As a child growing up in the 1980s in Washington, DC, Christmas was a time when the mundane presence of my Catholic school took an indescribable magical turn. It wasn’t so much the gifts as the sense that reality was temporarily suspended and replaced by something more refreshing – which I think is part of the reason I persisted in believing in Santa Claus until I was 10.
Of course, mine was the privilege of growing up in the capital of the United States, a federal headquarters that continues to this day to embody the racism and social and economic inequality that dominates life in the so-called “land of the free.” Although I knew little about domestic affairs like this when I was growing up, I knew little about my country’s contributions to the world’s suffering; in my year of birth 1982, for example, Washington had given the green light to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon which killed tens of thousands of people.
Closer to home, the decade of the 1980s was marked by US support for right-wing mass murder in Central America, all in a noble effort to make the world safe from capitalism. That the rigors of Catholic school was my biggest earthly complaint meant that I was doing much better than most people – something that became even more clear when I left the US in 2003, aged 21, for a nomadic lifestyle. that included the fallout from US atrocities from Colombia to Vietnam.
I’m now 42, and I didn’t have much hope for Christmas when in mid-December I flew from Mexico to DC, where my parents had returned to live – following their long stay abroad – just before my father died last year. This year, it wasn’t just my father’s absence that seemed to sap his energy from the festivities. The indescribable magical power may seem to have been extinguished by the terrible state of the world and the US-backed Israeli genocide that continues and escalates in the Gaza Strip, where almost all the people have been forcibly displaced.
Meanwhile, America’s transformation of Christmas into a mass of Amazon delivery trucks only perpetuates the ravenous presence of apocalyptic capitalism and the reduction of humanity to an endless, soul-sucking chain of economic transactions.
But, ironically, my first holiday cheer here in DC was initiated by one such transaction-based connection, when a Sudanese driver who works for the ride-hailing company my mother uses gave me a hug.
From the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, this man – we will call him Alsafi – had registered his excitement when he saw my “Free Palestine” shirt when he came to pick me up. Also 42 years old, he worked as a human rights lawyer in Sudan – itself no stranger to systematic killings and mass forced displacements – before fleeing the country in 2013 after a series of arrests and torture.
By the time he arrived in the United States, however, Alsafi had decided that the American dream was not quite what it was. Not only did he find himself in a position of racist behavior, he was also tired of the stressful shopping that has taken the place of life itself. He was also plotting to leave the country. Undoubtedly, we had a lot to talk about.
Days before Christmas, Alsafi invited me to dinner at a low-key Ethiopian restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, across the bridge from DC. I had spent a month in Ethiopia in 2016; Alsafi had spent several months there in 2013 between fleeing Sudan and immigrating to the United States. Over Ethiopian Habesha beer and injera with mounds of lentils and collard greens, I heard more details of Alsafi’s Sudanese carceral experience.
Once in custody, he was blindfolded and beaten while his tormentors continued to order him to the corner of the room. He stumbled in search of a corner, to no avail. “It was funny,” he said to me with a genuine laugh. “When they took off the blindfold, I saw that there were no corners in the house. It was a circle.”
Alsafi was not a fan of driving, but had to spend long hours to support his family in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, where they had taken refuge from the ongoing violence in Sudan. When I returned to my mother’s place in DC, she pointed out important landmarks in the area that she now knew better than I did: the Pentagon building, the Watergate Hotel, a patch of homeless tents that Alsafi also introduced me to. he was forced out in the interest of “security” when in July Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu descended on the US capital to open a genocide case.
There was something ironic about our shared hopelessness, and the night ended with another hug in front of my mom’s building — a lobby now with a giant Christmas tree and a stack of Amazon delivery boxes. Alsafi continued on his way, and I was left with a reminder that even in a society conquered by capitalism there are still people out there – which may be as magical as it turns out.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
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