The Five Greatest Regrets of Sayid Jarrah
Title: The Five Greatest Regrets of Sayid Jarrah
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Sayid. mentions of Ben, Michael, Shannon, Widmore, Nadia, Essam.
Warnings: Spoilers for all Sayid-centric episodes.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They own me.
Summary: Post rescue Sayid reflects on his greatest regrets of his life.
For Queen that_evening, who requested Sayid.
#5. His name isn’t Kevin Johnson. It’s Michael Dawson, and he’s a traitor.
Sayid hadn’t believed Michael the day they confronted each other on the freighter. This was, after all, the man who had murdered two of their people, then led three more into captivity by the Others. And now here he was, telling Sayid that he was under orders from Ben to kill everyone on board the freighter because supposedly bad things were going to happen if the people from the freighter landed on the island.
Ben was a liar, Sayid knew. He’d do anything to prevent escape from the island. It was easy for Sayid to believe that this was just another attempt of Ben’s to stop anyone leaving. Michael may have fallen for it, but Sayid hadn’t.
He was still unsure how far he could trust the freighter people at that time. But he knew he didn’t trust either Michael or Ben. This freighter represented his last hope of leaving the island, the chance to finally know for sure what happened to Nadia.
That was why he had marched Michael to Captain Gault and revealed his true identity.
it wasn't long before he discovered that Ben and Michael had been right all along.
He remembers Karl, the kid who had come to warn Sawyer about the Others' plan for the pregnant women. He remembers Danielle and Alex, mother and daughter only just reunited after 16 years of separation, all innocent victims in Widmore's war. And now Sayid's and Ben's, united in grief for Nadia and Alex respectively.
He'd told Essam once in Sydney that their terrorist plans were to serve the greater good. He is reminded of this now every time he kills another nameless, faceless man, yet still never feeling that Nadia's death has been avenged.
Avellino had meant nothing to him. Elsa was different. He had found that he had come to care for her by the end, although she could never be Nadia.
And now he has the name Penelope Widmore.
He barely knows Penelope. No reason why he should, since in the official story Desmond and Penny had nothing to do with the Oceanic Six. He does know that they are now on the run, far away from Widmore and also from Ben.
He doesn't really know Penelope. But he knows Desmond well. And he knows what it's like to be separated from the one person you love, to be reunited with them after several years only to have them cruelly snatched away.
He doesn't want to put Desmond through what he went through himself.
Ben's mocking gaze meets Sayid’s as he explains this to his employer. He coldly reminds Sayid of his words in Iraq that day when he killed Bakir. "Don't tell me that this is not my war. Benjamin...who's next?"
He reminds Sayid of Alex, killed by Keamy after Sayid thwarted Michael's sabotage operation.
He doesn't have to remind him of Nadia, whose face still haunts him every night.
They should have followed Desmond and Penny's example, disappeared somewhere they would never be found.
They would still be together now.
And Sayid would not be repaying this debt to Ben, torn between loyalty to his friend and avenging the woman he loves.
#4. You are following a Labrador, not a bloodhound, in an effort to find a boy who's on a raft in the middle of the ocean.
Sayid hadn't believed Shannon either, when she told him she had seen Walt that night.
They'd all seen Walt with their own eyes, leaving on the raft with Michael, Jin and Sawyer. Sayid couldn't see how it was possible for him to have appeared to Shannon like that and then disappeared so suddenly. The only way it could have happened was if it had been a nightmare. In fact, when Sun, fearing for Jin's safety, had questioned Shannon, she had told Sun herself that she believed it to have been a nightmare, brought on by the stress of Boone's death. it was much easier for Sayid to believe that.
Easier, that is, until he saw Walt himself.
He's wondered since what difference it would have made had he taken Shannon seriously. Possibly not much. She'd still have wanted to go looking for him, and possibly would still have collided with Ana in the jungle.
But she wouldn't have died believing Sayid saw her as worthless.
Sayid knew about how her father had died, and that she was still grieving for Boone. The two most important people in her life, gone when she needed them most. And from what little he knew about her earlier relationships, he knew she had come to expect people to leave her after only a short time.
But what Sayid regretted was that he could not honestly answer the question of how things could have been different had Shannon survived.
The day he tortured Ben in the hatch, every kick, every blow had been for Shannon.
But since he left the island, he's barely thought of her at all.
He can't speak of her to Nadia. In the version she knows, Shannon didn't survive the crash. And the Oceanic Six have an unspoken agreement not to speak of those left behind.
