Week 10, 2026: Background noise
You do know nothing is impossible, right?
It’s strange to admit that it feels scary because my life has not changed in any drastic way. I don’t personally know anybody who has been hurt or killed. I'm lucky in many ways. Most of the people I love live far away in much safer places, and are checking in on me. I’m around family and don't have to think about logistics like who will tell them if anything happened. We have not had to relocate like some people did. I’m yet to even see any fires or debris. I don’t live near big hotels, airports or military bases. It is much worse in other places, like [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]. That last reason plays a big factor in how strange it is to admit how scary it feels.
The situation is not too dissimilar from what it was like an entry ago, with a few exceptions.
One, phones screech with a grammatically-erroneous emergency alert saying to seek immediate shelter and steer clear of windows on a fairly regular basis. It used to happen once a day, in the early hours of the morning, but the screeches now happen every few hours. Their regularity has turned them into background noise but it’s harder to tune out the planes (drones?) and the windows shaking in their frames like they’re about to break. Human nature dictates that scary sounds make you move closer to the source to investigate.
Two, people are taking matters into their own hands. The fear-mongering has stopped seeming so far-fetched. School-children and knowledge workers are going remote. Friends are catching flights home. Residents from first-world countries are being advised to store canned food and bottled water. A family friend packed a bag and said she’s fleeing to Thailand. This was surprising because she is not from Thailand, nor does she have any connections to the country. My mother laughed but the woman was being very serious. She wasn't smiling at all when she then said, you do know nothing is impossible, right?
Three, it’s leaning more scary than funny now. It's still fairly funny, I wouldn’t dare deny that. More TRASHFUTURE funny than Jon Stewart funny. My Gazan relatives are certainly in on it. Headlines claiming that it now costs a family $250K to leave [REDACTED] are forwarded with the caption "It was $7K for Gaza". It is insane to compare these events but being in the eye of the storm can distort vision. Seven for every adult, five a minor. That was the cost of human life at the time. Word on the street is it rose to ten a pop. They feel little sympathy and I can’t blame them. I can see it too until the windows sound like they might burst into the room.
I’ve been following a We Have Books At Home approach with reading for the last six months, committed to finishing everything I own before I can address my to-read pile. For half of that period, I’ve been reading books by Ahmed Khaled Tawfik, the godfather of Arabic horror and somebody my father became fascinated with posthumously. He’s gifted me eight of his books. Eight!
I have come to learn that reading eight consecutive books by a new author is like entering quarantine with somebody you just met. At first, you may be enamored by their mysticism and develop the resolve to learn how they tick. How lovely, you enjoy voicing class critiques through medical horrors. Very nice, you have an impressive ability to seamlessly drop literary references.
Inevitably, their voice becomes nails on a chalkboard, louder than the internal voice in your own head. Let me guess, you have another dystopian novel where the main character is neurotically preoccupied with tobacco and women in ways that lead to his demise? Oh, we’re breaking the fourth wall again, are we? Well, it took three months but I did it. I put a bow on the guy.
When I went out for dinner, the emergency alerts went off on everyone’s phones and nobody flinched or batted an eye. I guess it’s not like COVID-19. Sheltering from missile debris in a restaurant does not feel more dangerous than sheltering from it at home.
During dinner, I accidentally broke my promise of abstaining from added sugar for Lent, which is perfect timing because my period is starting soon and it’s the end of the world any minute now. I could, of course, see this as a one-off mistake and continue my abstinence but that would be ridiculous. I deserve some chocolate for not crossing the border and bolting to Thailand.