It takes a village to raise an idiot
Don’t travel to Egypt now; Always have your passport with you, they warned me, the Attorney General, Keith Allison, isn’t he your friend? We don’t know what Trump would do!” They advise me every day. The morning news is a constant stream of Trump’s latest vanity affair, his administration’s reckless policies, impulsive decisions, and juvenile political maneuvers, becoming a new art form.One day, it’s the deportation of student protestors speaking out against genocide in Gaza and praising Pro-genocide protestors as patriotic. The next is tariffs imposed at random products and countries. Entertaining renaming the Gulf of Mexico, seizing control of the Panama Canal, occupying Greenland, and—just for good measure—sharing our military strategy for attacking Yemen with the media; another form of Trump’s transparent who gives a f**c policy, while Biden secretly shared them with our allies, and Obama the champion of democracy and the political Ayatollah of liberals, as Aljazeera explained in his secrete “Kill lists” was “Barack Obama’s blind spot He opposes the death penalty in the US, after lengthy trials, but issued kill orders for Muslims overseas with no trial at all.” Another form of American fatwa. I am interrogated by friends and foes alike; their looks at the coffee shops are full of sympathy and suspicion. My friends want to make sure I’m grateful that Biden’s Genocide plans were discreet, and my foes want complete loyalty and submission to the new king. The question came at the coffee shop from an old friend who I hadn’t seen for years, a blond James Dean-looking 70-year-old man, a conservative republican lawyer with a knack for nonsensical conservation and a racy sports convertible cars with a personalized PRO_POLICE license plate: “ It got me off a speedy ticket” he bragged once. At the coffee shop, he asked me, -What do you think of Trump? with a mockery smile. Well, before I delve into this and tell you what I think of Trump. I already spent four years talking about him in his first term. let me tell you a story about Rafat, the village idiot. He sat down with a curious interest. I was born in a small village in the heart of the delta, people’s interest in the outside world didn’t exceed the village corn fields, a place with one street, one mosque, one school, one river, and one idiot his name was Rafat; and ever since no mother in the village dared name their loved ones Rafat, it takes a village to raise an idiot. Rafat a darker man with a well-built body, with unshaved face, and unkempt hair, in his 30’s. 40’s, or even 50’s, hard to tell, he had no ID or anyone to give an alibi for the day he was born. Rafat was a stranger, an outsider; he was morally and politically neutral, a modern man who somehow belonged to everyone and anyone, a non-threatening fellow. He had no known family or place to live, yet he was as much a part of the village as the call to prayer or the animal morning walk to the farm. He was protected by his idiocy and his enigmatic life, reflected everyone’s hidden self or secret. Village leaders feared his brutal honesty and the poor envied his careless free spirit. Rafat showed up at weddings, funerals, and any social public celebrations he was given his space, welcomed in our kitchen where the mothers and daughters of villages were preparing meals, he was fed; at and during local celebrations, he was a spectacle, a spokesman for the uninvited, and a folk hero for unprivileged. Everyone, and then, you see the village’s Children tormenting him, chasing him out of the village through the dusty roads, where dogs looked on in disbelief. Adults tolerated him, dismissing his outbursts when he ranted about the village’s tangled web of, moral depravities, corruption, and secrets. In a village like ours, everyone had a story, and every story had a secret for Rafat to spill, saying out loud what everyone whispered in dark rooms behind closed doors, Rafat was indiscriminate with brutal honesty, which made him safe and his tails were the talk of the town; however, his stories melted away like morning dews, making room for new tails. Rafat became a village myth and folk hero, where villagers blamed and contributed lots of stories to him, things he had never said or done. Refat cleansed and mudded the village’s morality fabrics and formed their collective memories. Refat was tolerated by the villagers for his venerability and powerlessness. However, he was a mirror of the village’s vices and values, reflecting uncomfortable truths. It takes a village to raise an idiot, but the real tragedy? Unlike the old days when people in the village could ignore their fools, in modern days, we don’t have that luxury.
Ahmed Tharwat
Host and Producer of Arab American TV show BelAhdan
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Contacts: ahmediatv@gmail.com
