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A prank I did not forget
Ahmed Seif Hashed
I was always feeling very anxious and terrified of punishment.. Fear gripped me.. The power of fear had taken its toll on me.. There was no place for making convictions established by awareness, neither at home nor in school.. The punishment school is the one that governs us, and it has the supreme say.
It was or was almost a “school” with the authority to punish parents and teachers feel that it is divorced..
The father could not tell the professor to attach to my son when punishing, rather the father was the one who urged and encouraged the professor to punish his son, and more than that he delegated him with more severity and authority.. It makes you feel as if a sadistic desire from both sides towards you meets.. and you find yourself squeezed between them in a narrow corner, with no escape in front of you and no escape from behind..
We were governed by the power of fear of the father at home, and of the teacher at school… I had a deep feeling that the punishments of the professor and father were cruel, repulsive, inhuman, and painful for the body and soul!
I was skinny and exhausted.. My face was pale and yellowish.. I still remember some of the cracks that invaded my face in my early childhood, which were supposed to come later in life.. The vertical lines that I saw between the eyes, preying on the face of my childhood, are still engraved and printed In my memory, it is like an old tattoo that will never go away or be forgotten.
***
I tried to pretend not to go to school.. For me, not going to school meant that a great worry would be lifted off my shoulders.. A day’s absence from school for any reason makes me happy, even if I suffer from illness, and I may wish this illness to last longer. A period of time available or possible.. I feel unparalleled comfort despite the weight of the disease.. I free myself from school worries for a day or two, which is the extent available to me to do.. The absence of any day for any reason meant for me a space that relieves my fears and escapes from the teacher, school and punishment..
One day I said with childish innocence to my older brother Ali Seif, whom I loved very much: “I will tell you a secret, but on the condition that you do not tell it to anyone.”
He agreed and gave me safety and confidence; I told him that tomorrow I would be sick so as not to go to school; So he agreed, and added to his approval, his advice to me to split an onion head, and put it under the armpits before bed, so that I would look feverish in the morning.. He told me that they used to do this when they wanted to pretend in the military..
I followed his brother’s advice and wisdom, and I slept little that night, to ensure that the two pieces of onions stuck between the armpits so that they would not slip out or fall out of place during sleep or movement.. The smell of onions was strong and unpleasant and bothered me very much, but it was in any case easier for me than school..
My brother, who was supposed to keep his promise, and keep the secret from my father, or at least he was supposed to not agree with what I intend to do, went to my father and told him secretly of my intention, and the prank was ready for me, and I fell into his trap How much a wild rabbit falls into a hunter’s trap, In general, it is a prank that I did not expect or expect.
And when my father called me in the morning to go to school, I acted on him and pretended that I was very ill, and tried to delude him that I could not get out of bed because of the severity of the disease..
I assumed or expected that my father would take care of me as soon as he saw me sick and unable to get up and carry myself.. I expected that he would put a heart in his palm on my forehead to make sure I was hot and overheated, or maybe he would not care and leave me sick in peace for a day or two, which is available that I can steal stealth From the school days, in appreciation of the sick condition that I claim, or appear in front of him.. I might have expected him to yell at me to go to school, without making me go to school by force, especially when he sees me wrecked and unable to get up let alone stand, so he leaves me that day Excuse the illness, but what happened was shocking to me and out of my possibilities..!
Instead of my father caring about my matter, or leaving me for my disease that I claim, I found him lightly a magician extending his hand to one of his shoes that he is wearing, and he fell on my face and head slapped and hit, to find myself getting up in terror and screaming at the top of my voice, and running like a thief pursued by a battalion of men to arrest him.. I realized from the first slap on my head that I had fallen victim to betrayal intended to educate, or to fall into the trap of a non-false report.
This incident may have become a complex in my life, especially in what I often feel of doubt and suspicion towards the other, and perhaps it is the reason that made me repeatedly fail in any role that I pretend, even if it is under urgent need and necessity, as well as my abject failure to assume the role of any person other than my own. The truth and its stark nature, and even lying, I find it difficult or impossible to come by me, and perhaps specialists and psychiatrists have another opinion on this..
I remembered this story while listening to a read book, “The Preachers of the Sultans,” by the Iraqi sociologist Dr. Ali Al-Wardi, who talks about the cunning formula between what we announce to people and what we hide and conceal from them… The Sultan’s preachers, and the alliance of preachers with tyrants… The psychological crisis between the preacher who urges people to Leaving the world and its luxuries and arrogance and craving to splurge from its fountains with both hands.. Employing exemplary preaching in a blatant ideological, political and takfiri discourse.. the malicious thinking that we grew up in the arms of tyrants, and grew up on the leftovers of their tables.. clap for the oppressor, and spit in the face of the oppressed.. the relationship between the intensification of injustice And the increase in preaching more.. the exaggeration that characterizes preaching rhetoric, and what they are in the reality of reality..
My story that I remembered as I saw those who condemn the crimes that are taking place in Palestine – which are undoubtedly reprehensible crimes – and the more horrific and heinous crimes that our rulers are committing today against their people, and their use of what is happening abroad to bring legitimacy to their rule, consolidate their power and tyranny over their people, and compensate for their economic failure And their comprehensive and repeated failures with regard to the entitlements of their homelands and peoples at home, and their escape from them to Israel, America and other foreign issues.. Employing and exploiting political events abroad to serve their repressive regimes at home.. I felt that we needed a thousand shoes, and a million slaps would fix our affairs.
I remembered my story when I saw the stark contrast that we live in today between what is said and what is done… the paradox that I see between the truth and what is being claimed… between reality and illusion… marrying politics with religion or employing religion to serve politics, or to serve the agendas of power and the interests and ambitions of states. It has been said, “Politics has not entered into anything but corrupted it.”
I remembered my that story when I saw the pretending charlatans claiming for themselves righteousness, piety and piety, and benefiting people from it, justice and equity, and their affirmation of rejecting injustice, and even calling for resistance to it, but on the condition that this is far from the peoples they rule, while these authorities commit in our reality and in our right and the right of all our peoples Terrifying, horrific, and tyrannical…
They condemn the fanaticism of the other while they practice all the stinking fanaticism.. they imbibe it from their early childhood.. they drown in and around it, and they fall to its abyssal bottoms, or it sinks in them to the bottom of hell..
They call for knowledge and deep thinking, while in fact they are saturating our educational curricula with abhorrent fanaticism and heavy ignorance, and they intend to consecrate it in educational institutions from kindergarten to school and then to university.
and dullness, with which they extinguish the torches of the mind, promote free thinking in them, and bridle scientific research and its methods with a thousand chains and restrictions..
***
He follows..
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