He can never speak of his regrets that he was unable to protect Shannon.
He can never admit to his regrets that he could not be the person Shannon deserved.
#3. if you ever want to see her again, you're gonna talk your good friend Essam into blowing himself up.
Sayid still remembers the uncertainty he felt as he walked along the corridor towards 4-15, his room in his new hall of residence in Cairo University, wondering where he would ever fit in with the other new starters.
But when he pushed open the door to his room, the guy who was already in there unpacking gave him a welcoming smile.
"Hello," he said. "My name is Essam Tasir."
And as Sayid accepted his outstretched hand, he looked into Essam's eyes and knew they would become friends.
Sayid had listened to Essam speaking of his philosophy degree and wondering where it would take him in the future. Sayid knew by this time that he was destined to follow his father into the Republican Guard. He thinks he'd prefer it if he were in Essam's shoes.
Essam was Sayid's first friend in Cairo, and he remained his best one. Even when Essam met Zahra, the woman he went on to marry, he and Sayid never drifted apart, in fact Sayid gained a friend in Zahra.
That day at Sharm El Sheikh, right before their English exam, Sayid and Essam swore that they would always remain friends. At the time, they believed it. But as often happens, real life got in the way.
And after 6 years in the Republican Guard, Sayid didn't want his friends to know what he had become.
It had been hard to believe at first when Agents Cole and Hewitt had tracked him down and told him about Essam's alleged terrorist activities. That didn’t sound like the Essam he knew. But maybe Essam hadn't wanted his friends to know what he had become either.
But they showed him a file on Essam, details of exactly what he had been up to in the years since they last saw each other. Sayid had hated himself as he asked after Zahra, knowing as he did that she had been killed in a bomb blast fifteen months earlier. But he couldn’t let Essam know that he had seen the file. He had to continue the farce.
And he hated himself still more as he continued to encourage Essam in this fatal errand, knowing as he did that Essam was no longer sure he could go through with it. He needed to know where Nadia was, needed to know for his own peace of mind. But at the same time, he couldn’t let Essam go through with this.
The agents had given him a choice: Nadia or Essam. His long lost love or his closest friend. They were trying to tell him it was one or the other. But Sayid thought there must be a way he could have both.
Instead, Essam went to his grave believing Sayid had betrayed him.
He’ll never know now what the outcome would have been if he had been upfront with Essam sooner. Maybe he would have taken the opportunity to run. Or maybe not, maybe he would have gone ahead with it anyway.
Sayid will never know.
Arranging for a decent Muslim burial was the last decent thing Sayid could do for his friend. But it doesn’t make up for what he did. And it doesn’t make up for all the years he didn’t spend with his friend, years in which he could maybe have seen that Essam never fell in with that crowd anyway.
Essam was Sayid’s first close friend. And he remains his last one.
#2. You want to know who I am? My name is Sayid Jarrah, and I am a torturer.
From an early age, it had been understood that Sayid would follow in his father’s footsteps and join the Republican Guard. What other possible future could there be for the son of Hassan Jarrah?
Hassan Jarrah had been regarded as a hero for his deeds in the war, and he had died a hero’s death. "You must do your father proud," Fatima Jarrah had said the day Sayid had first enlisted in the Republican Guard. "It would’ve meant a lot for him had he been here to see this day. He was a brave soldier, and a good man."
Of course, Hassan had enlisted before Saddam Hussein came to power, when it was still possible for the Iraqi army to stand for good things.
People often said of Sayid that he looked very like his father. He had been given his father’s name for a middle name.
But he sometimes thought his family had forgotten that he was Sayid, not Hassan.
"Do not disgrace your father," Tariq had said to Sayid the day Austen and Inman had taken Sayid to him in order to find the whereabouts of the American pilot. But were not the acts committed a disgrace to Sayid’s own self? Sayid had justified his behaviour that day by remembering the film the Americans had shown him of the attacks on the village where his family lived, the attacks said to have been ordered by Tariq. He had gone on to tell Inman that he would never do that again. But he had, countless times.
There was always some way for him to justify these attacks to himself. But he never reached the point, as others did, where he was able to feel disconnected from his actions. These people were never nameless and faceless to Sayid. Tariq, Amira, all the faces still haunted him every night.
Yet until he met Amira again, he never gave a thought to the fact that that his own face may be haunting them too.
He’d felt able to justify his actions towards Sawyer, too, believing that he was deliberately withholding Shannon’s lifesaving medication, and that he was behind the sabotage of Sayid’s attempt to triangulate Rousseau’s distress call.
