Category: Housekeeping

The most striking and most incredible call to prayer in Cairo is from Masjid Al-Rahman in Zamalek.

Voice. Timbre. Expression. Emotion. Technique.

Stopped me dead in my tracks last night.

This is the English version of the previous blog post.

(My friend’s original Facebook post, which prompted this essay [my own translation])

I’m studying right now and we’re all supposed to go out to look for interneships. Being naive and in my little bubble, I thought that everyone will get a fair shot in the job market. However, it seems like some of my classmates, with an ethnic background outside of Europe, are finding it difficult to get an internship. I didn’t know that the barrier to entry was so high.

All I had to do was to make a couple of phone calls. I was successful on my second call, contracts were signed, and it was all done.

A 20-year old Syrian guy, who came here in 2015, with a science degree has not been able to get a place after having applied to 40 companies. He has a spotless attendance record at the vocational college and good grades. He has a driving license and lots of strong references. I helped him get a summer job and he never missed a day’s work, didn’t even come in late once. He’s had perfect attendance at that job.

It is said that everything is just given to you on a silver platter in Sweden. You get all the tools and so on, but my God some have to really fight in order to get a seat at the table. That guy must be so strong.

It wasn’t a day too late to start studying again. However, I’ve learned more about humanity than automation at the end of the day.

The post above is alluding to the narrative in Sweden that “all it takes” is getting a job and learning the language. If you get these done, then the doors to Sweden are opened to you, with everything becoming available to you.

I find myself today in a limbo land, between being an adult “nysvensk” (Swedish by assimilation) and a child of first-generation economic migrants. I have been a Swedish citizen since 1996, but I don’t have the social network that most Swedes have developed since children. I never went to kindergarten here.

But when I moved back here 6 years ago, I bought this narrative wholesale, this opiate of the massases. I re-acquired the language and immersed myself in idioms. I got a job. Guess what? I wasn’t swept up in an hurricane of friends and social capital, as is told by society, despite doing everything they told me to do and taking all suggestions. 2 years ago, I decided to study full-time and change paths. I wanted to get a non-tech job, a service job like many people here. It didn’t happen. I couldn’t even get a job in hemtjänst. All doors were closed.

After a lot of reflection, I realized that I had developed an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Where are my friends, dude?! Where is my payout, man?! Why am I not getting what I was supposed to get?! I have done everything…

The reality is that this is not how it works in Sweden. It doesn’t matter at all what you have done or accomplished. You don’t deserve shit. No one owes you shit. The only thing that has happened by getting a job and learning the job is that you have joined the fold. You have become a lemming like everyone else.

Do you want more here? Fight. Work harder. Build your own capital. But don’t expect anything of someone else, society, or the state. Are there obstacles? Become creative and get around them.

Stop complaining, Mina. No one gives a shit. The state doesn’t care. Plug in your AirPods and swipe through the void, like everyone else.

The reality is also as follows:

1. It does matter if you have a non-European name.

2. It does matter if you have dark complexion.

3. It does matter that most Swedes – regardless of ethnicity or cultural background – don’t want to make new friends or let new people into their social circles.

4. It does matter if you came here older, with no contacts, and don’t have your social network fully formed by 18 years old.

Do you have a job? Be fucking grateful and shut the fuck up.

Do you want to do something else? We can’t help you. There are others in more need of help than you. You have a job. Shut the fuck up.

Do you know someone who can get you a job? “No…” Then, shut the fuck up.

You may hear at some point in your life that there’s this guy who says that he loves cute women with a great sense of humor, but he actually hooks up with boring gym bunnies. He is neither evil nor a fool. He just lacks self-awareness. His sense of reality has not been tested by actual experience.

This guy is Sweden. Sweden is whistling in the dark, fervently hoping that their claims are true. If not.. well, that’s why we have the state! None of my business…

The narrative is not false because society is lying willfully. Rather, society is not aware of what it believes and whether it is rooted in reality or not. They don’t think about anything. Everything is set up for them. Why think? Why question?

At the bottom of the original Facebook post, the friend attached a photo that can be interpreted that society’s scorning of the young Syrian guy is a symptom of Nazism, that Nazism should be thrown into the garbage. I don’t agree with this conclusion, that the Syrian guy didn’t get a job because Sweden or Swedish society is a Nazi country or one.

I hold that Swedish society does not want to accept that everything is about your name, your appearance, and social capital. Because if Sweden accepts that about itself, then it is no longer “ett bra land” (a common trope in the literature of the Social Democrats). A good country. It is no longer the mecca of modernity. It becomes like all other countries – a flawed country with blindspots. Then, Sweden loses its ideological and moral high ground in the world.

Sweden, you’re in denial. Stop lying to yourself and all of us who moved here, regardless of pretense.

