Sometimes things happen that you do not understand immediately but suddenly, maybe years later, a piece of the big life puzzle comes to you and everything starts to make sense.
On a Friday morning, when I was about nine years old, I was experimenting with my cassette recorder. I had a blank tape inside and went around the house trying to catch different sounds. In the garden I recorded the sound of the birds and the cats, I went to the kitchen and recorded my mother and grandmother talking about their plans for lunch and then I went to the living room, where my grandfather was sitting with Amo Kamal (Amo is Arabic for uncle), a relative of us, and I recorded their discussion. I didn’t really bother listening to them, their talk was boring for me. Filling my blank tape was my only concern.
I rewound the tape and went to the kitchen to make my mother and grandmother listen to it, but they didn’t pay attention to me, so I went to the living room to present my creative work to my grandfather and his guest. I told them with a big smile on my face: „Look what I did and you didn’t even notice.“ I played the tape and they listened for a short while. I was still smiling proudly but they didn’t laugh, they didn’t even smile, instead they seemed to get angry, especially Amo Kamal. His face turned red, and he almost yelled at me: „You cannot record people’s conversations. Delete this immediately.“ He turned to my grandfather saying: „She could get us in serious trouble. They could put us in jail. Tell her to delete it now.“
My grandfather spoke in a calmer tone but he was very firm: „Delete this now and don’t ever record people while they are talking again. This could end badly.“
„What’s wrong with them?“ I thought „I just wanted to be funny,“ I felt really annoyed because they did not understand my joke. „Fun spoilers“ I thought and deleted their part of the recording. I left the living room and went to my room feeling upset and somehow ashamed about what happed. I couldn’t understand the reason for their strange reaction.
Unfortunately, I grew up to learn that the world is more than just an endless playground. I started hearing stories of people who went to jail or even lost their lives because someone recorded them while they were criticizing the situation in the country or the government.
One of the easiest and most common ways to control people in surveillance states is to make them control each other. When trust and solidarity are kept to a minimum, mass protests and organized oppositions are very unlikely to happen. Eliminating „dangerous“ individuals is much easier than facing the crowd, especially in times before the internet, mobile technology and social media.
Back then, I didn’t connect these stories with the reaction of my grandfather and Amo Kamal, since I didn’t really like to remember that embarrassing situation. But not too many years ago, I was talking with my mother and we remembered Amo Kamal. He was always talking with my grandfather about the bad conditions, the ongoing war, the latest scandals of the politicians, how everything is getting worse and how the prices are rising rapidly.
I recall one conversation they had very often: Amu Kamal would say: „The prices are crazy, and no one is doing anything about it.“ My grandfather would reply: „Yes, that’s so true. Before, the cost of one orange was one fills. That meant I could have bought 1000 oranges for one Dinar.“ Amo Kamal would add: „And today one kilo of oranges is about 3 Dinars and that’s not more than 5 oranges.“ At that point my grandfather would take a deep breath and say a Turkish proverb he used a lot to explain his anger on times: „To what times we stayed!“
Only then the puzzle was complete, and the big picture appeared. I realized what made them so upset. I recorded them talking about the deplorable conditions in the country. A tape like that, if put in the wrong hands, could have brought them behind bars. My „funny“ sound constellation was actually an evidence against them.
I felt sorry but it was too late to apologize. Both of them died before having to witness that the price for one kilo of oranges has reached 1000 Dinar in the Iraq of today.