Listen to: Peshrev Hidjaz Homayoun – Anouar Brahem.

This post is for the unheard, abused Middle Eastern children who barely make it to human rights statistics as digits and numbers for the world to be appalled by, because really, none of it really matters to their closed-minded fathers. Those statistics won’t change or matter to a father who beats his first grade daughter because she was sick and could not score a full grade on her spelling test until her nose bleeds. It might matter to those who have hearts, who raise their children with love, not fear and dominance. It makes perfect sense that those abusive fathers would support tyrants and dictators killing their people, because they too practice their given right to hit, batter, and harm their children to stop them from harming themselves and living a normal life.

It is quite common that those children grow up to fear love, to rather stay alone on a Saturday night, because growing up they got used to hateful words, beatings with belts, slaps, and sometimes even suffocation by their own father’s demons. And they start to wonder every single day: what is wrong with me, if my own father hates me that much; how could others ever love me. Those hateful, labeling words linger in their minds so much so that they become their bedtime stories, and morning hymns; waking them up to yet another forsaken day of self-doubt and suicidal thoughts.

It might not always be as bad as that. Those abused children might grow up trying to fill the void and cover the wounds inflected by their beloved father in excelling at every single damn thing they could. They try to become so perfect, so clean, so nice to everyone, because they have witnessed and felt so much hate in their lives that they wrap it within themselves and live with the denial that their mind tends to exaggerate those beatings. They are the best campaigns and lovers because they cannot stand arguing, not for a second. But they wander with their thoughts far too much for anyone to notice. They conceal themselves behind bricks of walls and shelter themselves from any dominating male figure.

Some break free early on and live with gratitude for as long as they live, because those abusive fathers change when they are afar. Those fathers become more loving, less physical, more caring, less controlling because their abused children are out of sight.

Those fathers might have been abused as children themselves, and perhaps that is what most of submissive children grow up to be. But those fathers, as good-hearted as they may seem to others are devils and tyrants in their own homes. There can be excuse to the kind of torture they submit their children to every time they please. They cannot bear to see their own children flourish on their own, without any of their useless help. That way, they cannot brag about it, or credit this success to themselves. So they take away that little piece of heaven their children accomplished after so long for their own selfish intentions. Their children can be happy, as long as this state of happiness is due to them, and only them. They are kind in a way, inflecting both joy and pain to their children.

Those children never grow complete. As much as they try or hope to be, they cannot, because they grew without love, without a father figure to look up to, without a home to run to; rather, they grew in a home they wished they would run away from everyday. In fact, sometimes they tried running away, but the destination was always unknown, and they could never confide in anyone because they feared that hand; that scream, that slap, that father.

As they grow, their imaginary friends soon start to fade, and as they feel more alone than ever, they find themselves building a new world where the only population is them. No one to hit them, no one to dictate their dreams, no one to take away their joy, just them alone, whether in a paper, in a drawing, or whichever way their heart pleases, they runaway, only not on the outside, but within.
Soon, this utopia of theirs will be filled with images of their minds they cannot forget, the first time they had a blue eye, the first time they had a twisted arm, how that twisted arm progressed to a broken one, the time a glass cup broke on their heads, and so on.. Till one day they can take this no more, and start self destruction, because really, if their own father never loved them, they should not matter.
God forbid if they ever open their mouths and defend themselves, if they ever try to push his hands away as he beats them, they have sinned. Because he is always right, no matter how wrong he is, and they are always wrong, no matter how right they really are.

And the mother of all people aches the most, for the child that grew in her womb for nine months is dying in front of her everyday and she can nothing but push him away and then tell him how right he was when he did what he because he knows best for his kids, and no, he is not wrong, and yes, he had all the right to hit his kids. They deserved it. They deserve to be hated for as long as they can remember. They deserve to be mistreated and abused because they refused to do something for once. They deserve it because they were born into an unloving, dictator’s arms.

The society we live in is corrupted beyond repair. Education is worthless if we are not taught to defend those in need. Education is worthless if we hear a child being hit by his father and do nothing but raise the volume of our stereo. The next time you look the other way when you see a child getting beaten by his parents, I want you to congratulate you because you too are guilty; perhaps even more than those parents, because you let them think it is perfectly okay to beat a child into obedience and get away with it. And even though it was not your hand that left that bruise on their arms, your silence played a big part in those helpless children’s misery.