And the day he tortured Ben, well, he was one of Them, who kidnapped Walt and Claire, hung Charlie from a tree.
When Sayid kills for Ben, he still feels the action is justified. To him, every person represents Bakir, the man who killed Nadia in cold blood. With the exception of Elsa, and in a way Penelope, these people have meant nothing to him. They are the nameless faceless people his torture victims never were.
Sayid never sees their faces when he sleeps at night. In fact, he barely takes in their faces when he kills them. The face he sees each time is that of Bakir.
There is no torture involved when Sayid kills for Ben, just pressure on the trigger and it’s over.
He thinks he prefers it this way.
#1. I can’t. Desertion. They would kill my family. I don’t have your courage.
Sayid knew as soon as Nadia left that it had been a mistake not to leave with her.
He knew as he repeated the tale of how Nadia had stolen his gun, killed Omar and shot Sayid in the leg, during the enquiry into events of that day.
He knew, when he was informed by his new commanding officer that they were satisfied with Sayid’s version of events, that Sayid was exonerated from all blame and was free to rejoin his regiment. For he knew that as long as he remained in the Republican Guard, that he could never be free, not as long as this government was in power, this government who did everything to crush free spirits such as Nadia’s, who would have people killed for merely speaking their mind.
And he knew when he encountered a man, the brother of one of the victims of the bombing in which Nadia stood accused of involvement, desperate for revenge on Nadia and attempting to get to her through Sayid. He’d claimed that Nadia was dead, executed after returning to Iraq for Sayid. Later, he had admitted that he had no idea whether Nadia was alive or dead and had merely said that to obtain a confession. This had been the catalyst for Sayid to leave Iraq forever. But he’d never been sure, even as he searched for Nadia, even as he was given the lead to her whereabouts in Irvine, which version was the true one. That’s why he told Rousseau that Nadia was dead because of him.
Sayid reflects now on how things may have been different if he had left with Nadia when he had the chance. Maybe they would have settled in California, maybe in England. He doesn’t know.
But what he does know is that he would never have been on Flight 815.
He would never have met Ben, never been on the island, never tortured Sawyer, never become involved in the war with Widmore.
Nadia would most likely have been alive today.
And if Sayid had left with Nadia in 1997, then his regrets from the intervening time would never have happened.
Fandom: Lost
Characters: Sayid. mentions of Ben, Michael, Shannon, Widmore, Nadia, Essam.
Warnings: Spoilers for all Sayid-centric episodes.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They own me.
Summary: Post rescue Sayid reflects on his greatest regrets of his life.
For Queen that_evening, who requested Sayid.
#5. His name isn’t Kevin Johnson. It’s Michael Dawson, and he’s a traitor.
Sayid hadn’t believed Michael the day they confronted each other on the freighter. This was, after all, the man who had murdered two of their people, then led three more into captivity by the Others. And now here he was, telling Sayid that he was under orders from Ben to kill everyone on board the freighter because supposedly bad things were going to happen if the people from the freighter landed on the island.
Ben was a liar, Sayid knew. He’d do anything to prevent escape from the island. It was easy for Sayid to believe that this was just another attempt of Ben’s to stop anyone leaving. Michael may have fallen for it, but Sayid hadn’t.
He was still unsure how far he could trust the freighter people at that time. But he knew he didn’t trust either Michael or Ben. This freighter represented his last hope of leaving the island, the chance to finally know for sure what happened to Nadia.
That was why he had marched Michael to Captain Gault and revealed his true identity.
it wasn't long before he discovered that Ben and Michael had been right all along.
He remembers Karl, the kid who had come to warn Sawyer about the Others' plan for the pregnant women. He remembers Danielle and Alex, mother and daughter only just reunited after 16 years of separation, all innocent victims in Widmore's war. And now Sayid's and Ben's, united in grief for Nadia and Alex respectively.
He'd told Essam once in Sydney that their terrorist plans were to serve the greater good. He is reminded of this now every time he kills another nameless, faceless man, yet still never feeling that Nadia's death has been avenged.
Avellino had meant nothing to him. Elsa was different. He had found that he had come to care for her by the end, although she could never be Nadia.
And now he has the name Penelope Widmore.
He barely knows Penelope. No reason why he should, since in the official story Desmond and Penny had nothing to do with the Oceanic Six. He does know that they are now on the run, far away from Widmore and also from Ben.
He doesn't really know Penelope. But he knows Desmond well. And he knows what it's like to be separated from the one person you love, to be reunited with them after several years only to have them cruelly snatched away.
