAY
AND THUS STROVE TO RETAIN WHEREVER
POSSIBLE THIS LINEAR SEQUENCE OF IDEAS
A simple Way One can come to accept the atrocities of One’s own
If you like, you can take the word ‘God’
from the Bible and make it your own.
If you like, every time the word 'God'
is written in the Bible you can replace
it with another word, a word
that is of significance to you.
If you like you can replace the word
with ‘Sister’ or ‘Brother’
when inevitable family difficulties arise,
with ‘Sun’ or ‘Moon’
when the seasons abandon your eyes,
if you like you can replace the word
with ‘Mohammed’ or ‘Mother’
when you fail to understand another,
with ‘Politics’ or ‘Colonialism’
when you seek today’s truth through others.
If you like, replace the word ‘God’
with a quiet negligence that now faces its truth
replace the word with something man-made,
with a significant thing which has escaped you.
And with the grand youth of its gesture, you read the word over and over
and God willing, if you like, you can prosper with the Word, over and over.
And over and over and
over and over and over.
Tell yourself not to worry,
this is but temporary.