An excerpt from something I've been working on (very on-and-off).
واستسلم الحكام بعجلة وكأنهم
كانوا ينتظرون فرجهم... كأنهم لم يريدوا البقاء والدفاع عن شعبنا من البداية.
Beirut, Lebanon. 21st C.
Crossing the street becomes laborious, nerve-wrecking.
People are just sick of each other, of being at each other’s throats all the
time, and they just ignore what happens beyond their day-to-day. Fighting over
a parking spot is cathartic, an outlet for so much more anger and anxiety, and
it makes things seem normal, if slightly uncivilized. But uncivilized
makes reality immediate, present, allowing for a focus other than the city
crumbling to bits around them. And on their heads most of the time. Engineers
seemed to see that the end would be in rubble as the large claws of “progress”
and “urbanization” ripped at the defiant and still recusant 19th
century structure, its green shutters gaping at the disinterested passers-by,
as though trying to stare them down, surprised they walked by silently.
Aminah was not surprised, and the artifact, this relic of a
mythologized grandeur and beauty, should know better. It was among the very few
remaining after an onslaught of demolition in the past few years, stronger even
than before, had set its teeth on what remained of the history of their direct
ancestors. Roman and Greek structures remained, unlivable but tourist worthy,
while the more recently historical face of the city, what was now the basis of
what Beirut is, was being torn down to be replaced by a faceless, cultureless,
and grey metropolis.
