This post is also available in: Français (French) العربية (Arabic)
Everything would be much lighter if we lived somewhere else, some place not ruled by war and major conflict. Somewhere where politics doesn’t seep in through every door, every window, every crevice.
If only our biggest worry were where to spend our summer vacation, where to buy Christmas presents this year, how to celebrate the return of spring or the end of summer. Instead, we are using all our energy to find somewhere safe to flee with our families, far from Beirut, the South, and the Beqaa—the regions of Lebanon that are witnessing violent shelling.
If I were there, anywhere, not here, I wouldn’t have to, for instance, look up and read about the meaning of ballistic weapons and air-to-air or surface-to-surface missiles. I wouldn’t have to figure out the difference between a jet and a drone, nor read up on the dimensions of a ground invasion and the mad history that sometimes repeats itself and sometimes morphs into a new type of tragedy.
Mornings would have been normal, like the mornings of many people in countries around the world: coffee with a nice morning show on the radio about the importance of healthy meals for psychological stability, or a day that starts out with sports and music. Or even meeting some pigeons on my way and sharing my cheese sandwich with them. They’d tell me about the sky and I’d tell them about the earth, about wheat, about people.
That could have been possible for us; psychological stability would have been a simple, obvious goal, and these nice shows would have had many listeners and millions of followers—who would not have been classified as marginal people uninterested in public affairs—only if we lived somewhere normal. A place where war isn’t fed to us with our mothers’ milk and where fear doesn't come along with our daily bread that we hope will last us the day.
We lose what makes us ourselves as these ongoing wars force us to slip away from who we really are.
Our simplest dreams have become impossible. We must acknowledge the curse that governs us and dictates to us a fate of complexity. We are forced to disguise ourselves, to hide from the daylight, from the bombing, from the madmen. We are forced to struggle during the day and stay up all night so as not to collapse and to continue the “party.” Naturally, we became experts in everything from a young age: economic, financial, and political crises, wars and heavy weapons, military and field strategies… lest we understand what is going on around us. If we are going to die soon, we still have the right to know what bullet we’re going to die from, whether it’s Israeli, Iranian, Russian, or local.
I’m surprised by my newfound ability to analyze military and political affairs in conjunction with the war that’s been imposed on Lebanon and the military battles that have expanded here. I’ve become fluent in plans and strategy, as if I’d been born in a barracks. But this is very sad. We lose what makes us ourselves as these ongoing wars force us to slip away from who we really are. We become harsh and analyze war as if it were some picnic we have no part in.
A cousin of mine, barely eighteen years old, stated to me in no uncertain terms that the Israeli bombing would be concentrated in a neighborhood near her house the following night. I asked her how she knew that, and she confidently shared her colleague’s analysis. She was so sure about it. But all I could think of was: why should a girl at the beginning of her life be worrying about which area will be bombed tonight? Why should she be afraid of death reaching a neighborhood near her home when she could have been living in a normal place where she’d be planning her future and starting to achieve her dreams? Instead of sitting at home with schools and universities on hold, waiting for a miracle to end the war or grant people a truce?
Had we been living anywhere else, I could have written something lighter, simpler, instead of this entry. Something about love maybe, or about the trends for Fall/Winter 2025… but we live in the Middle East.
