Prince and Comedy
Gailan Karim – Activist
Part one
In the place where the revolution is silenced, only the ash remains. In the midst of that silencing, nothing other than comedy emerges, and everything turns into a laugh. A laugh in which we must all be equal. If crying is in itself a true report of the pain and suffering of humans, here is the final part of the past then it turns into something that brings everyone into a laugh. We laugh at everything: at revolution, at blood, at sacrifice, at Anfal and chemical bombing, at all those things that reek of the past.
The revolution and all the days of the revolution were a bitter and painful part of the past, a past that had no strength to enter the future. What enters into the future is only comedy.
In this atmosphere, the prince appears as a disqualified child, tongue-tied, inexperienced, and without a past. He has everything; he is everyone, palace and wealth, bank and court and law, university and science and literature. A father sits calmly behind him, waiting chewing gum, in the name of all revolutions and their representatives, watching. The Daddy has bought all of the past into that circus to this moment and has satisfied everyone before the hand of justice and struggle. We have all sold our past to the president, and with our own hands have walked out.
The prince arrives and for the first time speaks about the new world atop the red carpet how the world appears in his eyes and how a person finds complete comfort here. A lucky prince with two long ears that we all can clearly see, except he is unaware of them. In his dream at night, he sees himself happily lying sideways on the red carpet. In that intoxicating and sweet circus, old men and worldly figures come, one after another kissing his dirty hands.
He speaks and we all laugh at him. In fact he doesn’t know how to speak the language of the people. His words are entirely broken and come out poorly. He speaks a language that the poor and miserable don’t understand. His generation assumes it’s the language of their ancestors, and afterward, everyone starts speaking in his tongue, the real, organic language fades away slowly.
The prince never feels nervous, because the elders of the revolution, those who stood with his father, laid out the red carpet for him and applaud. Their task is the same one they performed for grandfather and father, and they know that nothing here is an obstacle to completing the performance. Their work passes with success.
The appearance of the prince, based on a historical principle which past generations have experienced and the new generation has yet to reach, is a natural emergence and his natural right. Here, behind him, we write the future.