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Many people know the videos of the famous and much-loved YouTube Man, but few people know the man intimately. We were cellmates in prison. I left that institution three months ago and went into a prison hospital. The doctor diagnosed me with lung cancer. Life is a shock and only delusions help us to accept its cruelty and strangeness. That’s what YouTube Man said. I think that since childhood his fear of life and of other people had driven him to hide away in the strange games he invented and then just as quickly destroyed. Boredom was the enemy of his creativity.
Every morning I push the juice cart two kilometres from my house to the market. When I make juice in the blender, a great sense of calm comes over me. My customers are shoppers and other market traders wilting in the sun. They’re sweaty and thirsty and they gulp down juice thanking God as they do so, asking Him for a miracle to come and improve their lives. I was jailed because of some bribes I took when I was working in the Ministry of Trade. I came out of prison broke and had to somehow make up for my five-year absence from my wife and my children, who had since grown up and were now at university. My wife’s brother helped me buy this juice cart. My only dream is not to die before I have absorbed every last drop of anger from my family, who have suffered so much from my recklessness. The image of my friend YouTube Man is never far from my mind. I can’t deny I was happy to be in his company, since he’s famous and well-loved, even when he was in prison. But for me YouTube Man was a life-saver and an education. I learnt much from him: how to be content with my existence in this life and how to know the value of my own imagination, compared with the imaginations of the prison’s many cockroaches. ‘Life is a gift, a lovely shiver, whether in the cockroaches or in you,’ he said. ‘A shiver in prison or a shiver in freedom, it's the same. In this life, the difference between the shiver of one player and that of another lies only in the imagination.’ His words still echo in my mind to this day.
He adapted well to prison life.
It wasn’t always like that. In the first months he suffered a great deal because of his addiction. He was a long-term addict to YouTube, and this was suddenly cut out of his life. I told him that prison was a circus of corruption and if he got hold of some money he could get a mobile phone and have access to the internet and YouTube again. In those days he wasn’t a man who seemed to be wise or able to influence others through the energy he radiated. He was adrift because he’d been deprived of his drug, YouTube. But as soon as he had access to it again, YouTube Man became the lungs and heart of the prison. Even the violent inmates respected him and didn’t mess with him. His sister Nagham never stopped visiting. When he’d been in prison just three months, he decided to release videos of all the robberies he had carried out over a five-year period. He had kept all the videos on a flash drive and told his sister where it was. He asked her to set up a channel for him on YouTube. He wasn’t anxious about the videos going public. He had already admitted all the details of his robberies to the police. Within just three months his YouTube channel, which was called Flies, had become stunningly popular. He was a celebrity within a year, talked about by newspapers, on social media and television stations. He won people’s sympathy and had many admirers. They started sending him messages and visiting him in prison. When his fans found out about his problems in prison, they began to donate money to him, and YouTube Man got what he needed. He paid the wardens, who had also become fans, obtained an iPhone and an internet subscription, and went back to snorting his YouTube drug again.
You were YouTube Man’s confidant and a close friend.
After the fall of the dictator his life changed. The American invaders were responsible for a sharp divide in Iraqi society. Some people rejoiced and called it liberation, while others were angry and called it occupation. The dictator’s statue was broken into pieces and the country was broken into pieces with it. There were ethnic, confessional and sectarian divisions and vicious civil wars broke out. Logic, wisdom and coexistence were replaced by hatred, knives and bullets. The country didn’t matter to YouTube Man anyway, either before the occupation or after liberation. He was absorbed in himself – introverted, intelligent and peaceable. As you know, the internet wasn’t part of our lives when the dictator was in power. For YouTube Man, though, when the internet arrived, it was the most precious gift he had ever received. Discovering YouTube was like discovering the meaning of life.
