To Believe: A Man’s Quest to Understand Reality

by M I A Harba

  To Believe

  A Man's Quest to Understan Reality

  MIA Harba

  Amazon

  Copyright © 2021 MIA Harba

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: : 9798709686984

  Cover design by: Germancreative

  To the hundreds of Iraqi scientists and academics who were murdered since 2003.

  ‘Say: I seek refuge with the Lord of the Dawn…’

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Urge to Believe

  Physics and Reality

  The Desert Underestimated

  Consciousness: The Hard Problem

  A Mysterious Visitor

  Why the Existence

  The past, the Present and the Future

  Loneliness and the Faint of Heart

  To Believe

  A Revelation or a Lie?

  The Security Police

  Mother of All Fears

  The Reckoning

  All Theories Failed

  Homecoming: A Madman?

  About The Author

  Books By This Author

  The Urge to Believe

  Many people thought he was mad, irrational, unhinged or suffering a middle-age crisis. Sam was living a nice comfortable life that most dream of. Yet, he wanted to move out to live in the desert, in the middle of nowhere. In their eyes, this was madness beyond belief. However, he listened to none of this and started his outlandish project of building a house there.

  Sam was oblivious of what awaited him as he sleepwalked to his little project. He nearly lost his mind and life. His faith and outlook on life changed forever as he came close to forces from the beyond that no scientific theory could explain. Myths, facts, and illusion fogged up his vision, and he no longer could tell which was which.

  This is his story as he lived it, which will shake the belief and faith of many.

  When Sam first voiced his intentions, the people around him held both a feeling of amazement and worry about him. In a way, they felt sorry for him, as he had a promising career and a successful business. He was throwing all this away, but for what? He wanted to be alone, away from all, he said. Why couldn’t he be alone in his own house, here in the city? His spacious mansion would make many people more likely to feel lonely than being unable to be alone.

  His wife, a beautiful woman he married a few years back, thought so, too. But, while she understood his motives and urge, she was not going to be part of his silly plan. She would stay here in the city, to look after their only daughter, Aya.

  Although he had been thinking about his plan for the last few years, he couldn’t bring himself to tell anybody about it, not even his wife, for fear of ridicule. No, he wasn’t gay and wanting to get out of the closet. He was straight and loved his wife immensely. But he wanted solitude and time out, away from everybody. His mind was confused and being amongst people made him sick. He wanted space to clear his mind and to fight those demons that plagued him and deprived him of sleep.

  He lived in the affluent Al-Mansour district of Baghdad. He adored his house and its large garden that he often spent his evenings in, by himself, to the worry of his wife. His wife reciprocated his love and was prepared to endure anything to stay with him and keep him happy. She loved his tender heart, his unparalleled honesty, and his feel for the poor and the deprived.

  He inherited his house from his parents; he was their only child. He had a happy childhood, loved, and well cared for. Their loss was a great tragedy. They both died suddenly in a car crash when he was in his first year at Baghdad University. He blamed everything and everyone for their death and was at loss with life for many years afterwards. His aunt moved in with him in his house and looked after him during his studies.

  After graduation with a degree in civil engineering, he set up his own construction business, designing and building houses for those who could afford it. He specialised in spectacular houses, the high end of the market. He was good at it and managed to nurture a good reputation for his business.

  However, deep within, he was a tormented soul. He couldn't understand the unnecessary turmoil in society, nor the suffering of the poor. Within the years at university, he participated in many demonstrations against the establishment. He thought the government was reluctant or was not doing enough to improve the welfare of the people.

  His tender heart had a soft touch for the people who didn't have enough to go by. At university, he befriended a few who shared similar outlooks and aspirations. He joined them in the endless demonstrations organised against the university, the local and national governments, and whatever they happen to point blame at. He hid his affluent background from these friends because he didn't want them to shun him or distrust him because of his background.

  He soon realised such demonstrations and outcries were not necessarily the right means to make the required change. People demonstrated uselessly for tens of years, by generations before his, and were likely to continue for generations after. There must be other avenues he could try to make tangible changes, but what?

  These were the torments that kept him awake at night and the thoughts that swirled in his head in the evenings during his moments of solitude in the garden. He would spend hours looking at nothing and contemplating what there was to do. There must be something he could do.

  He could understand why people pursued religion and its interpretation of the world. Probably there were like him, lost and looking for a way out. They sought the divine to make the changes, if not in this life then, hopefully, in the hereafter. He wasn’t convinced of this; religion belongs in history, he thought.

  Then one day, this outlandish idea got implanted in his tormented brain and wasn’t going to go away. The idea was very simple and sounded sweet, futuristic, and gave him pleasure when he thought about it. It ignited within his soul an intense feeling that got stronger with time to the extent he could no longer contain it.

