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=> Pride In Humiliation

Posted by farid (Guest) - Friday, October 17 2003, 18:27:31 (EDT)
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Being a Christian Assyrian is conditioned on humiliation and shame and then overcompensation for it...not on any kind of pride. Even without looking too closely at what Christian Assyrians do in the name of this pride of theirs, just their words about themselves tip you off. There's the, "we're so happy to be Christian now" business. What other person from which ancient ethnic group he or she tries so damn hard to maintain there is a connection with is so pleased to say, "I don't follow those gods or that culture any longer but rather those of the enemies of my people." What is it besides a mark of shame to say we ran to another god...a Jewish one and since then we've suffered all manner of deprivation and cruelty by REFUSING to run from that one? And...that we ran from a god under whose guidance anyone but a lamebrained Christian would have to admit our greatest achievements came through to the arms of one who promised to get us killed off and followed through on it too??

Assyrian pride, in action...is mounted atop a pedestal in San Francisco since 1988. It could have been raised again in Chicago and then Detroit but shame kicked in...and humiliation. What else drives our Christians to fight and oppose something that has nothing Christian about it or might shine a light on their condition? A weepy-eyed Virgin Mary or a Jesus shot through with bullets would have been to their liking...some suppliant on his or her knees imploring a Jew is more their style. And that ISN'T humiliating for an Assyrian...descended from Ashur?

No matter which way you turn...how you squint and squirm...what tons of things you fail to see...there's no way to get around the sneaking suspicion that Humiliation and Shame IS Christian Assyrian pride...that they derive their "good feelings" from recounting their sufferings and sacrifices and exposing their wounds and begging and making wild ass-claims they know will only be spurned and scorned...and when all else fails, to cap it off by turning on each other and turning on their neighbors to make sure their children have cause to weep and wail for another 100 years to protect the Franchise and keep the copyright.

What have these leaders of ours done but work against any kind of Assyrian pride...calling Assyrian what is Christian to disguise their real efforts and goals. What would it have cost Nimrod or Jackie or Narsai and Golani to stand aside and allow the Shumirum to be installed? Why is a white American doing it? Why did each and every one of them have to see to it that this monument either served their own interests or no one's...because maybe by serving others...it might diminish their personal status at the same time it raised our children's? Who thought about all of our children growing up everywhere but in BetNahrain who have plenty of contemporary art to look at...made by everyone except Assyrians...because Assyrians might mis-use the color purple, for instance and have to be admonished and taught "manners" by ZOWAA...whose color purple is...so that people might be excused for thinking we're dead and gone...or only "survive" mouldering away in museum cases?

I wouldn't kiss any of their considerable arses...something a "proud" and therefore "well-mannered" Assyrian is expected to do because that's what THEY do. I expected them to let me make the sculpture...to trust that I knew what I was doing and not bother themselves about what I said and wrote or try to impose their dictates over what sculpture is and isn't...just as if we were living in a Democracy or understood what it meant...considerably more than plastering the word on every fascistic, heathen political passle of opportunists we come up with.

But no. It couldn't be. Since I don't conform to the Christian model...I'm out. Those Winged Dogs in Turlock...and the papier mache reproductions in Ceres and Chicago and those three pots Jackie gave you all in San Jose...those will have to do for us because those ARE embarrassing...nothing to feel any pride over and that's exactly how they see this Heritage and it's what all their "efforts" on behalf of it go to. My crime was NOT being an embarrassment...except to Christians. Narsai is just the latest one to fall for it...the last one worth anything, holding out...and me, I'm the one who brought him back into the fold 20 years ago. I wish I'd never done it.

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