Be honest and tell the truth. Then, we can either choose to stay and accept the insanity or revolt by leaving to live somewhere else.

I had the great privilege to sit and talk music with a friend and fellow musician. He’s a professional performing artist, with a big heart and an astute instinct for music.

We had planned a jam, but it turned into an impromptu guitar lesson since there was only one guitar between us. I played him a blues song I am working on. The way he critiqued the arrangement and my technique gave me a deep insight into his personality and philosophy on music.

He didn’t say it was shit. Even though it was really! He took my focus off the value judgment and helped me looked at the opportunities to improve my technique. He explained the difference between concert (standard) and open chord tuning. And then he showed me why. He tuned down to an open D chord and started to noodle.

It was a sublime, defining moment in my life. I saw the guitar in a completely new way. It was like a new universe opened up to me. No longer was the guitar a jail of chord changes. It was an open meadow of licks, riffs, and droning bass lines. I finally understood how the Delta blues masters were able to create so much with their guitars.

He made it feel like it was possible. It is common to be spoken to in a condescending manner, that you’ll never make it because you don’t have “it”. He did no such thing. He showed me the ropes, what I had to keep in mind, and what I had to work on.

One particular passing comment stuck with me: “It takes years to get to their level… or months if you work hard.” That second part he said with a glint in his eye and a knowing smirk. The comment lit a fire in my belly. I could be like Son House or Robert Johnson if I play and practice every day.

He gave me a place from which to start and something to practice. I had watched YouTube videos on the 12-bar blues, but this made more sense because he placed it with the context of songwriting. It wasn’t just another thing to practice because you’re supposed to. He broke down the 12-bar blues and helped me remember the positions by using the dots on the neck as a reference.

For years, blues guitar and songwriting has felt like some distant alchemy I’ll never figure out. I resigned to the fact that I’ll only write primitive arrangements and compensate with more emotion in my singing. Seems that that is changing now!

Many of my Christian siblings are up in arms this week about The First Temptation of Christ, the satirical comedy on Netflix. I have seen the petition to have it removed, being circulated on social media. And I have seen many express their dissent by cancelling their accounts on the streaming platform. 

Although I haven’t seen the film yet, it seems to be in the same spirit as Jesus Christ Superstar, Life of Brian, Dogma, and The Last Temptation of Christ. 

It won’t be the first. What does this mean? It means that there is an entire cinematic tradition of films mocking Christ or Christianity or the church. The tradition doesn’t seem like it will be upended any time soon. Christians haven’t stopped going to church because of them. Christ hasn’t appeared to avenge himself or punish anyone. And filmmakers haven’t stopped making them. But every now and then, some of us are riled up and feel the need to attack those who make these films.  

I don’t want these films to stop being made and screened. I want to allow them to exist and I won’t personally be boycotting them. My only reaction to this film, or any other, is that which I think is proportional to any work of art that I don’t enjoy or not; I just don’t watch it. And I allow it to live. 

The film is free speech. One definition of freedom of speech is the “right to express opinions without government restraint.” In these precarious times, I would add to that that it is also the right to express opinions without the restraint of others, even if it offends many. We don’t think we’re doing this when we react so strongly to opinions like the film in question, but that is essentially what we’re doing. By withdrawing our economic support for Netflix and boycotting the film, we are saying to ourselves and others, this opinion is so dangerous to me that I want it to be silenced and put to death immediately. It cannot exist anymore. It should not exist. I have decided that this opinion should not exist. All of this is happening because some are offended by this film. Then, what will you do when the next film that mocks Christ, is released? Will you do the same again? You will restrain another opinion just because you are offended by it? 

We seem to be prioritizing people being offended over opinions over art being voiced. The restraint by both government and society, whomever is holding economic or political power, is enough to make all ideas absolutely homogenous or totally forgettable. So, it’s better that we just let opinions exist. Why is it so scary to you that an opinion offends you? Let all opinions live and thrive, and then die when it’s their time to die. But we’re arresting the circle of life of opinions by killing it out with our outrage, our weapon of choice these days. You may then argue, well if I choose to boycott this film, it is also my freedom of speech. But it is surely not an opinion then. You are mobilizing your freedom of speech with action – in this case, outrage. You are not then expressing an opinion, you’re going into action. You are doing something, rather than just saying something. So, when you boycott this film, you are not expressing an opinion. You are just restraining another opinion. 

The film is a work of art. The subject of the work of the art doesn’t invalidate that and I think it’s incredibly dangerous to dismiss art because it offends and mocks, even the most sacred to many people. If we stop to restrain all works of art because they offend you, then soon all art may end up looking the same. 

So you may be thinking, well how about the Charlie Hebdo cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed? I maintain the same line about those, too. Those cartoons are works of art. I didn’t think they were particularly interesting or novel, but they are works of art nonetheless. And they need to be protected. It is important that they are protected because I would want the same standard upheld for me as an artist.  