He doesn't want to put Desmond through what he went through himself.
Ben's mocking gaze meets Sayid’s as he explains this to his employer. He coldly reminds Sayid of his words in Iraq that day when he killed Bakir. "Don't tell me that this is not my war. Benjamin...who's next?"
He reminds Sayid of Alex, killed by Keamy after Sayid thwarted Michael's sabotage operation.
He doesn't have to remind him of Nadia, whose face still haunts him every night.
They should have followed Desmond and Penny's example, disappeared somewhere they would never be found.
They would still be together now.
And Sayid would not be repaying this debt to Ben, torn between loyalty to his friend and avenging the woman he loves.
#4. You are following a Labrador, not a bloodhound, in an effort to find a boy who's on a raft in the middle of the ocean.
Sayid hadn't believed Shannon either, when she told him she had seen Walt that night.
They'd all seen Walt with their own eyes, leaving on the raft with Michael, Jin and Sawyer. Sayid couldn't see how it was possible for him to have appeared to Shannon like that and then disappeared so suddenly. The only way it could have happened was if it had been a nightmare. In fact, when Sun, fearing for Jin's safety, had questioned Shannon, she had told Sun herself that she believed it to have been a nightmare, brought on by the stress of Boone's death. it was much easier for Sayid to believe that.
Easier, that is, until he saw Walt himself.
He's wondered since what difference it would have made had he taken Shannon seriously. Possibly not much. She'd still have wanted to go looking for him, and possibly would still have collided with Ana in the jungle.
But she wouldn't have died believing Sayid saw her as worthless.
Sayid knew about how her father had died, and that she was still grieving for Boone. The two most important people in her life, gone when she needed them most. And from what little he knew about her earlier relationships, he knew she had come to expect people to leave her after only a short time.
But what Sayid regretted was that he could not honestly answer the question of how things could have been different had Shannon survived.
The day he tortured Ben in the hatch, every kick, every blow had been for Shannon.
But since he left the island, he's barely thought of her at all.
He can't speak of her to Nadia. In the version she knows, Shannon didn't survive the crash. And the Oceanic Six have an unspoken agreement not to speak of those left behind.
He can never speak of his regrets that he was unable to protect Shannon.
He can never admit to his regrets that he could not be the person Shannon deserved.
#3. if you ever want to see her again, you're gonna talk your good friend Essam into blowing himself up.
Sayid still remembers the uncertainty he felt as he walked along the corridor towards 4-15, his room in his new hall of residence in Cairo University, wondering where he would ever fit in with the other new starters.
But when he pushed open the door to his room, the guy who was already in there unpacking gave him a welcoming smile.
"Hello," he said. "My name is Essam Tasir."
And as Sayid accepted his outstretched hand, he looked into Essam's eyes and knew they would become friends.
Sayid had listened to Essam speaking of his philosophy degree and wondering where it would take him in the future. Sayid knew by this time that he was destined to follow his father into the Republican Guard. He thinks he'd prefer it if he were in Essam's shoes.
Essam was Sayid's first friend in Cairo, and he remained his best one. Even when Essam met Zahra, the woman he went on to marry, he and Sayid never drifted apart, in fact Sayid gained a friend in Zahra.
That day at Sharm El Sheikh, right before their English exam, Sayid and Essam swore that they would always remain friends. At the time, they believed it. But as often happens, real life got in the way.
And after 6 years in the Republican Guard, Sayid didn't want his friends to know what he had become.
It had been hard to believe at first when Agents Cole and Hewitt had tracked him down and told him about Essam's alleged terrorist activities. That didn’t sound like the Essam he knew. But maybe Essam hadn't wanted his friends to know what he had become either.
But they showed him a file on Essam, details of exactly what he had been up to in the years since they last saw each other. Sayid had hated himself as he asked after Zahra, knowing as he did that she had been killed in a bomb blast fifteen months earlier. But he couldn’t let Essam know that he had seen the file. He had to continue the farce.
And he hated himself still more as he continued to encourage Essam in this fatal errand, knowing as he did that Essam was no longer sure he could go through with it. He needed to know where Nadia was, needed to know for his own peace of mind. But at the same time, he couldn’t let Essam go through with this.
The agents had given him a choice: Nadia or Essam. His long lost love or his closest friend. They were trying to tell him it was one or the other. But Sayid thought there must be a way he could have both.
Instead, Essam went to his grave believing Sayid had betrayed him.
