Boundaries

While the old man asked me whether or not he was under arrest and what he had done, I watched the bombs fall down over Beirut.

While the old man; surrounded by a fog, a grey blanket that twirls around him, experience the border between real life and fantasy getting more and more blurred, thousands of people in the Middle East are experiencing the distinctions between reality and nightmare evaporating.

A water vapour that smells. Smells of old hatred, smells of new hatred, suddenly escalating fear.

While the old man is crying because he cannot remember how to sing, someone else is crying because there is no reason to sing. And I cry because it all seem so useless.

So far but yet so near. The time differerence is only 1 hour. The reality of a silent, thick-as-a-wall fog, the reality of a daily routine of nursing old people and perhaps watching some telly when you get home, just seem obscure. Rather, the contrast seem too obscure to grasp.

For me it is on the telly, for several thousands it is not on a screen, but in your town, in your street, your neighbour, your friend.

The borders are again fortifying. Not the physical ones, where to put the border controls, but the psycological ones... The personal boundaries are closing up, circling around each individual as the wounds are cut up violently. Again. And again. The boundaries permitting you to live, speak and sleep next to whoever, from wherever, are getting smaller and smaller.

I thought war could not happen again. I was wrong and it pains me. But probably not as much as it pains Yael in Haifa, Netta somewhere else in Israel and Maryam in Lebanon, and Dror, and Sam...