Warning

The following post is a very dark comedy. So dark it actually required me to make this warning along with a cover photo because the following photos are explicit in nature. And NOT in a good way, there won't be nude photos of any kind.

They say home is where you hang your hat. Explains why I never really wear one. You see I consider myself a comedian by profession, but when I'm not making jokes I write posts for #comedyopenmic. It's over a year and some change since I came back to Iraq, I didn't feel back at home, nor was there that feeling of joy when go back to a familiar place. I never really liked when I was here, why would I like coming back here? I mean this is after all a country where few gun shots and couple of explosions means that it's a quite day.

I always lived as a stranger. When I was a kid I was that weird kid who'd get lost every now and then trying to find the moon and touch it up close. When I went to Dubai I was that Iraqi kid with bad English, in Qatar I went to a foreigners schools but I was that foreigner Iraqi kid with mild English who always had a joke to say and was never able to be serious. And in Iraq I was the guy that weak kid from Gulf countries. But my English was pretty decent then, not that there was anyone for me to talk with using it.

I was always living outside the pack. The student who sat last in class and the distance between my disk and the one in front always seemed three times the distance the one in front of me had with the one in front of it. I was an observer. I always knew how to strike up a conversation till I started talking. Then all what comes up is a random sentence like "Hey, did you see Scarlett Johansson's tits?", or some jokingly insult. Luckily in some cases people saw it as a unique sense of humor. But to me it always was an inability to act normal. I always thought things were much more interesting in my head, that perfect girlfriend who's funny and loves everything I do, that one friend who just gets me. But that ended up with the imaginary girlfriend hooking up with my imaginary best friend. I guess even in my own head I could screw things up.

I also focus on the wrong things, like why does Scarlett Johansson's name has two T's and S's right next to each other? It seems like one of each would have sufficed. Yeah, you're probably holding the answer and it turns out that it is that way because in her home country they fry the fingers of those with no repetitive letters or something. I'm not interested in knowing the answers to such stupid questions, but I am interested in asking them to myself. Thinking about them blocks away the world moving around me. I'm just not interested in a conversation. And even if I ever was I lose interest relevantly quickly. I'm a firm believer in a lot of things and would spend hours researching and confirming them, but you wouldn't know because 3 minutes into a conversation I just go "I guess you're right" and slowly drift away to an imaginary conversation we'd have where you'd be convinced by me. And I know that makes as much sense as Shabbat to an atheist. Or an atheist to a Mormon. And now I'm completely mesmerized by the fact that if we remove the M in the middle of Mormon all we have is a moron. An atheist would probably agree with me.

Don't take it the wrong way, I actually love religion, I've read every holly book I could get my hands on. I'm just not interested in me and what I have to say. And halfway through a conversation I know you're not as well. When I came back to Iraq I was expecting anything to be better. Maybe I self-entitled myself into thinking people here would care what I have to say. "OH MY GOD, THIS GUY IS A GENIUS" is what they'd say, figures why I named myself the awesome one, doesn't it? Or maybe I was interested in how would anyone react to me, whether with joy or disappointment if you were my father... Not just to me. I feel like I'm trying to copy human emotions, like a shape shifting alien, or Mark Zuckerberg at the senate hearing.

It explains why my sense of humor comes out a bit dark lots of the times. I have so many drafts of things I decided not to post because I figured they might be going too far. But the fact is it's not that I don't acknowledge where the line is or should be. It's just that I don't recognize it. It's not that I don't recognize the humor in harmless jokes, whatever that means. I even see it in a simple "knock knock" joke. It's just that I also see it in different things, dark subjects. I was once with my girlfriend at her mother's funeral and my consolation bullet-prize winning line to cheer her up was "Well, at least we now know what would finally shut her up"

It's not that I was expecting that would cheer her up, it's just that I was hoping it will. I would have loved it if someone made a joke to me at a funeral of a loved one, maybe "Now, we know what's a grilled human looks like" Just anything that would connect to how I see things sometimes. I see blood everywhere, not only through tragic events but even in religious ones. Warning explicit gruesome pictures coming up

No, that's not Iraq doing their version of the zombie festival. Although the commitment is outstanding

That's what the heads of a lot of Shi'a people look like during the tenth of the Islamic month Muharam. All I could think of is how can you do this.................... in this heat? Can you imagine how sticky you'd be? and it's like you do this and go home. No there are still couple of activities you need to do. So you have to walk a lot. The stickiness is unbearable. Oh, and don't worry, this is a family activity.

They're mimicking what prophet Mohammed's grandson Al-Hussain went through of pain. Now I've been to New York and I haven't seen lots of people walking around with nails in their hands, the subway had a couple. This kinda makes me wish Al-Hussain had his dick cut off so after these guys stop bleeding they would also stop breeding.

I grew up within a Shi'a family, not my dad and sisters. But the rest of my dad's family were extremely committed so every time I'd go to visit them I'd hear all kind of stories about Al-Hussain. How he predicted a woman would get pregnant 3 years after he told her. Or how his head was seen praying under the moonlight 2 days after it was chopped off and the family was carrying it. You know, all kind of logical stories that makes anyone an instant believer. Bare in mind that the head was attached to spear.

No one ever answered as to why the family was carrying this around in the first place. It's not there was a doctor back home that would cure him. "Okay, I got this" The doctor would say "All I need is a heart, kidney, lungs and an entire human body then we're set". I don't know much about him really. All I know is that he died as he lived; pissing me off.

When I came back to Iraq I was taken into question by the police. They wanted to know if I was affiliated with any terrorist groups fighting the American army, because midst all the deaths in Iraq that's who the Iraqi government care about. I remember them asking if I was sneaking a gun into Iraq. Like INTO? As if that was the only way for me to have a gun in Iraq. Anyway, they were kinda sneaky when questioning me. Well, as sneaky as the Iraqi police can be.

"When you were honoring Iraq in Qatar" he said " Did you befriend any other heroes fighting the Americans?" I still to this day can't believe that this was his line of questioning.
"No" I replied. And then he said "Are you sure?" in a threatening tone. Then he showed me pictures on his laptop of a torture room with all kind of torturing tools and being tortured in sight, all clear photos photographed professionally. So amazingly taken that they'd get a curie here if a curie had a torture photography section. I remember thinking one thing, did they really need to hire a professional for these? Like I think a picture taken by an iphone 4 would have conveyed the message perfectly. But then I looked in all the seriousness in his eyes and realized that asking which photographer took these wouldn't be the smartest choice for me.

"Oh yes, I remember now" I said in preparation for a bullshit story to give them what they want "There was this one hero who went to the U.S air base in Qatar in intention to blow it with a bomb. And even though they had many soldiers guarding the base a miracle happened"
"Miracle? what kind of miracle?" He asked.
"Well" I continued "The man saw the American soldiers and his patriotism level reached sky level. He was planting the bomb and then BOOM! It exploded right in his face"
"Really?" He wondered "That's the miracle"
"No, no" I explained "That wasn't it. After the explosion happened, his head flew off his body. Like completely separated"
"And then?"
"And then sir, it happened. His body got up on it's own walked toward the head and picked it up. Walked toward a mosque and said "I love you head" then kissed it and walked away"
"Wait, wait" He interrupted me "How did the body see the head with the eyes being on the head?"
"That's not the miracle, sir." I elaborated "How did the body KISS the head with the mouth being also on the head. That sir, is the true miracle"
Because I'd rather spend couple of days tortured then thrown out before indulging that guy. Luckily, or unluckily more like it, I got my wish.

I nominate @idkuci, it's been a while since we saw an entry by you. As well @traf / @trafalgar