  The barren desert land, away from people, looked like the ideal place for its serenity and solitude. The wide horizons and the endless featureless terrain were the remedial ingredients for his tormented mind. He wanted thoughts-crystallisation that were stubbornly absent within the hustle and bustle of cities and towns.

  This was where, absurdly, his newly invented idea sprouted: to build a house in the middle of the western Iraqi desert.

  Sam remembered this as he sat with his back against a sand mound at his intended desert house, watching over the construction works. He chose a location about 150 km south of the village of Rawa, in the wide expanse of the Western Desert of Iraq. The Euphrates enters Iraq from the western border with Syria, flows eastward for a few hundred kilometres then heads south-east at Rawa towards the gulf. The area to the south of the Euphrates is the western Iraqi desert.

  He designed the house himself to be adequate but for a simple life. He hired labour from Rawa and ferried the construction material from there, too. It was tedious work, and he had to pay many times the normal price to get the necessary labour and transport to his location.

  It was not practical for the labourers, about 12 in total, to commute daily between Rawa and the construction site. So, he mad
e arrangements for them to stay on the site, in tents. Supplies of construction material, food, and water, were to be transported at agreed intervals.

  The work had been ongoing for the last 4 weeks, and the arrangements so far worked. It wasn’t necessarily a comfortable arrangement for the labourers, but they hadn’t complained; the highly inflated wages were a good incentive.

  It was around mid-December when they started, and the weather had been kind, nice blue skies and warm sunshine. The nights, though, were cold, and the canvas tents and the sleeping bags helped but to a certain extent. Dawn in the desert was spectacular, announcing its birth with a warm orange gesture of the sun, low in the clear skies above the horizon. Yes, this was what he needed, he thought. It was pure, innocent, and amazingly morale-boosting.

  When the sun cleared the horizon, it cleansed the desert from the cold night. It shone golden like a beautiful sunflower. The featureless terrain was eagerly waiting for the sunshine, too, for it became gleaming in the distance. All were welcoming the sun, and, most of all, his sad and miserable soul, too.

  For the labourers, the early mornings were difficult; leaving the warm sleeping bags to the cold morning needed an incentive. Rich breakfast -- fried eggs, French toasts, and coffee or tea -- helped. The cook, Zak, rose early to prepare the breakfast, and Sam was the man to prepare the coffee and tea. Sam’s incentive for the early rise was the beautiful morning sunshine and the beauty it brought with it.

  They had an LPG fuelled cooker, with four stoves. Zak would fry the eggs, and prepare Iraqi style French toasts, by frying Iraqi pita bread soaked in a mixture of beaten eggs and powdered milk. Sam prepared big pots of tea and coffee, made to the Iraqi way. A bunch of tea bags, boiled for many minutes, made the tea. The tea was served in Iraqi-style teacups, known locally as ‘Istikans,’ with lots of sugar. Most preferred the tea, but Sam preferred coffee.

  The work started at 8 am and stopped at 4 pm, with a one-hour break for lunch.

  The walls were three meters high by then, with the doors and windows openings clearly identifiable. It was, however, still too early to install the windows and doors frames.

  The foundations were the most difficult part of the building works. Digging the dunes with shovels wasn’t particularly easy; it was expensive, and difficult, to bring machine diggers from Rawa. The work continued fairly smoothly, with the foreman watching over the 10-man work team. He made sure the measurements were correct and to the design plan.

  One of the labourers brought a CD-player with a built-in FM and AM radio. It was battery-operated, and he had a good supply of batteries. There was no FM reception in that area, and the AM suffered static interference. He had CDs of Nancy Ajram and Elisa, the most popular female singer artists of the time. They were played non-stop, and most learnt the lyrics by heart within the first few days.

  Nancy Ajram was Sam’s favourite, and her music was a beautiful rhythm against the sound of the manual concrete mixer and the shouts and swearing of the labourers. The work atmosphere was warm and healthy, but he knew he would eventually be alone after the work was completed, and the workers went home. He had mixed feelings about this. He cherished the crowded environment of the works and the music, but he also longed to be alone, the purpose of building out there. This was not imminent, however, as at least a month’s worth of work was still outstanding.

  The works continued monotonously, interrupted only a couple of times. The first was when the weather turned sour, and a thunderstorm hit them. They couldn’t work for two days, and the tents provided but a little protection from the wind and rain. Sam slept in his own tent, and it fared no better. Fortunately, the storm passed quickly, and the following day saw fresh, clean air that smelled of the remote clouds that brought it. The rainwater was absorbed by the sandy terrain in no time, disappearing altogether, better than any city drainage could do.

  There was also an incident of a snake creeping into the site that scared some. Sam didn’t like snakes but wouldn’t let any of the labourers kill it. He used a spade to shove it away. It soon realised its predicament and went on its way.

