I have a problem to which I seem to have no solutions. I am lost, utterly irrevocably lost. When I wake up in the morning existential choices crowd my vision and banish simple normal life away. What to be or what to do pulls me hither and thither until I find myself running in circles. Shall I be a writer today, or shall I be an image maker; what is best: to be a commentator, to be a poet, to be an artist or to put on the guise of the scholar and go hunting for information about Syria’s disintegrating heritage? On top of all that I have to decide on which language to communicate with, Arabic or English, a conflict usually ending with using both. I tell you friends, I am exhausted and I am suffering from split personalities, not the one personality, not to mention that my system is suffering from overloading to the point of shutdown. And do you think it stops at this? No, never. For the Revolution is a very hard mistress and a very jealous one. It demands absolute service, total devotion and nothing less than one’s soul. It interferes with my daily life, with my hours of waking and my sleep. It even commands my dreams. I have to ask permission if I have to go out in order to buy some food so that I might not die of hunger, and I need its permission to have a break for eating or resting, even for going walking by the sea which I adore. Nobody has ever made such demands on me before. Even my art, a moody merciless master, has more compassion than this Revolution of Syria. I tell you, I am possessed and no priest or séance can rid me of this genie or free me from my mistress. Do I have to start a revolution against the revolution to regain control of my destiny and of my life, or do I have to shake the foundations of the world in order to help my all-domineering beloved mistress to triumph and in doing so free Syria in freeing myself? Help!!
My mistress’s flag
alisariram 