Bombs and Facebook Updates

A month ago, a bomb exploded in downtown Ankara only blocks from where my brother works. I woke up to a few updates in my newsfeed, mostly from my Turkish friends. Saw the picture of where it had happened, lost my breath. A very scary call to make. He seemed less anxious than I was. “We’re alive. For today,” he said with a dry laugh. Forced humor used as armor, something I’m very used to having grown up in Turkey. In the 90’s, mom wouldn’t let me go to the movies, as movie theatres were a common target for suicide bombers. I’d laugh in her face every single time.

I am in the midst of directing the West Coast premiere of Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s I Call My Brothers for Crowded Fire Theater Company in San Francisco. In the play, a car bomb goes off. This act of violence throws Amor, a confused Arab-American man, into a spiral of paranoia and shame. As attacks continue to take innocent lives all over the world — France, Turkey, Lebanon, Belgium, Nigeria, Pakistan — it’s been hard not to feel like I’m living inside Amor’s head.

This was my Facebook status update after the Paris bombings in November, 2015. These 10 words took me 2.5 hours to get out. But why, you ask? First, there is the shock. So many lives cut short. So many families broken. A paralyzing anger settles in quickly. You stare at the Guardian headline for a good while, not reading. You just breathe and try to prepare for what’s to come.

Then there is the time spent trying to get the facts, whispering under your breath “Please don’t let them be Muslim. Please don’t let them be Muslim.” Once it is confirmed that they are, there is the time to let the social media shitstorm wash over you. The innocent updates like the simple “Je Suis Paris!” images, and “I’m with France.” notes. Then the French flags appear all over social media. Then you remember all of the bombings in Turkey over the last year, and that no one felt compelled to do any of this. Then appear the coded words (“these people”) and the not-so-coded words like (“Why are Muslims so violent?”). The ones that swiftly remind you that even for your friends, you are nowhere near that undisputed, acceptable, and safe center of the mainstream. Then starts the shame-brigade, writing passionate updates about the bombing in Lebanon that had happened only a week ago. Why was that not covered? Where was the outrage? Valid questions. Then you remember that you didn’t post about the Beirut bombings, either. You saw the news, yes, and decided that you couldn’t let that violence enter your psyche. You took full advantage of this luxury as a man living in the West. Then you feel doubly guilty about it all.

You imagine people waiting for your update. As an artist who is publicly making work about and representing Middle Easterners and Muslims, you feel people are watching. Then you think it’s in your head, nobody actually cares. You watch other people in the community write status updates that twist them into knots to seem appropriately outraged, but also even-handed. You cringe. You feel everyone can tell that you still haven’t responded. What does that say about you?

Time to write an update. You want to honor the dead, but which dead? Just Paris? No. All of them? How far back do you go? Just as you are about to implode, you run into an update from a much smarter Evren: Evren Savci who teaches as University of San Francisco: “Silvan. Beirut. And now Paris.” Deep breath. Three cities that suffered in a row, and the subtle “And now” puts them all in historical context. Paris is not the only one, or the most important. It’s the latest. But you want to add something about how you’re feeling. But how are you feeling? Disgusted? Confused? Angry? Yes. Angry. But against whom? The brutal idiots who committed this heinous act. Yes. But also the brutal war machine funded by us that created these idiots and their puppet masters. You sit for a minute. Helpless. Yes. Helpless is the word. You type the words out, stare at them for another 10 minutes, and hit Post.

Not surprisingly, there is no sense of accomplishment about this update. You think about what it is that you want out of this. Sadly, the thing you want is simple: You want to be the type of person that can easily get outraged, type “My thoughts are with Paris,” and move on. And you want these psychopathic idiots to stop killing people for money, power, and misplaced rage. And the world to stop telling you that it was done in your name. You want this horrible act of violence to have nothing to do with you. Because it doesn’t.

An hour after you post your status update, you see this one from Shoresh Alaudini, the actor who plays Amor in I Call My Brothers.

And you think to yourself… Fuck, I should have gone with that!