So Close, Yet So Far
بقلم: Julie trad

  International Daily Bulletin

I lock and unlock my phone approximately 10 times per minute. I load and then reload my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds hopelessly searching for something. What am I searching for? A way to turn back time? A magical airplane that will take me back to Beirut? A way to feel the pain and the suffering of all those people who have lost their loved ones, homes, shops, jobs, limbs, dreams, and futures

I feel helpless and hopeless, trying to reach some unimaginable solution, some closure or some catharsis

Tears aimlessly drop from my eyelids and I weep. I weep for my country. I weep for my helplessness. I weep for not even having the right to complain and feel pain from far away; after all, I am safe and sound in a foreign country right

And so I scroll, read, and feel. Hoping to reach every utterer of every word, every cry of every child, every scream of every mother

Beirut is scattered and not only with her recent ruins. She is scattered all around the world, in dorms, apartments, offices, and universities stretching through the continents. Her language is being proudly spoken everywhere. Her traditions, her name, and her essence are planted in the deepest soils of this earth.

We are made of Beirut and she of us. She has her eyes glued to phones and televisions in the four corners of the globe, waiting for her kind repair.