Self-defeatism

Written by: Tantalize

In the morning when I start teaching my classes, I come across looks of defeat on many of my students’ faces. One is only 19, married, already a mother of one, and soon to be divorced. She mannequins anguish and a flinching attempt at smiling when I ask her how she is each and every day. Another student is a Jahra resident Bedouin. She knows her marriage will be out of her choosing as soon as she graduates. It will be unwillingly to someone from her tribe and most likely to her first cousin. Her face reads despair. Many of the female students seem careless with little enthusiasm because they sense that their fates have been sealed. They’ve been sealed by a projected time in which Islam and local traditions have already outlined, potentially manufactured, and guided their lives before they have even started. They have been contained by sets of uncontested customs in which they have become a menacing reality. Suicide is no option since it is sinful. Living out their deceptive lives holds more hope but while hopelessly holding on to sets of ideals they have no say in creating. This is what I see on a daily basis and on a semester routine.

A male student openly flaunts a facial mix of disinterest and discontent. He is not exhausted from school, but more tired of wanting to continue educating his brain because he thinks what he is learning is futile. He will get the job he wants due to wasta (connections) in a field totally unconnected to his present major and unconnected to what he may personally desire. His future is predestined by an over-nurturing family which has become his immediate religion: mafia-wasta.

The American teachers in the faculty room are slowly being sapped as well. They are falling to the cancer of this Kuwaiti-self-inclined-defeatism. They are put in a catch-22. They have been hired to strenuously teach and implement a language and culture from a place thousands of miles away; to a people who show more interest in its lifestyle than in its rules. The expats, as they call themselves, are spun between the strict textbook regulations they are expected to adhere to and mixed messages from the administration. They are flooded with conflicting taboo subject matters in the books, that the Kuwaiti faculty has reviewed and accepted but haphazardly enforces. Having many of the students come deliberately late, sugarcoating their guilt with dozens of “inshallas”, and scapegoating others but rarely themselves for problems self-bestowed boils the teachers’ sense of impeccability, decorum and time management. Thus, these foreign teachers are unknowingly becoming prey to defeatism, too. They are in a sense defeating themselves because they eventually and subconsciously accept and become engrossed by a greater and more societal self-defeatism.

When it comes to the general Kuwaiti faculty, they are the epitome of uselessness. They know they will get paid at the end of the month and can never be fired from a government position, that is a clause in the country’s constitution. Therefore, they cut classes here and there, utilize wasta in their favor, subject students to authoritarian style of learning, make them feel insignificant to eventually help them pass with ease. This is done after the students had been ridden through a labyrinth of hell. Conclusively, the faculty gives off the same defeatism to the next generation of citizens.

What appears to be magnanimous amounts of manual workers at fixing and cleaning after the students on campus have the heaviest sense of defeatism. Some of these Asian workers are as old as grandparents but they cater to people a fraction of their age, in an environment where teachers are supposedly teaching and enforcing human equality and respect. And all the while Asians are calling for prayer on megaphones from surrounding mosques. The students, on the other hand, walk past these workers as if they are invisible. Some of the faculty uses them to fetch them snacks from a cafeteria few meters away, while other workers are used to photocopy and deliver papers, when their sole job requirement is to clean.

As I leave work, I am thrusted by animalism and lack of respect on the streets by drivers who deserve much less than the type of cars they are driving. Their sense of civility is pathetic and their self-respect is as unendorsing. Some seem oblivious to being killed as they drive like maniacs. The faces they wear are evidence of that. The makes of cars they drive are not. They speed in carelessness just to gain a few meters ahead of others. They know there are traffic jams ahead of them but they race anyhow. Some seem to beg to be put out of their misery by having someone ram them. I truly believe that they think they are invincible and that Allah (God) will parcel them quickly to heaven if they ever do get killed. So, they don’t fear dying. Or, they may just want someone to kill them out of pity; to put them out of their own nihilistic misery.

As I approach home, I then wonder if there is any correlation to how the heaviest lunch meals are eaten and how much liban (buttermilk) is drunk during the hottest times of the day. I ponder if there is a connection to how people sleep in the afternoons and how they feel drowsy the rest of the day with how they are incompetent the next day when they head to work or school. It’s a vicious cycle of self-annihilation.

© COPYRIGHT TANTALIZE 2005