  Scorpions were a different matter; they were killed on the spot. No one cherished being surprised by a scorpion in his sleeping bag.

  The delivery of construction supplies dwindled, as most had already been delivered by then. The supply of food and bottled water continued every week. There was always two-weeks’ worth of food and water in store in case the delivery could not be made for whatever reason.

  He remembered his initial planning wasn’t easy. He couldn't bring himself to share this absurd idea with his wife; he didn’t have the courage. Instead, he opted to talk to his cousin, Salam, first. As expected, Salam thought the idea was ill-advised. His life in Baghdad and his successful business might not be there should he decide to come back again to normality in the future.

  ‘What about your wife? She has the right to know. How would she feel about it?’

  ‘I don't know how she would react to this. I'm dreading telling her about it. I know she's not going to agree, or she will have lots of questions for which I have no answers,’ Sam explained.

  Salam had invited Sam to his house for dinner a few weeks before that. There were many guests there, and the discussions were the usual in such social events. At the end of dinner, when people started leaving, Salam came over to Sam’s side and asked,

  ‘You’ve been quiet most of the evening, Sam. Anything on your mind?’

  Salam is an intellectual, well-read, and considered a thinker amongst the people he knew. However, some saw him as a maverick, with out-of-this-world ideas and postulates. They listened to him and forgot what he said as soon as they left him. They joked about him in his absence, and that was the extent they went with his ideas.

  ‘Salam, I’m confused. This world is wrong, all wrong. So much injustice.’

  Salam didn’t respond immediately, he wanted to hear more.

  ‘There is so much suffering in this world. The poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer. Some say 80% of the population own 20% of the wealth. The remaining 80% of the wealth is owned by 20% of the population. The percentages are getting worse for the poor. And you know what, the wealthy would do anything against the poor to maintain this.’

  ‘Yes, this is true,’ Salam said.

  ‘The poor are dying from hunger and disease. Why is that?’

  ‘Some would say it’s human nature,’ Salam answered.

  ‘If there is a heavenly superpower, who is just and merciful, why allow this? Instead of asking the oppressed to wait to the afterlife for justice, why not now, in this life? What if there was no life after this?’

  ‘So, what do you think, Sam?’ Salam asked.

  ‘I don’t know, this is why I’m confused.’

  ‘Do you think humans are better than the divine in bringing justice and fairness?’ Salam asked.

  ‘Probably not. Look at the communist countries, where power is, in theory, in the hands of the poor and oppressed. They messed up big time and most abandoned their ideology. Don’t tell me the ideology is right, but the implementation was wrong. I don’t buy it. It seems to me that whenever humans get the taste of power, they oppress the rest who oppose them, irrespective of their ideology. That’s what happened in these countries. If you were a member of the communist party, your wealth and status would get better. Things are easy for those with connections. It’s been proven to be equally unfair,’ Sam said.

  Salam looked at Sam intently. Indeed, he was a lost soul. Salam himself was also a lost soul, although he hadn’t been vocal about it because he thought all around him lacked the intellectual capacity to understand him. But here, for the first time, he saw someone he could open his heart to. He had come to the conclusion years ago that neither a heavenly power nor human power had proven to be the saviours of the poor and the oppressed.

  ‘I’ve given this a lot of thought. There might be other superpowers in control, but humans haven’t been able to
comprehend them or communicate with them,’ Salam said.

  ‘What other powers?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Look, Sam, I know you are an engineer, with sound technical knowledge. I want you to listen carefully to what I’m going to say,’ Salam said.

  ‘I’m all ears,’ Sam answered with a smirk, remembering what other people thought of Salam. This was going to be another stray of mind that Salam was known for.

  ‘I want you to imagine that you lived some 400 years ago. Then someone came along and told you the earth was round, not flat. Would you have believed it?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Sam answered.

  ‘This is now common knowledge, and most think the flat earthers, who still claim the earth is flat, are idiots.’

  ‘Yes, I think they are idiots, too,’ Sam answered.

  ‘OK, imagine someone came to you to say the earth was not the centre of the universe. The earth went around the sun, rather than the sun went around the earth. But you see the sun goes round the earth between day and night. The moon does the same, and so does the milky Way. Would you have believed it?’

  ‘OK, I’m getting it. I wouldn’t have believed it. What’s this to do with our discussion?’ Sam asked impatiently.

  ‘Well, I want you, for our discussion, to keep an open mind. To believe the earth was round against all your senses, and that the earth was not the centre of the universe, either, if you lived 400 years ago. In other words, listen to the argument even if it sounds outlandish and against your senses like how the other ideas sounded 400 years ago. Are you ready?’

  Sam smiled but said nothing.

  ‘I’m sure when you played computer games, or when you watched your daughter play, you noticed how the games are getting better, and the screen resolution getting better and better to the extent the characters on the screen are not dissimilar to real characters in looks.’