Crossing through Inferno

HOF – When I was 12, my father told me that I was a fly. He warned of the West’s allure like a blazing light bulb. He told me that the distant sparkle would incinerate me if I ever went there. I was a rebel. I never listened. I installed a VPN software to access banned Western social media. That was how I learned English. For the next 15 years, I relentlessly pursued the West.

I came to Austria with a student visa in 2015.

Here I am, in the heart of Western Europe, burning daily, just like my father predicted.

It hurts.

My father was right, accurately painting the West as infernal. Nonetheless, he failed to acknowledge that we, the Levantines, are very much Western. My burning began long before “Europe”.

In the Levant, we loved, and we lived in fear of getting caught. Sometimes that meant death. A killer was to be slain, by law, unless their act was deemed “honorable.” Until recently, “honor killers” faced a limit of two years in prison. In 2011, Assad raised the sentence to a maximum of seven years. Despite this, murderers often emerged from prison hailed as heroes. So, we guarded our chastity and concealed our affection. We hid our intentions, our thoughts, and our art.

We also buried our fury until it erupted in 2011, like a volcano.

The war forced me to flee Eastern Ghouta, where my family name marked me as a target. A year in Jordan offered no respite; it was hell there too. After wrestling with dark thoughts in Irbid, a city of mistrust, returning to war-torn Syria felt less perilous. Amidst warfare, Damascus offered precarious safety, providing me 16 months of meditation and red wine, while surviving mortar assaults.

The red wine made life easier.

In 2015, my father was happy to see me fly to Vienna. Two years later, he ensured my little brother relocated to Russia. He desired for us both to ultimately seek the blaze of light, for we burned regardless.

So here we are, playing with fire.

Nine years in Europe have unveiled new afflictions. These are distinct from war or violence. There is silent oppression, where the powerful crush the powerless, legally, with a profound sense of entitlement.

European society resembles a colossal pyramid scheme. Those at the apex remain unyielding. Those at the nadir feel like failures. They don’t rebel. They don’t catch on fire and ignite an Arab Spring. They don’t become terrorists. They don’t emulate Samson and topple the hallow Straße-der-Menschenrechte columns of Nuremberg. They depart silently, their despair unvoiced, their suicides unexplained, blaming themselves.

From the peaks of Steiermark, I learned that the sun often sets so young. What a waste!

Honor killings are scarce in Europe. There is no need for such brutality. The only thing that breeds here is a desexualized youth, devoid of passion for rage or love – or life – another woeful condition; the flipside of ours.

In the end, we’re all Westerners, and we all burn. In the heart, we smolder silently. On the fringes, we howl and sometimes chant “Allahu Akbar.”

Whether in Central Europe or the Levant, a corrupt West persists. It is shaped by antiquity and Abrahamic discourse. In here, suffering questions the divine’s role. God becomes both our solace and strife. Between Moses and Muhammad, Jesus hangs on the cross to cleanse us from our sins – and desires.

Yet, we quarrel over the one God we have because that’s all that we have. We fight for hegemony, for monopoly – for monogamy. We’re a crumbling civilization – at times an empire – that refuses to die.

We just burn and we do so on purpose.

Yet, it hurts.