YouTube Man was born in a family with one son and six daughters. Although the family was poor, he was spoiled as the only son and the youngest child. After finishing secondary school, he enrolled at the geography department of the College of Education. He suddenly decided to leave the family home. It was a big shock to his loved ones. He fended off their feelings of anger and sadness, and resolved to live alone. He moved into a cheap boarding house on Rashid Street. The main obstacle was making enough money to survive. He once told me that if it hadn’t been for the spectre of military service, he would have abandoned studying geography at college. At the beginning, he made ends meet by working as a cleaner in the boarding house where he lived. Every Friday, YouTube Man visited the Ghazel market, which was close to the boarding house. From his repeated visits to the market he learned that most of the traders and their customers were complaining about the high cost of animal feed. The ones who grumbled most were the traders who sold chicks. They needed the chicks to grow so they would profit from the eggs and the meat. For some reason the problem of chicken feed stuck in YouTube Man’s head. One evening, his Egyptian neighbour in the boarding house invited him to have dinner and drink with him. The Egyptian, who worked building houses and had lived in Iraq for years, cooked him mulukhia with rabbit. They drank two bottles of gin and YouTube Man got wasted and threw up the rabbit. Eventually the Egyptian had to call an ambulance. YouTube Man says, ‘While I was stretched out in the ambulance, I thought back to my childhood years. My mother used to keep chickens on the roof of the house. I amused myself by putting the chicks in my lap and killing all the flies that buzzed around me. The chicks would gobble up the dead flies. As soon as I was taken into the emergency room, I had the idea of selling flies in the Ghazel market. I was hesitant at first. I told myself that anyone could supply flies, which are available everywhere. But then I thought that probably most people don’t have the time or inclination to hunt enough flies. And besides, I would sell the flies very cheap. The process of gathering the flies from around the rubbish bins was tiring and disgusting. I went to the Ghazel market and laid out transparent plastic bags full of flies on the ground. I also took along three chicks to show customers how happy they were to eat them. People gathered around and started cracking jokes and making fun of my wares. I gave flies to the chicks and explained to the crowd the benefits of flies, which are full of protein. People watched the hungry chicks gobbling down the flies with relish. Within a month of me starting work in the market, the fly business had expanded and I had several competitors.’
Baghdad fell and he stopped selling flies.
With the Americans coming into Baghdad, the economic blockade ended and everything came into the country. Companies trading in hired murderers, weapons, tanks and oil came in. Companies selling foodstuffs, cars, pharmaceuticals, cigarettes and alcohol turned up. Terrorism, car bombs and mafia companies came in. The slogans of democracy, women’s rights and equality came in. Agencies selling sectarianism and fanaticism came in. Everything came into the country except peace, which stood waiting at the door, reluctant to enter. Compulsory military service was abolished and YouTube Man gave up studying geography. He bought a computer, logged onto YouTube and has hardly left it since. He locked himself up in his room in the boarding house and sailed away into the world of videos. He would watch anything. Silly things and profound things. Funny things and sad things. Scary things and amusing things. Scientific things and fantastical things. Private things and public things. The world looked to him as one long collective movie, an epic film produced for an audience composed of a single viewer, hidden away in a room.
Could you make me a juice cocktail, but without watermelon, please! The market’s very crowded today.
It’s normal to be this crowded. Maybe being away has made you forget everything. The day after tomorrow is the feast at the end of Ramadan, you know. I hope some religious fanatic doesn’t blow himself up in the market and turn us all into minced meat. Large gatherings of people are a tasty meal for the sectarian vampires. Here's your juice, cold and refreshing. Have you seen the video where the people praying have their shoes stolen? It’s one of my favourites. YouTube Man used to steal shoes from the mosque, saying, ‘You’re certainly not going to need your shoes when you go to your heaven!’
He recorded and filmed everything he stole.
That’s right. His passion for the world of video was his primary motive. Okay, listen! Yet again the problem of making money was an obstacle to YouTube Man’s desire for seclusion. He had to pay rent at the boarding house as well as cover his food and drink and the internet subscription. He didn’t smoke or drink alcohol, and he rarely bought new clothes. His expenses were fairly predictable. The idea of finding a job and having to spend ridiculously long hours away from YouTube terrified him, so he decided to resort to theft. He did his best to engage in forms of theft that did the least harm to the victims: shoes from the mosque, clothes, books, a chicken, a radio. Just enough to finance his YouTube addiction in the way of food and other simple needs. When it came to rent at the boarding house, he had to steal something special that wasn’t so harmless! He might steal a laptop or an expensive watch, for example. He installed a tiny video camera in the hat he used as a disguise while out stealing and he hid a mic in his clothes to record what he said. He talked about life, the country, the world, people and himself. What he said was always amusing. Sometimes he’d tell a joke, like when he was stealing a child’s buggy. In one of the videos, he can be heard reciting a verse from the Quran while riding a bicycle he’d stolen from outside a school. Often he would tell a short story or hum a traditional folk song.
He didn’t release all the videos.
I only saw one video that hadn’t been released. I liked it very much. One day he had to burgle a house to pay the rent at the boarding house. He checked out a poor area nearby and came across a house that looked uninhabited. He sneaked into the house by night. In the video he starts speaking right after climbing through the kitchen window. YouTube Man adds a touch of comic horror to the scene as he slowly roams around the dark house. He points his torch at the furniture and whispers, ‘Where’s the rent money for my filthy room? Come out, come out wherever you are!’ He opens one door and finds an old woman lying in bed. ‘Water, water,’ the old woman croaks as soon as she senses the presence of YouTube Man. He goes up to her and shines the torch on her wrinkled, half-dead face. He asks her if there’s anyone else in the house. ‘Water, water,’ the old woman says in reply. YouTube Man looks around the room and goes out to check there’s no one else in the house.
