Bait Khalaty, more than a novel
“Bait Khalaty” is a novel written by the Iraqi writer Ahmed Khairi Alomari. First of all, I would like to translate the word “Bait Khalaty” which literally means “my aunt’s home”. However, for every Syrian citizen, it means only one thing which is the prison of the Syrian regime. Then, when Syrian people say that someone went to his/her aunt’s home, this means that s/he was arrested by Syrian security forces and nobody can know where they might be or when they will be set free.
The novel’s events take place between Germany and Syria. The writer put the Syrian war as a background and as a compass that drives the whole story. The hero of the novel is a Syrian refugee living in Germany like millions of Syrian people who were immigrated and arrived in each corner around the world.
The testimonies that were narrated by witnesses and guest speakers within the novel tell a lot about the Syrian tragedy and the truth inside the Syrian prisons, security offices and intelligence slaughterhouses. The writer employs Yazan, the main character in the novel, to comment on the events of the testimonies from a psychological perspective. Yazan is an excited psychiatrist who analyzes everything around him and tries to give it a logical conclusion. He also criticizes the Syrian society and clarifies some inquiries in the minds of readers. Yazan is depicted by the writer as an intelligent person who has been discriminated against by his relatives for being from another city in Syria, not from Damascus. If someone comes from Damascus, he feels that he is more superior to other people who come from Damascus countryside or other cities.
For instance, if a Syrian guy is from Damascus countryside, he dares not to tell other Damascene people that he comes from that place. He will necessarily say that he comes from Damascus city, in particular from the area that lies inside Damascus Wall and its seven gates. The novel focuses on these layers of discrimination and highlights these stigmas to depict things behind the scene and show at least a reason behind the Syrian revolution either it succeeds or fails. It also sheds light on the story of refugees and their suffering when one of the people around them is arrested. In other words, the impact of PTSD lasts for years and may lead at the end to committing suicide.
Moreover, the writer describes the social structure, hierarchy, territorialism, sectarianism, regionalism and inferiorities in many horizontal and vertical axes. The description is amazingly true and on point. The Syrian revolution has uncovered these weaknesses and fragmentation in our communities and opened the way for people to express themselves and talk about these shameful social ties that destroy Syrian society by giving it a fake appearance that shows how Syrian people live with harmony and matchless homogeneity. The Syrian regime has changed the social structure and the psychological aspects of Syrian people the way that they will never look at things as they used to before 2011.
Back to the novel, this work should not be called a novel because it gives the events included less credibility and validation at the time Syrian people need this very much. Syrian people are still gathering evidence on the crimes of Syrian regime although these crimes do not need evidence after immigrating 15 million people inside and outside Syria. However, in this strange world we live in and in the presence of complex systems, international courts and organizations, in particular the United Nations, we need more evidence on the inhuman role of Syrian people. The dehumanization of Syrian people is fair enough to know that what they experience is beyond description. The differences in concepts, perspectives and viewpoints have made such a criminal insist on his doings and irresponsibly renounce what he does. The most catastrophic moment is when we find that some Syrian people are very supportive to this tyranny. These either paid or blind testimonies of Syrian regime supporters stab Syrian people and diminish their dreams forever. Do people around the world think that Syrian people are not strong enough to get rid of this regime? Or do they know very well the cruelty of this regime? Or do they care at all?
For that, “Bait Khalaty” should not be a novel. Rather, it should be a historical fact that is translated into tens of languages and disseminated in every corner of this world. The subject of suicide is one of the most complicated social phenomena that emerged after the Syrian revolution. The novel takes this case as a main event to discuss the PTSD mental condition. Suicides show the disorders of societies, deficiencies in structures and fragmentation in social relationships. Committing suicide is an alarm saying that society is on the cliff of hell and mass destruction. Why do people commit suicide? What is the motif of suicide in a context like the one of Syrian society, where religion is one of the most powerful institutions? Religion has also been part of the mask of Syrian regime. It has used it for centuries to control people. Syrian people use religion to control their sons and daughters and keep the structure of Syrian people very strong, however too fragile and unsteady even if it lasts forever. When the structure is built on a twisting construction, it will fall one day. Religion is not built without clarity and awareness.
With the novel’s events or in real life, the testimonies of former detainees were more than horrible. After they fled Syria, they had the courage to tell their stories using their real names or using pseudonyms. They were filmed to tell people what happened with them in the military prisons and how they were treated by detainers, doctors, nurses or volunteers who came to help the Syrian regime kill its people. When someone reads the testimonies of people, s/he will be immersed by every detail of the story. The reader will feel that another world of hell is taking place somewhere and the human mind is not able to imagine what is going on there. The psychological pressure, insult, dehumanization and dignity robbing are beyond imagination and reality. These things do not happen anywhere except in Syria. The second holocaust takes place only in Syria and will never be repeated with the same level of ugliness except in Syria.
Those former detainees have become refugees and asylum seekers somewhere in this world. The stories they bear in their minds are a daily nightmare. They attack them every night and sweep their comfort to awake their anxiety, fear and distress. Despair is always present but if it develops hopelessly, death will be ready to take the refugee to another life, that is far from here and maybe quiet. When sounds become loud inside us, when the brain does not stop thinking about fears and horror, life becomes a burden, in particular when no one is listening to people’s voice.
Social boundaries can be built not only because of the cultural backgrounds of people on both sides of boundaries, rather they can already exist in the minds of people. When people, in other words, are unable to talk because they are carried with mountains of pains, memories, events and post-traumatic stress disorder, life becomes like a jail and walls are like hedges. This means that life becomes much darker and the horizon becomes totally blocked. How can a refugee migrant build a social relationship with the host community in the absence of the ear that listens directly to his inner voices?
Refugee migrants who survived a savage war like the Syrian war feel certainly guilty about what happened to those prisoners, civilians, women and children who were exposed to bombardment, merciless torture, assassination and killing in the Syrian regime prisons. This will result in seeing the world differently because they were partners in one way or another in committing these crimes or at least seeing them in reality. This puts Syrian refugees under two ways: the first one focuses on their stance for the Syrian revolution if they are either supporters or proponents, if they actively work for making the revolution achieve its goals or if they work against revolutionists who were entrapped by the Syrian regime, extremism, militant groups and for sure the ramifications of civil war.
