Draining silence

it’s 2:30 am and i’m going out on a whim writing this.

it’s 2:30 am and my body won’t let me go to sleep because the thoughts of where i grew up are plaguing me. an all year summer paradise where no taxes are paid, a support system where all attended private schools, a hub where malls are larger than small cities, and anything your mind could rack up gets delivered right to your doorstep.

*sidenote: this is not to attack all citizens, only those that abuse. yes, i know a good amount of citizens are not like this at all and thus generalizing would give an inaccurate impression of the nation’s people. so let me clarify: this anger at the situation, the racism-fuelled institutions that keep it alive, the fact it exists and exists so silently. once again, this is directed only at the perpetrators, the quiet observers, those just in denial, and how largely untended the situation being discussed is. everyone else, let’s stand together and rise against.*

so no, i will never forgive you.

the world and i will never forgive you.

you and all your entitled citizens who think they have the right to abuse domestic workers to death.

your surplus of rich, rich superiority complex bearers who raise kids without even looking twice at them that end up animal abusers with a safety net.

the concerning abundance of insecure parents who blame anything and everything else when your child worsens society so it doesn’t taint their reputation.

you make the world a hideous, inhumane place.

i will never stop thinking of how ashamed i mention that “yes, that’s where I was born and raised” because i was, and i haven’t stopped this. does that make me an abuser too?

do i implicitly contribute to the one reported domestic violence act per day statistic?

degrading lives of your helpers to bring yourselves up. can you not see the hypocrisy? or is this entitlement that unabashed?

i cannot go on forever moping about every dog your children have hurt and watched cry for sport, every maid you’ve deemed subhuman, every soul that has died on your feet; all that is left is shame. i feel nothing but pain’s confluence with shame.

good devout souls that deem others as lessers, kill the helpers that clean, cook, organize and live at their feet. souls that pray to make it to heaven and fast until sundown and abstain from pork and premarital sex, because that is what makes all their ugly sins disappear. yes, you’ll make it to heaven. all you need to do is avoid alcohol, then you could abuse any animal on the streets, insult any foreigner on your land, abuse any low income worker living under the abysmally low minimum wage (233 KWD/month) working only to serve you day and night, night and day to go home to their family, the way you would from your shiny 32nd floor office, only if they survive to see that day.

take the money away from those who can already provide for their children’s education on the side of a dozen mansions, and provide it to those you force into heat exhaustion. those you hire to do the work that you can’t do yourself. those you feel are disposable as they do the work that keeps you alive and well enough to neglect everything but money and reputation.

‘disparity in income’ sounds so minimally phrased while what’s happening is institutionally justified murder under the conditions we’ve built.

your god won’t help you, not your hands that torture the lower class, not your eyes that watch souls and bodies suffer.

so put away your plastic smiles, your overvalued pieces of paper, your scholarships that praise mediocrity, your lives dedicated to purely protecting the upper/middle class, your goddamn pride that celebrates nothing but a culture of being rich, having a superiority complex, modeling aesthetically pleasing restaurants and putting on pretty water shows at the hands of oppression. stop washing the blood and sweeping the bones on the ground under the carpet in the name of beauty. stop playing god and using human lives at your disposal with your monstrous power just to feel control over anything.

silenced, damage souls, i hear you, and i will never stop fighting for you. you will see your time of day. no more deaths of puppies in staged, grotesque “animal fights,” no more domestic helpers tortured, starved to death only to be dumped out like a worn out garbage bag airing out their abusers detritus.

hate me. ban me. call me out on blaspheming a country that did nothing but pamper me, but an idea can’t be silenced. you can ignore my words but not the thoughts i just put in your head, thoughts that deep down, you know are nothing but truths. it is quite disturbing to admit to yourself that you’re a murderer, isn’t it?

Today is the last day. Your beautiful sunsets and lively 3 billion dollar cultural centers won’t mute us for long.

Published for Inquire Magazine on April 6, 2018