It's unfair!
Lebanon, Short Essay, 10/6/1997

I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, yesterday. A storm had blown, disturbing the silence of the night. Don't mock me: I felt scared. Very scared. I couldn't go back to sleep before it was over. You probably think I was being childish. The thunder isn't supposed to alarm an adult like me.

I have a good excuse: I have lived a war. It has planted in me a fear of any crashing sound. The ghost of an exploding bomb will live in me forever. I tell you this, but I almost had a driving accident once, because someone was having fun with huge and loud fireworks. Fear had paralyzed my senses.

Sometimes I think it's unfair. My sister and brother, my friends and I are all doomed to carry the weight of a tragedy we never even understood. I necessarily cannot generalize, but the majority of the innocent generations who grew up surrounded by bombs have this existential fear. All over the world, the sound of the thunder announces rain and fertility. To us, children of the war, it resembles the sound of death.

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