A Journey Around the Arab-Spring Revolutions: The Quest for Freedom, Dignity and Democracy

By Tarif Youssef-Agha

This book will take you on a Stunning Journey around the Arab Spring countries and tell you the stories of their Revolutions, all through the eyes of a Syrian poet who lived his youth there. He is anti dictatorship and pro democracy; that is why his writings are full of Fury and Power, Metaphor and Wit, but also Confidence and Hope. This book, simply, is a Poetic Chronicle of the Arab Spring Revolutions.
Visit his bilingual website @
http://sites.google.com/site/tarifspoetry

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781503516571

Tarif Youssef-Agha

Tarif was born in Damascus, Syria in 1957. He started writing short stories and articles in his early years of elementary school and free style poetry in his college years.He earned 2 BS degrees in Engineering and Literature from Damascus University.After a number of encounters with the brutal Syrian dictatorship regime, he decided that Syria was not a safe country to live in. He moved to the U.S. in the Eighties and restarted his life from scratch.He organized several poetry recital events in Houston in the years 2009 and 2010, glorifying the civilization, history and culture of his nation. As soon as the Arab Spring revolutions started late 2010, he instantly moved to their side one after one and step by step with his writings; he published 3 books in poetry and one book in short stories documenting them.In 2018, he published his 5th book ‘Hearts, Tears and the Journey of Life’ that contains collective poems of Love, Lamenting and Meditation.Seeing how the young generation was being attacked by a new kind of enemy, he took it upon himself to write this book. He is blowing the whistle on cell-phone addiction to draw attention to the underestimated danger it is going to create. On the other hand, he is opening doors for solutions. To him, giving up should NOT be an option.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Tarif Youssef-Agha.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/02/2014

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

636376

Contents

1. Dedication

2. The Translation Editor’s Note

3. The Author’s Introduction

4. My Two Letters to the Syrian Ambassador in Washington DC

5. The Poems

a. The General Poems

b. Tunisia

c. Egypt

d. Yemen

e. Libya

f. Syria

i. The First Year

ii. The Second Year

iii. The Third Year

iv. The Fourth Year

6. Conclusion

7. The Author at a Glance

8. The Arabic Materials

Dedication

I have dedicated these poems to the martyrs of the Arab Spring revolutions who fell in their quest for freedom, dignity, and democracy.

The Author

Houston, Texas

Attachment%20%23%204%2cThe%20author%20demonstrating%20in%20Houston%20TX.jpgPage%209%20giant-33503__180.png

The Translation Editor’s Note

I have known Tarif since the early ’90s and have watched him grow and evolve into a family man, business owner and operator, and my friend. In this collection of his works, you will feel the passion he has for his ancestral homeland, Syria, and his fellow citizens. You will also feel the grief and sorrow he endures about his new homeland (US) and its allies as they sit idly by speaking nice words but performing no deeds to aid the Syrian people in throwing off the tyranny of the Assad regime.

A David is again standing against a Goliath. With a pen as his sword and these writings as his shield, he is doing what is in his power to preserve, defend, and protect his ancestral people and to slay the forces that would hold his people as slaves.

Eyes can see and brains can understand words, but to really understand this book requires that you also process its information with your heart and its passion with your soul. Only then can you live the real experience of the struggle in Syria.

R. B. Welsh Sr.

Page%2011%20chains-19176__180.jpg

The Author’s Introduction

The Arab Spring Revolutions

Why, when, where, and who

There are twenty-two countries in the Middle East which form what is known as the Arab World, and it is almost one and a half times the size of the USA. All of those countries have Arabic as the official language and the majority of its three hundred million citizens follow the faith of Sunni Islam. They are located in Southwest Asia and North Africa, expanding from the Arabian Gulf in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Before the spring of 2011, none of the people of these countries practiced freedom and/or democracy.

The Arabs are very proud of their history as they, in the Middle Ages, ruled over an empire that stretched from the borders of China in the east to Spain in the west. That is beside the civilizations they hosted on their land and the sciences and inventions they introduced to the world in the fields of medicine, physics, chemistry, astronomy, math, philosophy, and poetry. They believe they deserve a better life than what they are having now, under dictatorships.

