"Abdel Qader"

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 19^th 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.

A strand of defiance flickered inside her, borrowed from the faltering rigidity of the structure before her, before it was brushed away by the lethargy that ate at everyone around her, and she hung her head, avoided the blank green stare of the building, and turned to walk away.