Why Column? Why Opinion? Why Bite?

In Bad Taste is Salma Mousa’s gonzo-style column at Rolling Stone MENA. New installments on the 13th of every month.

Look. We have a crisis. Open your playlists. Listen. We have a crisis. We have artists, timid, tiptoeing, solipsistic, self-centered. We have publications, timid, tiptoeing, unconcerned, self-censored. Our world today is split clean into two and there is not a third: Those who advertise, and those who seek to be advertised. That is the whole theater, and the waters are stale. An exposed cup drying up expeditiously, mold replacing what was once the rim. Look again. There is an intestinal clog. Listen. There is a spiritual calamity, a creative constipation. A paralysis disguised as loving politeness. A whole generation sitting on its hands. 

The problem: everybody craves a seat on the table. The bigger problem: there is no table. There is no table except for the one Hassan Al Battal would occupy all day in the old town of Ramallah. The same janky table at Maqha El Inshirah (El Inshirah Cafe), where all the small town heroes go to die. Everyday, Hassan would wear his same khaki beret, carry his same notebook, and arrive to scout, with the patience of a monk, for the eureka of his next daily column in Al Ayyam Newspaper. For 40 years, Hassan came bearing a gift to our town: As long as I have a breath, I have a word. As long as I have a word, I will share it with you. 

Everyday, we would receive the word like a prayer. Every day, a blessing from our small town hero to help us carve a way, even if unplowed, even if unlit, even if dead-ended. I might have spoken to Hassan briefly a few times, but I would see Hassan daily, I would see his column stretching the length of the broadsheet. I’d expect to see Hassan. I’d trust to read his holy prayer. Everyday, I believed he would show up. The steadiness of a saint. 

Because there is a charm – no, an ethics – to a line so consistent. The devotion of a prophet to his duty. The quiet friendship, then, with a person’s word, thus world, thus mind. A trust placed in a voice, and not a sponsored post, not a PR-trained brand’s spokesperson. Are we abandoning columns because we are afraid of a compass? After all, Hassan was the closest to an insurgent leader. A hero, “Al Battal,” it’s right there in his name. 

Where are our heroes today? Those who smell the rot building up on the glass? Those who will appear when the moment demands? Instead, we drift further from writing with teeth. We scatter press releases, pop culture news-pegs, and the latest shoe drops. We smile. We swallow words coated with sugar, drenched with diplomacy. 

Everyone has had a run telling us to play the game, to stay down, to remain positive, to nod our heads, to clap and clap and clap until it’s our turn to be clapped for. A careful excision of our frontal lobes, in the name of networking and positivity and profitableness. We are nearing a point of no return. 

They say: don’t be bitter, don’t be a cynic. They say: nobody likes critics, critics lack talent, critics don’t have statues. They say: be agreeable, be pleasant, be commercial, be quiet. They lied and we swallowed. We are so docile we forgot even a whisper is evidence of life. 

Critics, or those who scream, or diagnose, or whatever you want to call those who know a milk when it’s spoiled, are in no need of a statue, they want a wobbling table, and the very same khaki hat. And their knack? A concern. A deep and urgent concern to have a spine, to have a world so beautiful, art so wonderful, words sharp enough to deserve their teeth, and ultimately: honest truth. 

So why column? Why opinion? Why biting? Because the truth requires at least one tooth.