Witness
I once testified in court.
A Brown woman was seeking a restraining order against a white man who had stalked her. A lawyer represented the stalker. The woman represented herself.
I was her shāhid.
I swore to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, so help me God, and sat in the witness stand.
“How did I seem when I opened the letter?” the woman asked.
“You were terrified.”
“Objection!” shouted the stalker’s attorney. “Calls for speculation. The witness cannot know her interior state.”
“Sustained,” said the judge.
I was dismissed. The judge ruled in favor of the stalker.
Almost immediately, I realized that I should have said “You were trembling. You were crying. You told me you were terrified.”
Still, it might not have mattered. The judge would probably have ruled in favor of the stalker anyway. That day, all the cases on the docket but one involved women seeking restraining orders against men. The judge ruled in favor of the man in every case.
The stalker didn’t want a restraining order against him; it would have ordered him to surrender his guns. He was former military, and a former skinhead. He was compliant with the law as long as it was being enforced by men.
It wasn’t that he was a renegade.
He was just a garden variety misogynist.
There are rules to serving as a witness. Witnesses don’t usually know the rules. Lawyers do. My ignorance of the rules allowed the stalker’s lawyer to object to my testimony and the judge to sustain his objection.
This meant neither of them needed to rely upon the unwritten rules of testimony.
He said is always privileged over she said, especially if he is white and she is not.
This is known as testimonial injustice and the economy of credibility.
My attempt at testimonial justice was denied due to phrasing.
Shāhid is the Arabic word for witness.
someone who sees, testifies, gives evidence.
Arabic words are composed from roots. The root of shāhid is sh-h-d.
To witness, testify.
From the same root:
shahīd - martyr / witness
someone whose death is understood as a testimony.
In English, “martyr” has been corrupted to mean suicidal fanatic. In Arabic, it means a witness to the truth — a witness who makes an enormous sacrifice in the name of what is right.
The witness in a courtroom says “I saw this.” The shahīd says “I am the proof.” Their death is itself the testimony. It cannot be retracted, cross-examined, or recanted.
In Islam, there are 99 names for God. One of those names is Al-Shahīd: “The All Observing Witness” — who knows and sees all things, from the smallest leaf falling to the deepest human emotions.
What does it mean to be seen by a witness who cannot be deceived?
A witness is not innocent just because he saw.
I doubt that God pays attention to the economy of credibility.
I was born in 1960 in Tarabulus — Tripoli — in the United Kingdom of Libya, ruled by King Idris — Muhammad Idris bin Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Sanusi — head of the Sanusiyya order — Libya’s first, and only, king.
He was appointed King by the British, the French, and the Americans.
In return they wanted something. Oil.
And that’s where my family comes in.
We were there because of King Idris.
I am a child of oil.
I am a witness who can easily be deceived. This was particularly true when I was young.
Sometimes my exceedingly honest five-year-old brain was asked to process some piece of information — something my parents said, perhaps, that my own eyes told me was not true.
I did not yet know the word bullshit.
My father would beat my mother. I would witness her terror and her shame. I would witness him declare that it was nothing. In my young mind, only one of those two things could be true.
When my father would say “Arabs are not to be trusted” I knew he wasn’t to be trusted. When my stepfather said it, I knew he wasn’t to be trusted either. And when all the oilmen around me said it, I knew all the oilmen around me weren’t to be trusted. When my mother would repeat what men said, I figured that was to avoid more terror and shame.
Racism is why my father distrusted Arabs. Racism is why my stepfather distrusted Arabs, especially the urban Arabs. The desert dwelling Bedouin, he thought, maintained an admirable masculine purity. That’s another way of saying he thought them primitive. He exoticized it, though. Orientalism.
Racism is also why shahīd — the witness whose death upholds truth — becomes, in English, suicidal fanaticism with the payoff of forty virgins.
In western thinking, there always needs to be a payoff. Preferably cash.
I am a compromised shāhid. I don’t know all the rules of witnessing.
I was called a race traitor by a family member. “Don’t forget you are white” she kept saying.
We no longer speak.
As for shahīd — someone whose death is a form of witnessing, of testimony — I hope it never comes to that. Everyone hopes it never comes to that.
Martyrs aren’t fanatics who go looking for death.
Martyrs are killed because they won’t deny the truth.
This piece was shaped in part by the work of Farah El-Sharif. Her essay "Resisting Heretical Defeatism" can, and should, be read here. Islamic Spirituality for the Disenchanted is also something you should read.
This was a beautiful, heart wrenching read, Geoff. May your heart, limbs and eyes always be a shāhid of truth, even (or especially) when it is bitter to do so.