Christmas for pessimists – #INA

As a baby rising up within the Eighties in Washington, DC, Christmas was a time when the same old monotony of my Catholic faculty existence gave strategy to an indescribable magic. It was not a lot the presents because the sense that actuality had been quickly suspended and changed by one thing much more invigorating – which I suppose is a part of the rationale I insisted on believing in Santa Claus till I used to be 10 years previous.

In fact, mine was a comparatively privileged childhood in america capital, an imperial headquarters that continues to today to embody the racism and socioeconomic inequality that governs life within the so-called “land of the free.” Whereas I knew vaguely of such home points rising up, I knew even much less of my nation’s contributions to world struggling; in my start yr of 1982, for instance, Washington had greenlit the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that killed tens of 1000’s of individuals.

Nearer to dwelling, the last decade of the Eighties was characterised by US backing for mass right-wing slaughter in Central America, all within the noble pursuit of creating the world secure for capitalism. That the tedium of Catholic faculty was my best earthly grievance meant that I used to be doing significantly better than an entire lot of parents – one thing that turned even clearer after I deserted the US in 2003, on the age of 21, in favour of an itinerant way of life that introduced me into contact with the fallout of US misdeeds from Colombia to Vietnam.

I’m now 42, and I didn’t have excessive hopes for Christmas when in mid-December I flew from Mexico to DC, the place my mother and father had returned to stay – following their very own prolonged stretch overseas – shortly earlier than my father’s loss of life final yr. This yr, it was not simply my dad’s absence that appeared to preemptively put a damper on festivities. The potential for indescribable magic would appear to have been pretty soundly obliterated by the dismal terrestrial state of affairs and the US-backed Israeli genocide that continues to rage within the Gaza Strip, the place nearly your entire inhabitants has been forcibly displaced.

In the meantime, America’s conversion of Christmas into a large visitors jam of Amazon supply vehicles merely drives dwelling the all-consuming presence of apocalyptic capitalism and the discount of humanity to an infinite soul-sucking collection of financial transactions.

And but, mockingly, my first inkling of vacation cheer right here in DC was triggered by simply such a transaction-based interplay, when a Sudanese driver working for the ride-share firm my mom makes use of gave me a hug.

Hailing from the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, the person – we’ll name him Alsafi – had registered his enthusiasm on the sight of my “Free Palestine” sweatshirt when he arrived to choose me up. Additionally 42, he had labored as a human rights lawyer in Sudan – itself no stranger to systematic killing and mass compelled displacement – previous to fleeing the nation in 2013 after one too many arrest-and-torture classes.

Upon attending to america, nonetheless, Alsafi had decided that the American dream was by no means what it was cracked as much as be. Not solely did he repeatedly discover himself on the receiving finish of overtly racist comportment, he had additionally rapidly bored with the oppressive consumerism that has turn out to be an alternative to life itself. He, too, was now plotting his exit from the nation. Evidently, we had a lot to speak about.

Days earlier than Christmas, Alsafi invited me to dinner at a lowkey Ethiopian restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, simply throughout the bridge from DC. I had spent a month in Ethiopia in 2016; Alsafi had spent a number of months there in 2013 in between fleeing Sudan and relocating to america. Over Ethiopian Habesha beer and injera bearing mounds of lentils and collard greens, I heard among the particulars of Alsafi’s Sudanese carceral experiences.

Throughout one in every of his detentions, he was blindfolded and overwhelmed whereas his torturers repeatedly commanded him to maneuver to the nook of the room. He stumbled round in the hunt for the nook, to no avail. “It was humorous,” he remarked to me with a real snort. “Once they took the blindfold off, I noticed there have been no corners within the room in any case. It was spherical.”

Alsafi was not a fan of driving, however needed to put in lengthy hours with a purpose to help his household in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, the place they’d sought refuge from Sudan’s ongoing violence. On the drive again to my mom’s place in DC, he identified key landmarks in a geography he by now knew much better than I: the Pentagon constructing, the Watergate lodge, the patch of tents housing homeless individuals whom Alsafi knowledgeable me had additionally been forcibly displaced within the curiosity of “safety” when in July Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had descended upon the US capital to make the case for genocide.

There was one thing paradoxically uplifting about our shared pessimism, and the night ended with one other hug in entrance of my mother’s condominium constructing – the foyer of which now hosted a big Christmas tree and an ever-multiplying heap of Amazon supply bins. Alsafi went on his approach, and I used to be left with the reminder that even in capitalist-conquered society there are nonetheless people on the market – which could simply be as magical because it will get.

The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.