He’ll never know now what the outcome would have been if he had been upfront with Essam sooner. Maybe he would have taken the opportunity to run. Or maybe not, maybe he would have gone ahead with it anyway.
Sayid will never know.
Arranging for a decent Muslim burial was the last decent thing Sayid could do for his friend. But it doesn’t make up for what he did. And it doesn’t make up for all the years he didn’t spend with his friend, years in which he could maybe have seen that Essam never fell in with that crowd anyway.
Essam was Sayid’s first close friend. And he remains his last one.
#2. You want to know who I am? My name is Sayid Jarrah, and I am a torturer.
From an early age, it had been understood that Sayid would follow in his father’s footsteps and join the Republican Guard. What other possible future could there be for the son of Hassan Jarrah?
Hassan Jarrah had been regarded as a hero for his deeds in the war, and he had died a hero’s death. "You must do your father proud," Fatima Jarrah had said the day Sayid had first enlisted in the Republican Guard. "It would’ve meant a lot for him had he been here to see this day. He was a brave soldier, and a good man."
Of course, Hassan had enlisted before Saddam Hussein came to power, when it was still possible for the Iraqi army to stand for good things.
People often said of Sayid that he looked very like his father. He had been given his father’s name for a middle name.
But he sometimes thought his family had forgotten that he was Sayid, not Hassan.
"Do not disgrace your father," Tariq had said to Sayid the day Austen and Inman had taken Sayid to him in order to find the whereabouts of the American pilot. But were not the acts committed a disgrace to Sayid’s own self? Sayid had justified his behaviour that day by remembering the film the Americans had shown him of the attacks on the village where his family lived, the attacks said to have been ordered by Tariq. He had gone on to tell Inman that he would never do that again. But he had, countless times.
There was always some way for him to justify these attacks to himself. But he never reached the point, as others did, where he was able to feel disconnected from his actions. These people were never nameless and faceless to Sayid. Tariq, Amira, all the faces still haunted him every night.
Yet until he met Amira again, he never gave a thought to the fact that that his own face may be haunting them too.
He’d felt able to justify his actions towards Sawyer, too, believing that he was deliberately withholding Shannon’s lifesaving medication, and that he was behind the sabotage of Sayid’s attempt to triangulate Rousseau’s distress call.
And the day he tortured Ben, well, he was one of Them, who kidnapped Walt and Claire, hung Charlie from a tree.
When Sayid kills for Ben, he still feels the action is justified. To him, every person represents Bakir, the man who killed Nadia in cold blood. With the exception of Elsa, and in a way Penelope, these people have meant nothing to him. They are the nameless faceless people his torture victims never were.
Sayid never sees their faces when he sleeps at night. In fact, he barely takes in their faces when he kills them. The face he sees each time is that of Bakir.
There is no torture involved when Sayid kills for Ben, just pressure on the trigger and it’s over.
He thinks he prefers it this way.
#1. I can’t. Desertion. They would kill my family. I don’t have your courage.
Sayid knew as soon as Nadia left that it had been a mistake not to leave with her.
He knew as he repeated the tale of how Nadia had stolen his gun, killed Omar and shot Sayid in the leg, during the enquiry into events of that day.
He knew, when he was informed by his new commanding officer that they were satisfied with Sayid’s version of events, that Sayid was exonerated from all blame and was free to rejoin his regiment. For he knew that as long as he remained in the Republican Guard, that he could never be free, not as long as this government was in power, this government who did everything to crush free spirits such as Nadia’s, who would have people killed for merely speaking their mind.
And he knew when he encountered a man, the brother of one of the victims of the bombing in which Nadia stood accused of involvement, desperate for revenge on Nadia and attempting to get to her through Sayid. He’d claimed that Nadia was dead, executed after returning to Iraq for Sayid. Later, he had admitted that he had no idea whether Nadia was alive or dead and had merely said that to obtain a confession. This had been the catalyst for Sayid to leave Iraq forever. But he’d never been sure, even as he searched for Nadia, even as he was given the lead to her whereabouts in Irvine, which version was the true one. That’s why he told Rousseau that Nadia was dead because of him.
Sayid reflects now on how things may have been different if he had left with Nadia when he had the chance. Maybe they would have settled in California, maybe in England. He doesn’t know.
But what he does know is that he would never have been on Flight 815.
He would never have met Ben, never been on the island, never tortured Sawyer, never become involved in the war with Widmore.
Nadia would most likely have been alive today.
And if Sayid had left with Nadia in 1997, then his regrets from the intervening time would never have happened.