The Slave

“MY country”, they said.
Whomeover coined that expression messed up the direction of possession: it’s not MY country. I don’t own anything of it.
Actually, it OWNS me. I am a slave, like we Africans have been owned by all types of Masters across the ages. I am a slave to a security apparatus. I am one of 75 millions slaves whose lives are controlled by their Amn el Dawla files.

I had almost, almost forgotten what the country whose passport I carry was: a Police state, one where our destinies belong to the Security files that someone who wasn’t smart enough to be anything but a police officer.
Where we are being watched for what we say, do, where we go, who we talk to.

You see, I was planning a mad vacation - a backpacking trek across Iran and Afghanistan. I give you that, an odd choice of destinations - but still, sovereign countries where the first one I find fascinating and the second one is the giant playground for my job (reconstruction, this type of stuff that I’ve been bugging you with for several months).
So I was all planned, packed, ready to take my plane, marked the main pages on my Lonely Planet, planned a good night sleep so I would be operative the second I’d touch the ground in Iran. Shiraz, Isfahan, here I come!!

But when 8 hours before my flight I hear from my uncle X of this branch of Security, and then, 2 hours before it from cousin Y of that other branch of Security, telling me NOT to go because it’s a really bad idea as far as Maaaaaster the Government is concerned, I had to submit to this fact.
Obey.

I’m starting to understand the mindset of what is essentially every rebellion in the history of mankind.
It’s not just about Poverty, as I would once have postulated. Add Oppression to it and you’ll realise that you got yourself an explosive cocktail.

What can I say. Law lam akon masreyan, lawadadtou an akoun 7aga tanya.
(such an awful thing to say, heh? I still love this place - but I’m really, really pissed at it).

And Yes, it is a minor hassle compared to getting tortured in a police station, of having your 16 years old son picked up from your house at 4 am by the police. (seemingly a favourite time for them to work). But I have still faced a form of opression which has suppressed my right to free movement, which I deem really vital.. Opression takes many shapes and forms. And if I am angry at something seemingly that secondary, I cannot begin to imagine what people whose more fundamental rights have been violated feel..