I see myself as a full human being. I have consciousness and a mind. I have the ability to dream, imagine, day dream, and create. I believe that these faculties are part of me being human. As an Orthodox Christian, God has these in his image, I have received them from being in his likeness. He is the creator and I can be creative like him. I can create from what exists, He can create from void. Void here is absolute nothingness. The closest I can get to this is by writing because something I can’t access with my senses can be moulded into the words you’re seeing on the screen now. So, art seems to be in my very nature as a human being. 

I can create, in the loose sense I have just described, whatever I want. It can be tempered by my beliefs or sensibilities or convictions. But should I remove all of them, I can just bring forth something. Whether it will be effective or not, convincing or not, powerful or not, loved or decried, it’s art. Art will challenge, will make you uncomfortable, will question, will distort maim or mock because the function of art is to see, to first see and then capture it with the medium of choice. Telling someone that what they see offends you is like saying to them your eyes don’t work. No, their eyes work just fine, just like yours. But they see what you don’t see. 

Art should not be subject to your tastes. Art is not moral and should not be moral. The Chinese-Belgian philosopher Han Suyin says that moralists have no place in an art gallery. A few of us are morally outraged by this film and thus want it to be silenced. We seem to be content or indifferent about most other art, as long as it is inert or illustrative or simply aesthetically pleasing. Art can teach or illustrate or be pedagogical. But the art you will remember is the art that jarred you. For me, it’s Saturn Devouring His Son by Goya and Vampire by Munch. Art has to be free of sensibilities, morality, and good taste so that it can see. The minute it is hindered, it is no longer art and it is just a message. art can have a message, but it’s best when it’s just a captured feeling, a vision, a moment.  

So, The First Temptation of Christ is just an opinion, a work of art, and a moment. The creators of the film have created some art that you don’t seem to like or agree with. As artists, they are free to create the art they want. If this moment injures Christ so much, then Christ isn’t the all-powerful son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity that I believe and hold he is. He is then a weak demigod who is perturbed by people. That doesn’t sound like him. 

This then begs two questions. Firstly, what kind of Christ do you believe in? Is he a weak, neurotic demigod, requiring of us tireless and continual defense or else he will visit us with his wrath? Or, is he the Christ that bore our afflictions and suffered, from the day he took flesh?  Christ is being tainted and affronted. But does he need our defense? Did he need it on earth? Does he need it now? The passion of christ on earth wasn’t just on the cross, it was from birth to death carrying all of our infirmities and withstanding all pain until the end. his suffering is over. he is not suffering now. His church is suffering and we are his body. You will argue that someone is attacking the head, so the body is hurting too. I could  concede that, but does that mean that we become like the world and simply fight back with outrage? Is that the only response we have in us these days?

We’re people of the Scriptures. So, let’s look in scripture, in the crucifixion narrative. Christ was mocked. Did he retaliate? 

I couldn’t find anything in the Acts of the Apostles, where the apostles retaliated with their money or outrage because Christ was mocked. There is this one verse though 17: 32, where some mocked the resurrection after Paul was preaching in Athens. What did Paul do? 

He left. He didn’t engage. He moved on.

I challenge you. Find a verse in the entire scriptures where God says, “Defend me [when they insult or mock or make caricatures of me].”

In closing, I won’t be supporting the ban of the film because it is an opinion, a work of art, and Christ will remain Lord and Saviour, no matter how many films are made about him. 

I haven’t been at peace with what I wrote since two friends commented and explained what International Men’s Day was about.

I made a deal with myself yesterday that with whatever I wrote, I wouldn’t retract, delete, or edit it if there would be any kind of response. I would also not change the privacy settings of the post. I would take the flak for anything I wrote – even the flak from Scranton, the resident critic in my head. So, I kept my promise and didn’t do any of that.

Dear Mina,

This is an important year. You are at peace, there’s a warm glow in your heart, and you’re living awake.

You’re strong, resilient, and pliable enough to know now that it’s not about one’s own might.

You’re worthy. And you’re believing in that, one day at a time.

This year you allowed yourself to be known and seen, to be helped and cared for. This is a wealth freely given to you by God. Cherish it.

The last 7 months have been a string of little deaths, the quiet execution of old plans, defenses, and traits. And there is a rumbling in the rubble, an equally quiet emergence of someone you’ll soon to get to know as the hidden you. A Mina that is not the final product, but certainly a first draft of the genuine you. You and I are both the process of writing the draft and living out the draft, one day at a time. We are the daily process.

A lukewarm wind is gliding past your arm. The sun is hot, it’s a calm and unassuming sweat today. It’s just us on this pier. There is some longing in you, for it to have been two. But this moment is enough. And you’re documenting the particular marks of this longing.

The party has come to our street. Let the contentment begin.