I very much enjoyed the video of the old woman, and I cried when I saw it the first time. Everything that’s said and everything that happens in the faint spot of light seems magical, touching and frightening at the same time. YouTube Man fetches some water and asks the old woman if she’s okay and why she’s alone in the dark. The old woman isn’t frightened and treats YouTube Man as if he lives in the house. She tells him that the area they live in is liable to sectarian attacks from time to time, especially at night. Two days earlier she’d run out of pills. But her son hadn’t come back. The woman was paralysed and advanced in years. She asks YouTube Man to open a wardrobe close to her bed, tells him where her gold necklaces and rings are and makes him an offer: ‘Take all the gold. I’ve gone without food for two days and I don’t think I’m going to live much longer. I can feel the fingers of death around my neck. I’m hungry and I’d really like some soup. Make me some lentil soup, take all the gold and go on your way!’
Despite the tension and the horror brought to the scene by the old woman’s feeble voice in the darkness, I laughed a lot when, like a shy child, YouTube Man says, ‘I’m very sorry but I don’t know how to make lentil soup.’
‘It’s easy,’ the old woman says. ‘First go to the kitchen and soak some lentils in water, maybe enough for two people. I hope you’ll have some soup with me.’ YouTube Man does what she asks. He put the lentils in the water and then goes back to the old woman’s side. He notices that the torchlight is hurting the old woman’s eyes so he turns the torch off. In the darkness, the old woman talks about her youth in the 1970s when she was an aspiring architect and a political activist. In the days when Baghdad was flourishing and safe. ‘Do you think the militias have killed my son?’ the old woman asks.
‘I’ll go and cook the soup,’ YouTube Man replies.
‘First heat a little oil in the pan,’ the old woman explains, ‘and fry half a chopped onion in the oil. Drain the lentils and fry them with the onion and oil. Add hot water to the pan to cover the lentils, just like we cook rice. Leave it on the gas until the water evaporates. Then add a sprinkling of turmeric, curry powder and a little cumin, and add hot water again to cover the lentils.’
We see YouTube Man making the soup awkwardly by the light of the torch without saying anything or commenting as he usually does.
They drink the soup together. YouTube Man takes a single necklace from her stash of gold jewellery and leaves. From his room in the boarding house, he makes an anonymous call to the hospital and asks for an ambulance to go to the old woman’s address.
Could I have a cigarette please?
Of course, here you are. I hope we can get hold of those videos one day.
The only person who knows where they are is his sister, Nagham.
They say he was stabbed in prison because he’d taken pictures of Islamists having sex.
Please, I don’t have any more to tell you. I have to get back to my work.
Okay. Do you think his sister will let me interview her?
That’s none of my business. But I have something else to tell you. In the video of the old woman being robbed, before YouTube Man leaves the room, the old woman tells him that someone called Robert A. Heinlein once said, ‘You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.’ YouTube Man wrote this quote in chalk on the wall of his cell, and sometimes we set it to music and sang it.
I may have referred in an earlier message to my intention to translate a text Cioran wrote about his friend Benjamin Fondane, whose main interests were philosophy and film. Maybe you know him. He was a Jew from Moldavia. His real name was Benjamin Wechsler and he lived from 1898 to 1944. The Nazis detained him during the occupation of Paris and moved him to the death camp at Dachau with his sister. Cioran and several intellectuals intervened to save him but he stipulated that his sister should be released too. The Nazis refused of course, and his fate was to be gassed and burned there. I’ve started the translation and I may finish it today. My dear Hassan, be stoical! Forget superstitions about death. There is no scythe or anything of that sort! There’s a voice inside me, sometimes a powerful one, that swears that death is just a way of refurbishing the universe.
Best wishes.
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Back to Juan Miro: there’s nothing easier than proving that whims are part of life, even in its latter stages. With this in mind, I went back to an old friend and his art. I’m sending you text and pictures, in the hope that you’ll treat them like a good armchair that provides relaxation from physical fatigue. This definition of art by Henri Matisse, remains valid, even more so if one believes that no one can erase the bleakness of this life (as if the meaninglessness of it were not enough!). So, my friend, look at the works of this Spaniard, who never tires of loitering in the past’s deep caves or in other skies for that matter. Of course, I’ll get back to Cioran soon.
All the best.
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Yesterday I sent you a text about Miro with some of his pictures, with the suggestion that you tre
at them as an armchair for a tired body. There’s an extraordinary book by Cioran called The Breviary of the Vanquished. He wrote it in the mid-1970s. In fact, this book was an extraordinary summarisation of everything he had already written. In the 1990s I had read the Polish translation of the book (maybe I once told you there’s a large shrine to Cioran in the temple of Polish culture). Very probably I’ll prepare a simple text about my quick impressions, especially as I don’t have the book now and haven’t read it since I was in Warsaw. I don’t know if I told you before that I studied in Poland. And all I have now is some simple remarks that my memory is too tired to enrich.
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