Assyriska? Syrianska? Sodertalje? Jibberish? No, just something I wrote a while ago.

If you live in the relatively obscure city of Södertälje, part of Stockholm county (consult Wikipedia for a geography lesson – let’s just say it’s pretty close to the city of Stockholm) and you happen to follow a local football team, then it is highly likely that you are of non-Swedish ancestry.   By that, I mean you are a migrant to Sweden.  If not, then your parents most probably were.  No, this isn’t some sort of prejudicial assertion, it’s a simple fact inherent in the nature of the demographics & recreational inclinations of the people of  Södertälje.  

Being only (let's just say not that many) kilometres from the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, home to some gigantic clubs like AIK, Djurgardens and Hammarby, means the average Swede tends to follow one of these clubs.  However, to about 40% of people in Södertälje, there are only two teams in town worth supporting – Assyriska Södertälje Foreningen and Syrianska Football Club.  Like I said earlier, the vast majority (I would say 98%) of the supporters of these teams are composed of immigrants.  To be specific, immigrants from the Middle East (overwhelmingly Christian and members of the Syriac Orthodox church, not to be confused with the unrelated independent nation ‘Syria’ to which there is no connection), all escaping religious and at times even civil persecution as well as the hardships associated with being a minority group in a country whose government is generally indifferent to witnessing your extinction.   

A quick history of things:

1960s – wave of migration from Turkey during the Turkish-Cypriot conflicts by Syriac Christians.

1970 – Assyrian association in Soderalje is formed.

1974 – a football club, Assyriska Foreningen, is established in the city of Sodertalje.  The name Assyriska is Swedish, and it translates to “Assyrian” in English.

1977 – a rival club is formed in Sodertalje by people from the very same group of migrants as described above.  This football club was named “Syrianska”, which translated to “Syriac” in English.

Added to rouse interest.

So, what we have here is a collective group of people, united by their church affiliation, but divided by their nationalistic ideals.  That is, Assyriska’s members associate themselves with the Assyrian nationalism movement while Syrianska’s members fight the separatist “Aramean” cause (which, by their questionable reasoning, somehow through history has come to mean “Syriac” – to their own convenience).   

It is quite sad that I, myself an Assyrian, have to face the reality that my own people do not even agree on their identity.  Thus, we are becoming the architects of our own downfall (this a topic for another place and another time).    

You’ll notice that on Syrianska’s jerseys, rather than having a sponsor, they have “Suryoyo” which is a way these people identified themselves for the past hundreds of years in the Middle East.  Now, this is a common term used by both sides to describe their ethnicity.   It's difficult to comprehend how these two seemingly opposing groups (they save the greatest hatred for each other you see, rather than for, oh let's say the government which oversaw their genocide during the first World War) were in fact one before their mass migrations to Sweden, via Southern Turkey, which was the Western part of the ancient Assyrian Empire. 

What subsequently followed was a comically tragic demarcation of opinion on how "Suryoyo" was to be translated from the native language to Swedish and beyond.  Ignore the fact that you have referred to yourself with the same name in your native language for hundreds of years, but rather throw into the works a bone of contention rergarding the small matter of your ethnic identity only once you decide to translate this name into another language.  Assyriska supporters claim Suryoyo = Assyrian.  The exact transformation is difficult to get your head around:  Suryoyo = Suroyo (the “y” was added for reasons beyond me, but it is irrelevant since BOTH groups agree on it).  Go back in time, and what was called Assur was called by the Greeks Sur, dropping the A, hence the historical transformation of the word Suroyo, which is Suraya in the other Eastern dialect of the language.  Quite simple really.  The people of the Assyrian empire continued to live even after the empire collapsed, coming under other rules but still maintaining their identity as Suraye/Suroyo (= Assurayeh, also known as Atourayeh) the “ss” is actually a “sh” sound, hence the common name amongst Assyrian of “Ashur”.  So, to summarise, Suryoyo = Suroyo = Othoroyo = Assyrian = Assyriska!

And there you have it, a useless piece which will be read by no more than one person and commented on by even less.  Hoorah for the internetzzz.

Now, a song which may or may not relate but qualifies for it's sheer awesomeness.

/Chile out

Prolixing life away

...I think the purpose of life is to find a purpose.  Consider that pointless rhetoric but in truth we are born confused and confide in moments where we piece things together but in the end, what we fear the most is to not conform with the general conventions in this world, which lay a limited and exhaustive list of accepted paths one must take to be deemed to have had a purposeful or meaningful life.

Now here are some pictures.

Once opened, your heart will just be picked out by vultures, their friends, family and pets who decide to run away or get run over, thus ruining your childhood.  Pets suck.  Your life is a box of chocolates. 


































You can't see it, but it's there.  Like a stalker.  Come to think of it, celebrities aren't as lucky as we might think - their stalkers just suck and get caught in the act.  I'd like to think that I have a really, really good stalker.  You've probably noticed the existence (or -non?) of air before.

You intimidate me, but almost certainly no one or anything else.  You are flowers.

  Even if I have never met you before, and know absolutely nothing about your life, I probably know one thing - your best friend is a box.  Or a rectangle.  And as time goes by, it's only socially acceptable if your friend is alarmingly anorexic.  Your friend essentially raised you without any physical contact.  Your friend is a television.

 
Your purpose in life is to stifle.  Even when your ideals coincide with ours, we sense an ulterior motive and move on to something else.  You've won already.  Parents, come forward.

 
Don't let the smiles fool you, or the fancy suits, they're both manufactured and designed to do just that.  I hate you.  You hate it.  You are death personified; the quicker and less agonising is most desirable.  Death provides freedom.  You give us currency to enjoy 48 hours of freedom for every 120 of torture.  This is work, and nobody is your friend.

The fruit of persisting with that abhorred associate.  No expiration date but as time goes by we need more of it.  Not only that but we sometimes get the urge to kill for an extra slice of kiwi fruit.  The best tasting fruits are the ones which take the most effort to prepare for hearty consumption. It's money that I crave.  Slavery still exists.