لحظة ادراك

 

In the Season of Migration to the South

No sooner had the last of the fifty-six Arab and Muslim delegations departed Doha—along with a significant number of leaders and organizations of joint Arab, Islamic, and international action—than they left behind the echo of words that filled the halls, and seven pages of the same distilled into a final communiqué, translated into every language on earth. It contained everything the heart might desire: phrases bent to praise and solidarity, restoring dignity to the host, and denunciations of treachery, folly, and annihilation for the perpetrator. As though their unspoken words were: this is the utmost we can do. And despite everything, we shall maintain a fragile thread of connection with those who reject the logic of peace and compromise.

Meanwhile, on the other helm—in Jerusalem—the perpetrator stood alone, with the last of his allies at his side. Yet that ally, by the weight of his thuggery and folly, was equal to the entire world. Together they roamed above and beneath the earth, inhaling the scent of history and myth, save for a wall that had witnessed uprisings and beside which much blood had been shed. Into its crevices he pressed a slip of paper, scarcely able to settle in place given how many hands had tampered with it, stuffed with wishes from every direction. Politicians, diplomats, and every would-be ruler in Washington came to touch it for blessing.

And so, a closing conference without statements bore but a single title: either five non-negotiable conditions, subject to additions as events unfold, or else advance with the “war of legend” against all things—even if those remaining of his own people still languished in death’s dungeons. Outside his residence, the bereaved gathered nightly, hurling curses and insults at him and his wife, robbing him of sleep. He left the place in deference to democracy’s rituals, even under the shadow of swords, taking his wife along so she would not hear the mockery. For such talk carried no weight compared to the outcomes of the “war of legend” and its grandiose dreams.

Within hours, the jet of Caesar’s foreign envoy landed in Doha—after all others who stood on the opposite side of history had departed. Armed with the blessings of the temple priests and doses of sanctity, he crafted words to soothe the wounded, save their face, and avoid, near or far, any condemnation of deed or doer, smothering any language of reason by calling it “partnership.” As for the aggrieved, it sufficed that a “guest of exceptional rank” drank their coffee and offered flattering words. Such is the Arab custom: whoever treads our carpet has delivered us our right. The dead and the afflicted—well, their sovereign host would lavish upon them what might placate.

The final wish for the extraordinary visitor: more pressure on those dwelling in a house once thought to be that of Abu Sufyan, to extract what even Gideon-1 and Gideon-2 had failed to seize. Meanwhile, the tormented on the land of death’s surplus were beyond counting. The news tickers could scarcely contain it. No sooner had the extraordinary guest finished his last words in a love-laden Jerusalem conference, and no sooner had the Doha conference of grief and courtesy adjourned, than bombardment intensified from every direction—sky, land, and sea—with all the hunger for blood and death could crave.

The death toll rose by the minute in every color and form. Buildings collapsed with their inhabitants. Roads filled with battered vehicles and people on foot. In the calculations of the “army of legends,” the forced exodus of 40–50% of those crammed into western Gaza had become the minimum threshold for entry into the second, bloodiest phase. There was no ground combat to halt the war machine’s advance into Gaza’s depths—only an exhausted “army of the forsaken,” clinging to place despite betrayal. For leaving now would mean no return. From south to south, the season of migration to the south had opened. All eyes fixed on one south alone, awaiting changes that might or might not come as dreamers wished.

In the frenzy of power and endless wars, the head of the “legend government” rummaged through history and at last found something the books might lend him: Sparta, a strong city that built an army fighting for decades. If the symbol bore relevance, he undermined it by complaining to the extraordinary guest of political, economic, and moral siege, and of plans to allocate funds to “whiten pages” blackened by deeds that shamed humanity—on live broadcast. He mused about an economy on the verge of dramatic closure. Surely the extraordinary guest wondered: where is Sparta today? Few even recall it. What remains is Athens, heir to Greek civilization in glory and in failure.

As for the selective slaughter of children, the elimination of the elderly and the disabled, these had become unspeakable acts—too shameful to name or recall from history. But when nations age prematurely under the intoxication of limitless expansion and domination, such results are inevitable. Those who received the “messages” along their migration south, carrying every form of death, were reminded: they had nothing left to lose—save shackles, tents, a forgotten night, and the humiliation of bread lines. Even the harshest rulers of this new Sparta had warned against that despair. And yet it became fodder for satire in local and global media, used to justify pumping more funds into bleaching the unbleachable.

The guest’s ignorance of political geography and history only compounded the host’s ignorance. Both were graduates of the same intellectual school: hatred of the other. They forgot, while speaking of history and geopolitics, that they had come to lands tied to them only by myth and fantasy. The guest—of Latin Cuban roots, who now believes in closing his new homeland’s doors to immigrants like his own parents once were. The host—of Polish roots, bent on expelling the land’s original people. So it was no wonder he joined in inaugurating a tunnel, placing a slip of paper in the wall, and issuing orders to dismantle an urban fabric to push out a people for another.

Is it strange, then, that someone who believes annexing Canada and Greenland is achievable should also believe in tunnels and erasing another people’s cities? When the people of the land are burdened by such minds in the age of artificial intelligence, there must be reflection—how has humanity sunk to such intellectual shallowness?

Amid all this, irony lingered. Some messages soothed the furious; others smeared the scene with wet mud to obscure its flaws. The complicit in the strike dreamed of a “mutual defense pact,” as though an ant could ally with a raging, hungry elephant—unless against another ally closer to heart and soul. Elsewhere, another pact was signed to “restore balance,” claiming options existed to forgo the thief of trillions who failed them in need. One envoy from the time of Moses’ staff and the Companions of the Ditch explained how new Sparta and Caesar of the twenty-first century would carve up real estate profits after the great demolition.

The victim rushed to Amman, seeking to shift part of the burden onto his compatriots there. Another power, unashamed, raised its hand for the sixth time in two years against the will of fourteen nations, saying “Enough” to all this death and destruction—in the very house founded to preserve peace and security.

The issue was no longer about ideological extremism that seeped into the lives of the oppressed during the Red Cancer era—in caves of those who opposed Marx and Engels, created, funded, and installed in power only to be fought later, like statues of dates devoured in hunger. Their ugliness had long harmed the oppressed. Yet as long as it served interests, it was tolerated—even rewarded with further expansion into spheres of influence. But once it touched red lines, the price was no longer themselves but the land into which they had been planted. It had to be cleansed, in the eyes of war’s emperors, burying past, present, and witnesses, creating new catastrophes. Talk of the past would then be dismissed as surplus words, nourishment for neither body nor soul.

On the margins of the “dream visit” to an empire where once the sun never set, came rare dissent from one heir of the idea of a homeland for Holocaust survivors. Even as the heir of a fallen empire awoke from deep slumber to sweeping global change, he told him: bad things may happen. In other words, no point in a gesture now unnecessary—for on the table lay a grand real estate deal reserved for us, and us alone. The demolition bill had already been paid by taxpayers of the land of dreams and opportunity.

Tyrants never learn from history, despite the inevitabilities spelled out in its pages. Leaning on exhausted historical grievances will not last long—not in the age of image and sound, where anyone can see truth on the ground as it is, not as imagined by those living behind history.