A Socratic Love Logic

Film still from Adam and Eve by Liliana Basarab and Costel Chirila

As I ponder the many possibilities of love, I can’t help but wonder if it’ll ever happen to me, then I swiftly discount the thought as a mere weakness, an expression for the needy and the romantics. I think about how I love chocolate, my family and Algeria, how I love England and taking long walks by the river, how I love the ice cold wind as it hits me on the face and I believe it’s making me younger, how I love many things and many people and think so what’s so bad about love anyway?

Why does it scare some people so much, to the point of rejecting it from any source and in any format. But I know better, I grew up in Algeria….or in your case… (insert Arab country here….).

Where love is synonymous with mother or motherland, country, weakness and other futile and bad things, where it is secretly practiced never uttered, where only the love of the mother is implied never expressed.

Where there’ll be no holding of the hands, or touching of the hair, no fornication (in public), no adultery (in public), no homosexuality allowed (in public or otherwise), in fact no mention of love, where porn is 5% sex, 95% guilt, no fun or display of, not even liking, for God’s sake, just no affection related sentiments or acts!

Where the very concept of it is too much to bear, where love should only be for God and the prophet (pbuh), sometimes the other prophets too, but preferably only for Mohamed (pbuh).

Where the very thought of love should be banished and reduced to a feeling of guilt and shame, how can a man love a woman, surely only his mother can love her and therefore deem her a suitable mate, her father owns a business too so that’s always a positive, and so she was deemed a suitable mate by all (not you, your opinion doesn’t count).

Where love should not be fostered or encouraged. Heresy I say! A great source of debauchery and evil, reducing great men to their baser instincts and bringing out their soft side, which if not controlled, will make them disciples of the devil and the West.

Where a suicide bridge is preferred to the bridge of love, where sexual Jihad is encouraged and innocent love is condemned, where the word itself is so taboo it’s haram. It’s evil, it’s damned, it’s so small it’s big.

Where obscurantism is common practice, hatred is fostered and love is silenced, segregation is actively encouraged and sexual frustrations cultivated, where a man knows so little about a woman, he fears and loathes her, imprisons and mutilates her, violates her, hides her, degrades her and obsesses about her. He, who gave her a rib, then threw in the cage for good measure.

Her forms, her soft yet strong being, her frail yet robust body, her fierce beauty and satanic mystifying bosoms. He hates how he loves her, how he needs her, how he wants and desires her, how weak he is in her presence and at her hands, he almighty bearded man who knows all, realised she’s the source of Love, she is the embodiment of Love and therefore evil and he never forgave her for bringing him down to this wretched earth.

Dz-chick… women are Love. Love is evil: women are evil