I’m going to tell you a personal story that often comes to my mind whenever I see political turmoil around the world circulated on the news.
It’s the summer after grade one in 2006 and I’m six years old. I’m sitting at my grandparents’ house, and like most Arab households, they have the news on. I see shooting and fire. People are running and screaming; people are dying. I read the news and discover that it’s happening in Lebanon. I begin to cry.
I’m spending my summer in Egypt, and my best friend (at the time) who is Lebanese, is probably spending her summer in Lebanon. As a six-year-old, I have no way of contacting my friends to check in on them: no email, no Facebook and no other place than school to bring us together. I assume she died. When you’re six and you see something like that on T.V, you think, “Well that’s the whole country; everybody is dead.” I spend the entire summer feeling anxious about going back to school because I’m afraid she isn’t going to be there.
That day finally comes and I walk into my school.
There she is.
I can’t describe how happy I am to see her. She is here. I give her a huge hug, but I don’t tell her I was worried I wouldn’t see her again. I don’t tell anyone. I don’t ask her how her family is––I don’t even ask if she spent the summer in Lebanon. Why would I? It feels like everything is okay now. This feeling; I want to say a feeling of emptiness, but it in reality is the opposite of that— chaos, confusion, gut-wrenching pain— are more accurate descriptions of how I feel at this moment.
These are the feelings that I kept inside me forever.
As I see everything that is happening in all of these countries, I’m brought back to that summer of 2006, and the fear trickles inside of me. Now, I cannot deny that I am blessed; blessed to be living in a safe place, not being worried about the walls of my home collapsing in on me, nor on my family back home. I’m also blessed to have social media to stay in touch with my friends. The ones living in Lebanon through this financial and economic collapse; the ones living in Turkey through the fires; the ones with family in Syria and Palestine. I take these blessings and I reach out to my friends; I tell them I can’t imagine what they must be going through and that, although I may not have family there, I have never forgotten the feeling of being scared for the life of someone you love.
So please, if there’s one thing I want to say, it’s this: don’t take it lightly that these countries are struggling to keep their people alive. Keep them in your prayers and always check on your family and friends. See how they’re holding up. Don’t let them suffer in silence.