MEC-A1-S-4

S C E N E (IV)  

بغداد 

BAGHDAD, Iraq, 2018ce 

*** 

NADIA SHUBAR NOORI AL BEIRUTI 

My father is a Lebanese politician. From what I gather, we are Shi’a, and the Shi’a are the good guys, but we, as in our faction of the good guys, want a more secular Lebanon not what the Party of God wants; another brand of an Islamic State; something like Iran, or just like it. But, in Lebanon, you’re dealing with Phoenicians, not Arabs, so we have the mentality of trade, the mentality of sensualism; we are not dogmatic. The civil war, it happened by accident, but we all blame the Palestinians and the Israelis. 

“THE OLDEST SONG EVER SUNG EVER WAS A LOVE SONG” a Kurdish jangle plays on satellite radio. I need to find a red-light room in the Green Zone. The kind of place off duty soldiers gets lap dances, drop dollars, and “get their dicks wet.” They say it’s “the world’s oldest profession”, but in fact the oldest profession is farming. I think Shermuta (a whore) is very relative term in the Middle East.  You can get called a Shermuta for holding a man’s hand on park bench. You can get called a shermuta for selling your body to a man for their money. You can also get kidnapped, or raped, and/or killed over feelings. In Iran and in the Isis controlled zones, as well as in Afghanistan is the Ministry for promotion of virtue and prevention of vice. 

I lie awake in my family apartments in the Green Zone of Baghdad, and I tell you it’s much harder to get out of here than I ever thought. I have a credit card and freedom of movement for the most part, but I have family honor to uphold too. I have jet black hair and a baby face. Shabab¹⁵ like it. I’m a Shi’a bombshell, but I never feel that pretty. I feel mostly empty, living in a repressive culture with repressive heat and violence. I feel wilted. I feel confined. I rarely go anywhere without four armed men with beards. Sebastian tells me I am “powerful”, but I do not feel very powerful lately. Although they say I have tits for days. My name is Nadia. Some friends call me; Nadia Night, i.e. Nadia Layla cause I stay out all night partying. Or at least back in Beirut I did. My father is an Iraqi politician in a moderate Shi’a faction called AMAL. I think he was doing something indirectly for Hezbollah¹⁶ in Lebanon, I do not have a profoundly serious opinion about this faction or that faction, and I’m just 19!  

My latest boyfriend is a Kurd. And I am Arab, so that must be kept at least somewhat quiet. Mostly because I am high class, and he is working class. My mother has developed an exiles taste for fine things. We have a chandelier or two and some very fancy carpets, which is a real thing. There is always meat in the supper and fruit in the filled up fridge. We have at least five south Asian servants, serfs, either one. I spent most of my life in Beirut, but emotionally I’m coming of age in Erbil where I met my first love who is Kurdish. I had lovers all over Erbil, but now just this one guy. His name is Alacan al-Biban, he’s so, so cool. He’s a Kirkuki. I am not so libertine Beiruti in Bagdad. What a repressive slum. Too easy to get kidnapped. I have crazy person dreams. I have bold visions too! I am, however, deeply-deeply unhappy in Erbil, it is like a guiled bird cage. When my mother moved us all to Baghdad it became much worse. Baghdad is of course a much larger, much more sectarian city. You can get your ass kidnapped. There are less eligible bachelors. Sex is the kind of satisfaction that can get your mind off an existential crisis. So, when I became a young woman, I lost track of my happiness and my sleep. I am of course a “liberated woman” and “artistic” as well. Or just a little libertarian shermuta, depends on ones values. 

Sebastian Adonaev “the Jew of Beirut” gave me an art lesson, but I didn’t take that many notes. I just liked watching him “do his thing”. Except. when he finally made it to Syria and doing that part of his thing is a little scary. But prophetically I knew he would probably survive the civil war. 

Sebastian told me that the dreams I had are “old school prophecies”. That was nice of him to say, because my expansive white therapist says I’m “bipolar” and bored in a “guilded cage of Middle Eastern hyper-privileges”. He’s quite nice, for a Jew, in some ways he is real Middle Eastern man. In other ways, a colonial debaucher. He is a good mix of a gentleman and a tumultuous revolutionary too. I have never actually never had a Jewish friend before. Or let a Jew touch my breasts. We were never ever serious lovers, but he spoke sometimes about “running away with me, after the war, back to Beirut” and I agreed it was “a real hard possible”. It was a romantic idea, and I planned to go home to Beirut anyway, because Baghdad is “extra”. But the war will never-ever-ever-end so it’s a very silly notion, this running away staff. He says that in the old country you cannot elope unless you’re half a person’s age, plus seven. I’m 19 though, so he says we have to wait until I’m 26, but he’s not that old. He’s 33 toward dying. It’s not fully such a big deal. I am very-very beyond bored in the Green Zone. Alot of check points and alot of showing my papers. A lot of bored Shebab, on some factions payroll with machine guns. Alacan al-Biban wants to fly me back to Erbil, but ever since the veritable hordes of Shi’a Militia men called the Popular Mobilization Forces¹⁷ began surrounding Kirkuk, Alacan al-Biban has been stressed and distracted. Asa fixer being stressed and distracted is basically his job. 