The Arab History at a Glance

To begin, I need to go back in time to help you to understand why these revolutions happened. Before WWI and for about five centuries, the Arab World was part of the Ottoman Empire. The empire lost that war and also lost its colonies, which moved to the hands of the victors, mostly to the British and French. But after WWII and after the rise of the USA and the Soviet Union as the ultimate two superpowers, the British and French had to free their colonies and go home, ending the old colonial era. The Arab masses were optimistic an era of freedom and democracy, which they never experienced before, was about to start. Unfortunately, their optimism didn’t last long. As soon as they became independent countries, local leaders jumped to fill the power vacuum left by the colonials. Those leaders gave themselves different titles like kings, princes, sultans, presidents, and comrades. Regardless of the different titles they gave themselves, their message to their people was the same, and here it was: Since we have just had independence, we, your beloved leaders, have to protect you from the exterior evil and conspiracies. Freedom and democracy are not good for us now, and we have to impose a state of emergency and rule the country with the military and police. Thank you for your understanding. Sincerely yours.

Therefore, they asked their people to be prepared for long-term hardships and tough times in order to achieve that goal, but also promised to give them freedom, democracy, and prosperity after achieving that goal. About six decades passed without anything. Those leaders not only couldn’t fulfill their pledges, but even two of them lost parts of their homelands to a foreign country, Israel, in the 1967 War; Egypt lost the Sinai Desert and Syria lost the Golan Heights. After that war, the Arab people started to recognize that those leaders were nothing but a bunch of failures, traitors, thieves, and liars. Public protests started to take place in the seventies in Syria, Libya, Egypt, and other places, but were crushed with no mercy by the dictators, while both the East and the West pretended they didn’t see it. After the Soviet Union collapsed and many countries gained their freedom from dictatorship, the Arab masses asked themselves, Why not us too? When the year 2011 started, most of the Arab countries were bankrupt, and the people were suffering from both economic and human-rights hardship. With masses of unemployed and oppressed youth, the mood couldn’t be better for revolution—the Arab Spring that year brought with it the quest for freedom, dignity, and democracy.

The poetry I write and used in this book is classified as free style or poetic prose; it doesn’t follow the known classic rhythms of Arabic poetry. It tells stories, documents events, and colors paintings where the pictures, rhymes, and meanings work side by side to build the poem. It also uses easy language, simple words, and popular proverbs, with a touch of metaphor and wit to do the job.

The Author

My Two Letters to the Syrian Ambassador in Washington DC

My First Letter to the Syrian Ambassador in Washington DC

Syrian Memorial Day, Friday, May 6, 2011

Mr. Imad Moustapha, PhD

Ambassador of the Arab Republic of Syria in Washington DC

Salam.

Regarding the painful events which Syria is going through these days and the blood that is being shed from its unarmed civilians of all ages, please let me remind you of the following. More important than the fact that you represent the Syrian government is that you represent Syrian civilization and history. You represent Syria, which had existed long before any government did and still exists today and will keep existing after the departure of all different governments. You also represent your conscience and the family name you hold as well.

By remembering that, I wish you to fulfill your national, moral, and ethical duty by sending an immediate letter to the president asking him to personally intervene to stop the bloodbath, protect the unarmed civilians, grant them their rights in peaceful demonstration, and give them the reforms they demand and also freedom and dignity.

