- This piece is published on the “Al-Hal Net” website after winning the Al-Hal Award for Journalistic Creativity – Satirical Article category (second place), by Iraqi journalist Alaa Koli. (This material is exclusive to Al-Hal Foundation, and publishing or quoting any part of it is prohibited without first contacting the foundation and obtaining permission.)
Friends sit in a café talking about their past achievements and laughing, then they curse everyone who wasted those beautiful days they once lived through. After that, they trade insults among themselves and curse the café owner for no reason, then leave.
A father walks with his little son, talking to himself and cursing his old friends who forgot to take him with them on their last pleasure trip. Then he looks at his son and goes back to cursing everyone, until he even curses himself.
The little boy goes on cursing his brothers for the frightening prank they played on him weeks ago. He still trembles whenever he looks in the mirror or at his brothers. They taught him how curses can turn him into another person, one filled with spite and hatred.
A madman sits beside a foolish woman at the main street intersections, and the two begin cursing passersby, car owners, and people on their way to work every day.
That old beggar at the traffic light studies the faces of people and the owners of luxury cars, then curses them with all the resolve he can muster. But he quickly calms down when that beautiful woman in her thirties passes by him smiling. He returns her smile for a few seconds, then goes back to cursing everyone who passes by.
The cleric sits in the pulpit speaking about morality, tolerance, and renouncing hatred. When his moral lecture ends, he begins cursing the people who did not come to his gathering, or those who left early, because he was unable to deliver a proper lecture addressing their problems and the moral troubles of people who changed after assuming senior positions.
A sycophantic journalist speaks to the official with perfect politeness and courtesy, and sometimes a cheap perfume seems to waft from his words. After he finishes speaking, he starts cursing until he grows bored, then asks his master how he can stop. The master replies that he must curse more, because there is a global conspiracy against his project of deepening hatred among the people so that he may remain evergreen, seated on the chair of siphoning and theft.
On the bus, a man with an air of dignity sits beside another man with calm features. The first man starts cursing someone from more than a thousand years ago. Then the calm man notices him and erupts into cursing another person from more than a thousand years ago as well. After that, they exchange insults, and no one intervenes in the historical conflict between the two men.
I know a drunken man who sits every day in front of his house. He harms no one, but the neighborhood children harass him and throw stones at him. He confronts them with the foulest curses, just as a minor government official curses all the officials who have risen above him in rank.
I used to sit near our house and hear my neighbor cursing our other neighbor over some minor disagreements. I even happened to hear that other neighbor cursing me without pause, cursing me in front of the entire neighborhood. So the next day I sat down and cursed everyone.
On the other side of the world, two lovers infatuated with each other sit together. At first glance I thought they were flirting, but then I heard them cursing everyone without stopping. They were inventing new insults; they even cursed each other. I thought I was dreaming. I went to wash my face and head only to discover that what was happening was merely a faded dream, but the truth was shocking.
Days later, I found an employee bloated with taxes and paperwork reading out customers’ names and then cursing them. Her colleague suggests that she curse alphabetically: if the customer’s name is unsuitable, she delivers a long list of insults over the loudspeaker; but if it is a prominent name, she settles for mild insults that do not harm the psychological state of that beautiful customer.
In the market, people trade insults with one another. In the café, everyone started cursing each other, then laughing. I went to the doctor to have my ear cleaned because I felt there was something wrong with my head or my ear. The doctor laughed and started cursing too. I sat to one side and asked him to tell me why everyone curses and smiles.
He did not answer me. I asked him whether there was some grave defect in my head that I should treat, or whether I should rip off my head or my ear, or try to put a medical bandage over it and seal it completely, just as any commercial project on which the state lost billions is shut down and dismissed as a worthless losing project.
Before I left, he gave me a new curse and said: go to the pharmacy, you son of a—, go and bring me the medicine. I had to wait a long time, and I could hear the pharmacist cursing the customers standing near the pharmacy door.
Before I went in, he was handing out insults so crudely that I felt something was wrong, but no one noticed. Even the little children and the beautiful teenage girls passing through the market were laughing and hurling obscene insults.
I went back to the doctor and told him that I had to leave his clinic able to understand what was happening. Why was everyone cursing without any reaction from anyone? He told me that the authorities had decided to replace greetings with curses, because we do not deserve to offer greetings while we are drowning in vice and corruption, on the grounds that a beautiful greeting in an age of ruin is also corruption.
The Council of Experts on Curses, a new council comprising the finest cursers, proposed that cursing take this form in order to reinforce the values of hatred and reckless discourse, because everyone had lost control in the face of corruption. So the authorities decided that everyone should participate in this corruption, and the beginning was the project of curses.
I laughed a lot, then left the clinic laughing, and I laugh whenever I hear a curse pass through my ear… I laugh meaninglessly. I returned home filled with dust, curses, and laughter too.