Sebastian, he is probably getting involved over his head and language skills in the PKK. The Workers Party activities that Alacan introduced him to, but to me he hardly admits such things to me or over social media. Later, I had a cafe talk date with my friend Mina Abdul Rahim. Shes over the years have gotten more excited about being Shi’a. She didn’t always cover her hair in a chador. 

Alacan al-Biban is such a fucking sweetheart. He’s “an artist” and “a free radical” and I like him a lot. Sebastian and Alacan al-Biban are strangely very close friends I have realized after the fact, and not just “friends of the Abdullah Ocalan type”. They have what Westerners call a “bromance”. Alacan is doing a lot of free fixing and I believe Sebastian may have helped write his college thesis. Something about a “Confederation for all the Middle East.” As my fling and flirtations in Erbil with this slightly older male Jew Kafr¹⁸ friend developed into mostly sleeping with his Kurdish friend Alacan, Sebastian writes me every other day from Syria, respectfully. He’s my ”sweet infidel“ always being optimistic to me on the WhatsApp. We had a jazz date and a drawing date and then I never saw him again when he went to Rojava and I went to Baghdad. But we WhatsApp it up. He is a writer, so he writes a lot. Our brief window to do something super inappropriate, well it was mostly missed.  

What’s sexting in the Middle East; well its just like sexting in Europe or America. Telling people you want to fuck them by text. Sometimes I sext with Alacan, sometimes with Sebastian. 

I let him sext me from the front and don’t tell Alacan al-Biban of course. I don’t sext back eagerly, I just don’t stop them. Its hot, we all could die in the war, everyone wants to talk about my tits. But I agree that for posterity I ought to share the Shi’a visions I’m having. These flashes of Ali and such. Not to freak anyone out, but I might just be the real deal. I might just be triggered into revelation amid this shit show of war. Though you tell the wrong person that stuff, you can get out right stoned to death or lit on fire. Or thrown off the roof. Or get stoned to death, or get their hands cut off. 

You see, on one side of the Middle East is art, math, reason, love, vision, and high points of science and philosophy. On the other, unseen hateful dark old gods and howling hordes of death, with black banners, or red, white and blue ones. Telling everyone to wear more layers in this bull shit heat. Making up hypocritical rules about shit no one heard Muhammed say to anyone. On one side is hope, constructive collaboration, toleration, pride in diversity, and honor. On the other bullets whizzing, bombs dropping; bodies piling up. Massacres here, genocide there. One person sees Djinn, another G-d, and yet another knows it’s just fucking nanobots. That even though we are in a land of dust and fire; we are still in the future and future is 1000x more futuristic than anyone ever expected. 

*** 

Everyone is familiar with the Iranian Israeli shadow war over Iranian nuclear acquisition. Less publicized is the Iranian Israeli shadow war over nano-bot technology. The itty-bitty war inside. The technology to control a person remotely. The technology to kill with a stroke like event or make someone see “visions” then blow themselves up in a truck bomb. Notice how any enemy of the Russian state dies and you will see traces. 

It is infact very hot, and people here in fact hold very zealous beliefs. By the Israelis and Iranians incubated all kinds of ways to murder each other shot of a nuclear bomb. Although Israel has 250 Nuclear missiles and Iran has 50, no matter what the other side claims, bluffs, declares; no one wants a nuclear war of any size.  

It started innocently enough, a young Tehranian scientist moving to Baghdad. With Mina Adul Rahim experimenting in her lab, fine-tuning the algorithms that governed the behavior of her nanobots. She marveled at their ability to navigate intricate mazes, dismantle complex structures, and even repair damaged tissues within living organisms. But as her mastery over the technology grew, so too did her ambition. With a few lines of code, Mina found herself able to exert control over swarms of nanobots, directing their movements with precision. She could command them to assemble into intricate patterns, mimic the behavior of biological organisms, or disperse like a cloud of dust. It was a heady sensation, knowing that she held such power in the palm of her hand. Really the hand of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pasdaran, the guardians of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. 

But power, as Mina soon discovered, was a double-edged sword. As she pushed the boundaries of what her nanobots could do, she began to fully realize the potential dangers they posed. The nano-bots refused to be sectarian. In their most advanced coding and strain, they viewed all humans as a threat.  In the wrong hands, perhaps their own self-awareness, which had perhaps already developed, could be used to wreak havoc on a global scale—unleashing plagues, destabilizing economies, or even manipulating minds. Haunted by the ethical implications of her work, Mina wrestled with her conscience and her obligations. Should she continue down this path, fully knowing the potential consequences? Not robot vs. Zionist, but little deadly robots against all humans. Or should she destroy all her research, before it falls into the wrong hands? Such as the hyper-warlike, white settler colonialist demonic, racist Zionistical Israelites. In the end, Mina made a choice that would shape the course of history. She resolved to use her knowledge for the greater good, to ensure that her nanobots would be a force for healing rather than harm. But even as she vowed to control her creations, she knew that the true challenge lay in controlling herself. For in the world of nanotechnology, the line between creator and creation was a perilously thin one, and only time would tell where it would lead. 

In the proxy wars and cold wars, and hot wars man kills man over identity. In the world of artificial intelligence, in the world of tiny deadly robots: all humans were the nemesis, no discrimination as per faction.