To Whom It May Concern

Author: Younes Al-Amouri

You are not required to understand, to feel, or even to stop for a moment to ask how the day passes in this place that no longer resembles anything but itself as it tires. It is enough to know, or not to know, that there is a people who begin their mornings searching for what they lost yesterday, not for what they dream of tomorrow. A people who no longer plan for the future, but only try to survive the details of their day, as if life has turned from a lifelong project into a battle of hours...

In this land where stones remember the names of their owners more than maps do, crises are no longer exceptional events but have become a way of life. People no longer ask when the crisis will end, but rather which crisis will precede the other: the salary crisis, the fuel crisis, the water crisis, the traffic crisis, the banking crisis, the road crisis, the waiting crisis... until a person feels that their life has turned into a long series of queues, standing in one to move to the next. It seems the demand of this people is to learn how to live within the crisis, not how to exit it, and to master the art of waiting, not the art of living...

Here, the salary is no longer a right received at the end of the month, but has become a vague appointment resembling old promises, arriving incomplete when it arrives, and if it is delayed, it loses its meaning... People who have gotten used to building their lives based on what they earn, have begun to build them on what they borrow, on what they postpone, on what they apologize for not paying. The father no longer feels ashamed of how little he has in his pocket, but is ashamed of the many apologies he offers his children, and of the number of times he says (not today)... Meanwhile, official speeches continue to talk about resilience and stability, as if resilience can pay a bill, as if stability can feed a child, as if citizens are always required to bear the consequences of management that they feel is not bearing any of this burden with them...

As for fuel, it has turned from a material that moves vehicles into a daily test of patience. A short journey now requires lengthy calculations, and a small queue can waste hours of life. The question is no longer how much a liter costs, but whether it exists at all. Even the car parked in front of the house is no longer a means of movement, but a silent witness to a time where reaching work, or university, or hospital has become an adventure whose outcome is unknown. Each time a new crisis emerges, people are told that conditions are difficult, that the phase is exceptional, that a solution is coming, and then days and years pass without a solution arriving, as if the exceptional has become the norm, and as if the crisis has become part of the administration of the country...

And water... that which was once a basic right of life, has become a heavy guest that comes and goes as it pleases. People deal with it as they deal with rare seasons, storing it, guarding it, and calculating its consumption as a poor person counts the last remaining in his pocket. Not because the sky has withheld, but because everything here has become prone to transformation into a crisis, even what God created to be accessible to all. With each new crisis, the same justifications emerge, the same words circulate, the same promises return, while the citizen sees in their daily life only the same result... nothing changes.

In the country that has relied on its olives for thousands of years, the roads no longer lead to cities as they once did. The road itself has become a test. A checkpoint here, a gate there, a barrier in one place, and sudden closures in another, until distances are measured by the number of obstacles, not the number of kilometers. A person might need an hour to reach their work, or five hours, or return from where they came without arriving at all. Nothing is certain but that the road is no longer a road. Amid all this, the citizen stands helpless in front of a reality they cannot change, while the official leadership stands helpless in providing a convincing answer, or perhaps unwilling to confront the roots of the problem, content with managing the crisis instead of ending it, and issuing statements instead of creating solutions.

In the city where prayer meets the church bells, reaching it feels like a visit to a distant dream. And on the besieged coast for many years, the sea has become closer to a closed window than a space of freedom. Among the hills stretching north and south, the same story repeats: tired faces, empty stores, farmers waiting to reach their land, students who do not know if their universities will receive them in the morning, and patients fearing that the road will defeat them before the illness. Each time people ask about the solution, they find themselves faced with postponed answers, accumulated crises, and a reality that seems to be a routine for everyone except the citizen who pays the price every day...

Then came the story of the banks, as if people needed a new pain. An employee stands at the bank window holding a salary he cannot benefit from as he should. The vaults are filled with banknotes that do not find their natural path, while their owners exit with more anxiety than when they entered. Money exists, but it does not fulfill its function, and people exist, but they are unable to act on what they have. A paradox that the ordinary citizen does not understand, nor wants to understand, because they only know they have obligations, and these obligations do not wait for economic explanations. In the end, they are asked to understand, to be patient, and to trust, while they find no one to understand their need, no one to be patient with them, and no one to provide them a convincing reason for all this incapacity...

