Evariste

In a coun­try where people are motiv­ated by greed, driv­en by ambi­tion and led by instincts, some stand power­less. We take our val­ues from cor­rupt politi­cians, enshrined by ‘vir­tue’, or should I say shrouded by ‘vir­tue’ which stench fills nos­trils and per­meates beings. We observe, ana­lyse and deduct like Winston Smith (1984) and are unable to act or react in an envir­on­ment where “he who con­trols the past con­trols the future. He who con­trols the present con­trols the past.”

Our soci­ety has decided that everything has already been decided. An ori­ent­al tra­di­tion rein­forced by the con­stant feel­ing that the gods take pleas­ure in toy­ing with us, and who, like a spoilt child, in a fit of spite, breaks the pup­pet snatched from its play­mate.

At a time when some of us decided that our coun­try was worth fight­ing for, we aban­doned our exile, that peace­ful envir­on­ment which rein­forced our beliefs in the mor­als that made nations great, to return and build what we hoped would be a coun­try worth fight­ing for.

Aeons past, or so we felt. Things that we took for gran­ted, remembered from a father’s or mother’s tale and revived by our hope for a bet­ter future, van­ished one after the oth­er. To start with, only a few super­fi­cial habits were broken. This was unim­port­ant, after all the coun­try had to reawaken from its slum­ber, and as an old man rising from bed, had to stumble before stand­ing tall. But the flesh is weak and faith is elu­sive. Those who believed that cross­ing the sol­id line on the moun­tain road was an unspeak­able sin were sur­prised to con­front lor­ries stream­ing down their side, scream­ing insults at the unsus­pect­ing climber. And so it was. The main edi­fice crumbled, but oth­er palaces were built. Pontiffs sprung from the ground, like the skel­et­ons that faced Jason, and drowned the flock of faith­ful with lies and hypo­crisy.

We were busy then. Busy gath­er­ing the scraps that fell from the mouths of our lead­ers and los­ing sight of the lamb that was slaughtered on the table of their ambi­tions. Our coun­try was being divided and dis­membered. Every small morsel was traded either for gold or for power. Both were accu­mu­lated with greed, self-indul­gence and with a short-sighted­ness to make a mole envi­ous.

We were behold­ing, des­pond­ent, our dis­in­teg­rat­ing moth­er­land, and instead of heed­ing the great Arabic poet, Imru’ al Qais in his max­im “There will be no alert­ness today, and no drunk­en­ness tomor­row”, we took pleas­ure in his “Today is drink,…” and dis­reg­arded the second part. We were drink­ing then, are drink­ing now; some of us are still drink­ing, wait­ing for tomor­row; but tomor­row nev­er seems to come.