Come in. Step out of the cold and into the glow. Coat check’s to your left, your innocence to the right. Take a good look around — faces in shadow, hands wrapped around crystal glasses, and in the back, the band’s letting a muted trumpet weep like it’s got its own sins to confess. You’re in Fundji’s now, and in this joint, the truth is poured like contraband gin — all bite, no apologies.
You see, in this little corner of the world, “terrorist” isn’t about morality. No, no, no. It’s a costume. A role. Something they sew onto your name until the lighting hits right, the politics turn, and someone backstage decides you look better in a tailored suit than behind bars. And when that happens — poof — you’re respectable. Overnight. No dry cleaner could pull off a transformation faster.
Take Nelson Mandela — oh, the long con that one pulled, or rather, had pulled on him. America kept his name in the “dangerous” drawer until two shakes away from his 90th birthday. All those years after the Nobel, after shaking the chains of apartheid off his country, after seating himself in the president’s chair — still officially a “terrorist” in the U.S. files. The tune changed not because the song was wrong, but because it was bad for business to keep humming it.
And Yasser Arafat — ah, the man who made airports interesting for all the wrong reasons. Back in the day, boarding a plane under his sky was like buying a ticket for a mystery show: destination unknown. The world cursed his name, swore he’d never sit at the table. And then, as if somebody flipped the record, he’s picking up a Nobel Peace Prize and smiling next to the very men who, a decade earlier, would have had him searched, cuffed, and dragged out the back door.
Abbas — quieter, but just as slippery. He turned payouts for jailed or dead attackers into something he’d call welfare, as if international outrage could be soothed with stationery and official stamps. Washington frothed, the headlines boiled, but the money lines never went dry. Oh, names and details shifted, sure — a fresh label on the same old bottle. That’s the way things run in here.
And then there’s al-Jolani — now, there’s a miracle act. Started in the Al-Qaeda circuit, a wanted man with a price on his head. But swap the fatigues for pinstripes, get yourself brushed up as a “regional power broker,” and suddenly the dance card’s full. Champagne with Macron, handshakes with Trump, polite nods from those who once promised they’d never share the same air as him. He didn’t erase his past. He just walked right over it into the VIP lounge.
It’s not just the people that get this dance. Places do too. Palestine — for so long the political equivalent of a ghost: talked about, invoked, but never invited. The very same governments that spat the word “recognition” like it tasted wrong now purr it into microphones, glasses raised, welcoming the “State of Palestine” in polite company. Nothing changed on the ground — not the dust, not the fences, not the leaders — only in the scented air of diplomatic parlors where decisions dress themselves as revelations.
But don’t think for a second it’s all champagne and cigar smoke. Behind all that, there’s the ledger — the blacklists. They’re kept locked up tighter than our best bootleg in the cellar. Who’s on? Who’s off? Who’s guilty of what? Only the ones writing them know, and they’re not in the habit of speaking to people without titles. It’s not law; it’s choreography. You’re listed until you’re needed. And once you’re off, nobody mentions the paperwork again.
After 9/11, Brussels scribbled names like a barman pouring doubles on a Friday night. Basques, Tigers, FARC — terrorists by label, enemies of useful friends in truth. The asset freezes? Mostly theater. The real currency was favors, traded like cigarettes under the table. The same crimes were condemned in one set of hands and excused in another. There’s no consistency in the moral compass here — it points straight toward whoever’s paying for the round.
And oh, the cocktail that is the Middle East. Iran holding Baghdad steady. Baghdad doing its own dirty work but never tasting blacklist ink. ISIS smashing in like uninvited drunks and getting stamped, loudly, undeniably, as terrorists — hard to argue with that one — but the only real bouncers stopping them are the Kurds. Trouble is, the PKK patch on their shoulders brands them “terrorists” too, so the West has to slide weapons across the floor in legal limbo, pretending they’re for “general safety” while knowing exactly which hands will hold them.
And there, lovely, is the house truth, the thing I serve to every new patron before the night gets loud: “terrorist” is never forever. It’s just a hat they put on you while you’re inconvenient. Stick around long enough, and maybe you’ll be swapping that hat for a crown, a presidential sash, or a Nobel medal. Villains graduate into dinner guests all the time around here. Sometimes, it even happens mid-meal.
So drink up. Out there, they pretend it’s complicated, moral, principled. In here, we know it’s just casting calls and costume changes. The music’s about to start; the boys in the band are tuning up. And as I always say — in Fundji’s, hypocrisy’s on tap, and the first round of double standards is always, always on the house.
