Now Lebanon
3/07/2014

Madmen under the caliphate
By Doha Hassan

Insanity has peaked with the establishment of an Islamic state in Syria

Crumpled bodies lie surrounded by tremendous destruction. The camera moves in, showing blue faces with wide eyes staring into a void that seems not so far away. Some people have seen these bodies in real life. Another picture shows the shredded and bloodied bodies up close.

Whoever saw and experienced this event, whether directly or indirectly, was exposed to a major shock. The shock is short-lived: it is absorbed and fades away as one tries to move on with life. But the consequences grow in body and mind. The effects differ from one person to another, but taken together they become a collective trauma.

Violent and bloody events in Syria are still taking place, meaning that these shocks and their fallout remain incurable. People suffering from the disorders resulting from these events suppress their pain while they are exposed to successive traumas over a short period of time.

The body collapses

When the mind kicks into an elevated defensive state, it suppresses all memory related to the shock. This leads to physical and emotional trauma symptoms, such as depression, loss of appetite, tension, stomach pain, and partial memory loss.

This typically happens to people who have suffered one traumatic incident, let alone multiple repeated ones.

Daily life

It is 6 am. The room is dark. The alarm goes off and no one tries to silence it. Farah remains motionless for half an hour, staring at the ceiling before throwing her feet, then her body, to the floor. She stands and walks towards the bathroom, puts on her clothes, and goes to work.

“I feel I am literally dragging myself out of bed, but I cannot afford not to work,” says Farah, who moved to Beirut about a year ago. Now 20, she was arrested and detained in Damascus for a month and a half and, like other Syrians, was exposed to successive shocks. “I always try to get through the day. I have been suffering from memory problems for three years. I started having problems communicating and no matter what I do not feel happy.”

“I do not know how I feel; probably empty. I am excited, tense, or calm for just a minute. I sleep for 20 hours and I merely imagine that I am alright.”

Qusayr – Abu Saqqar

During the Qusayr battle, a video was published showing a man going by the name of Abu Saqqar holding the heart of a regime soldier as the Syrian regime stormed the city. The man holds the heart next to his mouth, though the video does not show him actually eating it.

The reactions to this video were quite disturbing. The shock comes from the event itself, but the disorders resulting from it take the shape of reactions to the video and people’s conflicting opinions over Abu Saqqar’s actions.

Reactions were as follows: “The man did not eat the heart”; “this man is a monster, he ate the heart and I saw him”; “how can he put it in his mouth?”; “he is a criminal”; “what do you expect from someone who saw his family get killed?”; “I can understand when someone gets angry and consumed by hatred, and what Abu Saqqar did is normal in his case”; “nothing justifies a human being acting like Abu Saqqar did”…

Razan Zeitoune – The numbness

The Syrian regime killed thousands of civilians in one day when it used chemical weapons in eastern Ghouta. Everyone was in a state of shock as images of the massacre spread.

Those who witnessed the Ghouta massacre had to take immediate action. The feeling of direct shock was postponed, as witnesses had to carry and bury bodies, document the dead, and save those who could be saved.

“I am trying to relive the details of that day at a very slow pace, to burst out crying and wail, as a ‘normal’ person is supposed to do. I am terrified by the numbness in my chest and the fogginess of the images racing through my mind. This is not a normal reaction following a day spent tripping on bodies lined up one after the other in long, dark hallways. Looking at these bodies, wrapped in white shrouds or old blankets, the only thing one can see is their bluish faces and the frozen foam around their mouths, sometimes mixed with a trickle of blood. Foreheads or shrouds bear a number, a name, or just read ‘unknown,’” wrote Razan Zeitoune.

If what Razan feels is correct, i.e. the “numbness” gripping her when she remembers the details of the massacre, why did she end her article with the following sentence: “The world is a dirty and cruel place. You will understand one day when you are older, if you are allowed to grow older. Say goodnight to your nation, my son”?

The beheading

While people continue to try to cope with the trauma of the chemical attack, the fallout from it and the disorders, in addition to all the other shocks, the media publishes the image of an Islamic State of Islam and al-Sham (ISIS) militant beheading a civilian in northern Syria. Yet another shock.

Towards madness

This new shock is added to old ones with their fallouts and disorders, as the media constantly exacerbates the disorders viewers are suffering from. Violence, explosions, arrests, and painful events go on in quick succession. Elsewhere, life rolls on, as people have no choice but to go about their day and move on to the next. Will this lead us to madness?

The caliphate and an era of madness

On Sunday ISIS published a new address by its official spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani al-Shami.

Adnani officially announced the establishment of an Islamic caliphate, headed by Abdullah Ibrahim – known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – who accepted promises of allegiance.

In Syria, people reacted hysterically to the announcement. Social media was filled with satirical comments on the issue, a tone echoed in the comments of people at work and when they met with each other.

Fouad said: “It seems we are crazy. We cannot acclimate to what is going on, everything that has happened over these three years, all the killing, destruction, displacement, refugees, ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, and now the Islamic caliphate. The irony of it all. We cry, we are depressed, we laugh, and we get angry all at once. We really have gone mad.”

Michel Foucault once wrote that the mind has discovered in madness a special tool, another way of shutting out anything that could impose an external authority or an animosity without bounds.

After the announcement, I, along with everyone else, commented ironically and hysterically on Facebook. But I stopped doing so half an hour later, as if someone had slapped me. It is no joke to read the announcement of an Islamic caliphate in 2014. The caliphate has indeed been established.

A few minutes later, I rejoined the state of madness with scores of other people.

If we imagine ourselves in a psychiatric hospital, subjected to constant electric shocks, then the Syrian regime, ISIS, and their offshoots are overseeing it. We have become madmen living under the caliphate.

 

This article has been translated from the original Arabic.

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