Wa’d. وأد
This is a curious and storied word in the Arabic lexicon. It means “to bury alive.”
That denotation has its roots in pre-Islamic Arabia--the so-called Jahiliyyah, or Age of Ignorance. Wa’d was the preferred method of infanticide for unwanted baby girls. Among Islam’s claims to advancing basic human decency in the land and time of its advent is early Muslims’ dedication to putting an end to this barbaric practice. It is even called out in the Quran.
Today, the word is, mercifully, employed more for its connotation than its denotation. When used at all, it is usually a metaphor. Hopes, in Arabic, are not dashed; a literary register in Arabic would say that they have been mau’oodah--buried alive. The same can be said of projects. Confidence. Aspirations. Dreams. Revolutions.
What a tragic irony, then, that the first inkling I had that the Syrian uprising was at risk of becoming mau’oodah was the first time I saw a video of someone in my erstwhile country of residence being killed by method other than gunshot. The spring and summer of 2011 saw an endless catalogue of grainy videos of demonstrators in small towns and villages being shot, of bloody corpses being recovered from streets. I watched many.
But in the fall of 2011, I saw a video I will never forget. Grainy mobile phone footage shows a blindfolded man in a deep hole in a cratered patch of earth, his body submerged in dirt that reached up to his chin; like a beach game made sinister. A group of men stand around him, talking amongst themselves in the inscrutable accents of coastal Syria. Two of the men had shovels, and were busying themselves with tossing ever more soil onto the hapless man in the hole. The man is screaming.
Muslims’ lives are supposed to be bookended by the Islamic testimony of faith, called the shahadah: La illaha illallah muhammadu rasul allah--there is no god but God and Muhammad is His Messenger. If you are born to Muslim parents, your father is supposed to say these words to you as soon as possible after birth. And if you are in a position to know that your death is imminent, they should be the last words you speak.
Sensing his end, the man in the hole spits out the dirt that has begun to encroach on his mouth. “La illaha illallah!” he shouts, painfully, desperately, dutifully. The man recording the video retorts with a blasphemous taunt: “La illaha illa Bashar, ya kalb”--there is no god but Bashar, you dog. Probably the last words he ever heard, as the dirt began to reach his nose and then his ears. The video ends abruptly.
Wa’d. It means to bury alive.
* * *
“Why Do Americans Hate Beheadings But Love Drone Killings?” the title of the article read, shared by a Facebook friend and appearing in my newsfeed. I was annoyed already, but I couldn’t stop; I had to read it. As expected, it was full of liberal, anti-war claptrap, employing a lazy comparison that is not so much meant to actually answer the question asked as to interrogate why Americans have an ugly propensity for warmongering. The point of the straw man comparison made by the article's title is that, materially and politically, bombs of various sorts, particularly those of America's technologically advanced arsenal, are much more destructive than knives. That's a given. Bombs, not knives, are what fuel wars and the destruction of societies.
But actually killing a human being with your own two hands and the aid of a blade is an intensely intimate act, perverse intimacy though it may be, and the performance of that perverse intimacy also has long term social effects that shouldn't be underestimated. As terrible as bearing witness to the tangled mess of your erstwhile limbs or spilled entrails is, if provided the option I may very well choose that level of physical pain over the supreme ignominy of being intimately murdered.
The unduly facile nature of American liberal tropes forces a curiously reductive view of violence and its effects--that the only meaningful scale by which one should measure their outrage is the number of bodies destroyed or damaged, and not the manner in which it is done. The complicating factor of savagery--that noxious amalgamation of primal physicality and intimately administered violence--is disregarded, which leaves liberal discourse impoverished.
Consider the incredible patience that many marginalized groups exhibit under entrenched systems of violence. African-Americans have produced stunningly few Micah Johnsons and Gavin Longs despite the steady drumbeat of black bodies shot by agents of the state. Palestinians, it must be said, have shown incredible forbearance with their colonizers and ethnic cleansers; Palestinian terror attacks are a vanishingly rare occurrence in the scheme of more than half a century of acute, then slow, ethnic cleansing. But what of Syria and Syrians?
Part of me imagines that the unprecedented whirlpool of bloodshed destroying that country was not engendered by mere bullets and body counts. Syrians, too, showed amazing restraint with their tormentors for more than 40 years, and the spring and summer of 2011 were no different. Week in and week out, peaceful protesters went forth and faced bullets and bombs. Protests led to funerals. Funerals led to larger protests, which led to still more funerals. And, amazingly, Syrians’ will to not further poison society by answering violence with violence stayed intact.
But then tens of thousands of young men were thrown into the regime’s dungeons, where they were heinously abused by a government only comfortable with creativity when it is given expression by torturers and executioners. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women--and possibly greater numbers of men--were raped by their jailers. Detainees set on fire. Lacerated limbs constrained in boxes to be feasted on by rats. Wa’d.
The steady drumbeat of bullets on bodies is one thing. But how do you remain patient and peaceful when confronted with these affronts to your dignity that only savage methods bring to bear? While guns (and bombs) are more materially destructive, that is not necessarily the most pertinent question to be asking ourselves.
I’ll put it this way.
As a politically conscious black man in America, I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about my place in this country: about white supremacy and what it demands of the forces who act in society’s name; about ways to challenge a society rooted in racism; about how to reconcile myself with the possibility of a life cut short by a police officer’s bullet while protesting. Or driving. Or walking. Or laying down on the pavement. Or standing still. My politics demand that I think about these things and try to effect change peacefully while preparing myself mentally for the worst possible interactions with the state. The steady drumbeat of bullets on bodies, even bodies that look like mine, does not compel me to do more.
But I’ll tell you this much.
The day after video emerges of a black man being buried alive by police is the day that I’ll be tempted to arm myself.
[*Note: This reflection was originally written in late 2016. I just rediscovered it and am sharing it here]