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=> Short Order Cook

Posted by farid (Guest) - Wednesday, November 5 2003, 11:00:16 (EST)
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Okay, here's the dilemna: What's past is past...however the people of Iraq were cut, they're bleeding now and need bandages and medicine...whoever destroyed their food...they're hungry now and need some...however the roofs got blown off their houses...it's cold and snowing and they need new ones...and so it goes. The only thing wrong with this is that even as we help them now, our government is plotting and planning to do the same thing all over again. At what point do we stop using humanitarian aid as another facet of neo-Imperialism and murder...when do we stop being collaborators too? Aren't we just the "Mop-Up" crew for Bush?

I love Vincent as much for his paintings as for his character. He was a minister first of all working for the companies who owned the coal mines in Brabant. His flock was the miners and their families all of them doomed to choke through life in extreme poverty and die from Black Lung disease...a very nasty way to go. He was sent there to ease them into death...to tell them the Christian fairy tale that by suffering worse than animals...they were proving themselves worthy of god and heaven...so best not complain because what's a few years of misery and watching your children swallowed by the mines when you get an Eternity of milk and honey. Only it wasn't enough for Vincent. He actually dared complain about the conditions these people suffered on earth and said no heaven need be bought at such a price. He was warned once or twice then fired. But his heart and his head were in the right place.

His compassion and work as a minister were misplaced. He was aiding and abetting the mine owners. You could say he esed their pains somewhat...but this too wasn't a natural diaster they were suffering the effects of but a man-made one...one that could be ameliorated or made less severe. It was his job to make sure the miners went uncomplainingly down the shafts every day...that they didn't go on strike or shirk their duties...no heaven that way, don't you know.

It's entirely likely that there will be endless calls to "help" not only Iraqis...but the people of Somalia and Madagascar and any number of places where our military will leave survivors. I wonder how much of our care and concern is for our own sake...when we support the general bombardment of civilians first. Hell...there are BOUND to be some survivors. You can bet on it that Narsai wouldn't be having these dinners if every last Iraqi had been killed. Why? What would be the point? Would the AAS build a school or a clinic if there were no children or people left alive? What a silly thing that would be. And do you think they'd have the dinner then to protest the wholesale murder of the Iraqi people...their complete annihilation nd possibly incur the wrath of the administration that killed their "dear" brethren? Of course not. If they aren't gong to protest when half of them get killed...what's the point of protesting after they're all gone?

The truth is all the people attending and dining that night supported this bullshit of a war of liberation. They were moved to tears and rage by what Saddam "did" to the Iraqi people...as they were told "facts" by the same lying press that convinced them of WMDs no one can find. In fact...decent Americans who did speak out and who tried to help the children of Iraq were hounded by this government...that wasn't the time to help starving children, they said...because it supported Saddam. So...now it's official...the same government that killed those people says it's okay to help them now. Bush now needs Narsai like he needed him before...needs all the window-dressing and polish he can get. Now humanitarian aid is okay...now it's possible to expedite things to bring Majdolin into the United States...where before all Iraqis were suspect terrorists...now that she's blind and her children are dead...she makes a good object of pity and "healing", though not as satisfying as if a Muslim had done this to her.

Narsai simply worked hand in hand with Bush...we all did. Our role was to condemn privately but suport publicly. "Quietatis Consenterim"...pardon my Latin..."In silence there is consent". So now Narsai wants to "help"...okay, fine. The people could certainly use it. But just whom is he helping...who gets most of the benefit? A good question when you consider that should Bush think it's necessary he'll bomb again the very houses Narsai rebulds and kill the children Narsai now would educate...and Narsai once again will not say a word...none of us will.

One of the things that pisses me off about me is that I get too focused on a goal and sacrifice everything else. Early in our relationship Narsai called my father, my dead father, "A fucking asshole". I kept silent about it because I had those eyeballs focused on the prize...keeping him on board on the Ashurbanipal. And he knew what he was doing...he was testing the ground...snooping around to see what I was made of. When I let that slide he knew how much I'd take...they all figured that one out. They just never thought I'd turn on them and give them their just desserts one day...the day they finally took away the monuments...the entire reason I took their abuse.

As much as has been made out of eating and dining well in these last years you have to keep in mind that fine dining is the other end of taking a rich and smelly shit. That's all it is...and focusing that much on what goes in, can't help but involve you to an unhealthy degree with your bowel movements. In other words...it's hardly a noble calling. One should eat to live...not live to eat.

One of the things I've always admired about my father was his behavior during the first Palestine War in 1948 when he was a doctor and Major in the Iraqi army. They'd captured a wounded Israeli soldier and it was my father's task to keep this young man conscious so they could torture him for information. The fellow was of European extraction...a survivor of concentration camps who'd been in medical school when the Christians of Europe declared war on the world. They were both well read and as my father tended to the prisoner each day they'd chat and swap stories. Needles to say it was a horrible position for both of them. My father was called whenever the man fainted...to revive him or see if he'd had enough for that session...in other words: keep him alive so he could be tortured...maybe tortured to death one day either accidentally or carelessly.

I don't know how long this went on but one night my father smuggled the man out of camp in a motrocycle sidecar...took him down the road towards the Israeli border, fired some shots in the air and beat it back. There's no way of telling what happened to the man...but his chances were much better. My father of course could have been shot outright for such a thing. But he did what a doctor and a man of conscience had to do...he would not help his own government torture a man...not even an enemy man...because where that sort of thing is concerned...we have no enemies except this ability to violate our own humanity. My father was being an enemy to himself if he continued...and that comes first.

He went on to become a psychiatrist and a protege of the head of Langley Porter Clinic in San Francisco, Dr. Karl Bowman, who was also head of the American Psychiatric Association, who begged my mother to keep him from returning to Kuwait to fulfill his oblgation to the government that had paid for his advance training. Dr. Bowman wanted him to teach and he would have become successful in America. I visited their library years later to look up some articles my father had written and on identifying myself seeral staff members came out to tell stories about my father. Before he died in Kuwait, under mysterious circumstances...he was appointed head of the Health Department in Kuwait...a Christian Assyrian.

This is the man I had to stand there and hear called a "fucking asshole" by a glorified short-order cook...a man who never read a book in his life, as far as I could tell...a man who would call someone's dead father such names. And me...I took it when I should have slapped him across the face...and maybe that and other things that I took from them all fuels me now. Maybe. But it doesn't change the facts. these things...between Narsai and Jackie and Golani and I DID happen and I let them happen so long as there was the slightest chance to do the work...with some honor. Not for me, but for the work itself. My own integrity I could dance around...but not that of the monuments...they were the whole point and the reason I took as much as I did.

They should never have taken those from me...it freed my hands and my tongue. I too was an opportunist...and it doesn't soften the blow that I did it for "Assyria"...not one bit.

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