Mr. Ambassador; I lived through the days of the October War. I was and I am still proud of it, like all the Syrians and Arabs. I even showed that in more than one of my poems. And as a Syrian who has been living abroad for more than a quarter of a century, I was and am still proud of Syrian role in supporting the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance that helped in liberating South Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. I documented that in more than one of my poems as well. Then came my epic poem Syria Talks about Herself, to which I invited you and the embassy staff to attend the recital in Houston last year. The poem in which I glorified Syria from north to south and from east to west, its cities and villages, mountains and valleys, civilization and traditions, history and heroes. Syria did not build its glory on all that only, but also on the freedom and dignity of its sons. Since without freedom and dignity, no country and no people have anything left that deserves to be talked about

From my position as a writer and poet abroad and from my vision as an independent person who does not belong to any political, religious, or even social club, I find it difficult to understand what is going on in our countries. As when the homeland turns into a private company where the elite become millionaires while the majority of the people are swinging around the poverty line, then that is what all dictionaries, languages, and customs call corruption. And when the people demonstrate and protest that and also demand freedom and dignity at the same time, but are faced by live bullets, stepped on by feet, and confronted by tanks, then that is what the same sources call suppression.

And that leads me to a question for which I may need your help to answer.

Can any government fight the enemy, support the resistance, and stop the foreign conspiracies without seeing the corruption flourishing under its eyes and without suppressing its citizens? If that is impossible, then no government should be surprised in case it wakes up one morning to find itself in a confrontation square where it is on one side and the people are on the other.

Excuse me as I did not pay enough attention to the protocols and to the language that the diplomatic letters should use. The scary photos which are arriving from the homeland, together with the countless amount of blood which we see flowing there—all that distracted me from doing so. I do not have a doubt you agree with me that what is going on in our homeland and some other Arabic countries may spread to other parts of the world, and that it is an event that is considered, in all standards a turning point in the history of humanity. Our generation is quite lucky to witness this event, which is not less important than the Slave Rebellion of Rome and the French, Russian, and Iranian Revolutions whose lessons and conclusions are still alive today. But there are always a few people, especially the enlightened ones, who do not believe that it is enough for them to witness that event, but also have enough courage to chisel their names on the list of its makers, so they become a guiding light and a good example for the others. And here I am, with all humbleness, adding my name openly to the list of the people who are demanding to stop the bloodbath that is taking place in our homeland, and asking you to openly add yours, together with all who not only believe that Syria has enough space for all the Syrians, especially those who got tired waiting for the reforms and the fulfillment of the promises, but also want to live in freedom and dignity before anything else. Let us not forget that the free and dignified citizen who does not suffer from corruption around him is a citizen who will be more proud and therefore more capable of fighting the enemy, supporting the resistance, and defeating the foreign conspiracies.

Do you agree with me?

Salam.

Tarif Youssef-Agha

An expatriate Arab Syrian writer and poet

Friday May 6, 2011

Houston, Texas

Note:

A few days after my first letter to Imad Mustapha, the Assad-regime ambassador in Washington DC, on May 6, 2011, regarding the Syrian revolution, I received a phone call from him. He claimed that there was no revolution in Syria, but rather a world conspiracy to destroy his regime, and that the demonstrators were motivated by foreign agendas and that most of what the media was saying was a bunch of lies. He also said that his government was ready to respond positively to some of the demands of the angry protesters, but only after they go back home. He asked me to write another letter showing my vision how to stop the violence and to bring the crisis to a peaceful end, promising that he would forward it to the decision makers in Damascus. After I wrote the letter and before mailing it to him, gruesome news came out: a thirteen-year-old child, Hamza Al-Khateeb, was tortured to death at the hands of the Assad security forces. That horrifying incident convinced me that we were facing a ghoulish regime that had no interest in solving the crisis by peaceful means. Even though I published the letter publicly, I never contacted the ambassador after that.

My Second Letter to the Syrian Ambassador in Washington DC

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Mr. Imad Mustapha, PhD

Ambassador of the Arab Republic of Syria in Washington DC

Salam.

Allow me first to thank you in regard to your phone call to me, Thursday, May 26, 2011, which came as a response to my letter to you on Syrian Memorial Day three weeks ago. I will respond to your call in this public letter as I believe in the valuable Arabic poetry verse which says,

"The spoken words are impossible to last,

Only the ones in writing do."

Mr. Ambassador.

Unfortunately, nothing has happened in Syria during the last few weeks except increasing the number of those who were killed and shedding more of the Syrian blood by Syrian hands. That was exactly the contrary of what I wished in my mentioned letter, and also of what I wished