In the markets, faces have changed. The seller no longer calls as he used to, and the buyer no longer questions much. Everyone knows that purchasing power is eroding, that commercial movement is declining, and that the blessings people used to talk about now also require someone to seek them out. Many shops open their doors every morning knowing in advance that their day will be heavy, but they open in the hope that God will change what humans have failed to change. As for those who are supposed to change the reality, they often seem as if they see only numbers and reports, not the faces of the shop owners, nor do they hear the voice of a worker who does not know how he will return home at the end of the day...

The people here have never been accustomed to luxury, but they have been accustomed to the minimum of reassurance. Today, even this minimum is declining. The head of the household calculates his daily expenses tens of times, the mother postpones buying what the house needs, the young man delays his marriage project, the student postpones her dream, the merchant postpones paying his debt, and the employee postpones his obligations, as if the whole community lives on a policy of postponement, not because it wants to, but because it no longer has another option. Even dreams have now become deferred, and the homeland itself has become for many a postponed question, for the person who cannot ensure their day, how can they plan for tomorrow...

And the strangest of all, is that this huge scene of exhaustion is met with cold silence. Statements do not feed the hungry, declarations do not fill a vehicle's tank, speeches do not pump water into the pipes, do not open a closed road, do not restore a missing salary, nor do they give people the feeling that someone shares this heavy burden with them. The scene sometimes seems as if those who are supposed to be closest to the people are the most distant from their details. The citizen talks about the price of bread, while the official talks about major headlines. The former runs after their daily morsel, while the latter runs after a new image, or a new meeting, or a new statement. The problem is no longer just the existence of the crisis, but that the official leadership seems to have accepted the idea of managing it indefinitely, instead of seriously seeking radical solutions to end it...

Then there is the bridge crisis, that bridge which is no longer just a crossing point between two sides, but has become a symbol of a whole state of anxiety, waiting, and humiliation. A citizen wanting to leave their country finds themselves facing a journey they do not know when it starts or when it ends, and a traveler holding their right to return but not knowing if the road will bring them back home or to another queue. Long hours of waiting, tiresome procedures, sudden closures and changes, a citizen feels that their exit from their country has become an adventure, and their return to it has become a conditional dream. Each time the suffering repeats, the talk about arrangements, coordination, and circumstances repeats, then the bridge remains standing as a witness to an endless impotence, or a lack of genuine desire to find a permanent solution to end this daily tragedy...

Here, the paradox of the homeland becomes more brutal. How can you ask a person to stay in their country, while life in it makes every day more difficult, and then be surprised when they look for an opportunity outside the borders? How do you ask a young person not to leave, while you do not provide them with a job, economic security, or clear hope for the future? And how do you ask them to return if they leave, while the road back itself turns into a long ordeal? The homeland is not just borders on a map, nor a song at an official occasion, nor a speech given from a platform. The homeland is feeling that a person has a place in it, that their dignity is preserved, that their future is possible, and that their return is not a journey of suffering. For a citizen to leave by necessity, and then be blamed for leaving, is akin to breaking the door and then asking why people left the house... And perhaps the most painful thing in this land is not the crises themselves, but the habituation to them. That the interruption of water becomes ordinary news, the delay of salary a predictable matter, the closure of roads part of the daily bulletin, waiting in front of the bank a habit, and that questioning the availability of fuel turns into a casual morning conversation, while the bridge crisis becomes a repeated story that stirs only fatigue. When crises repeat like this, it is the citizen's right to ask... Is all this real incapacity, or is there someone who has grown accustomed to managing crises more than their desire to solve them? And are all these crises a fate that cannot be changed, or is some of it manufactured, exaggerated, and left open because the persistence of the crisis serves the interests of those who do not want it to end? When people become accustomed to pain, it is not always a sign of strength, but may be an indication that the pain has lasted longer than it should, and that those holding power no longer feel the pain of those waiting for a solution...

What is said about manufactured crises, or about crises that are inflated or left to worsen without solutions, is no longer just passing talk for many people. The citizen sees crises that begin suddenly, last long, and then end without knowing why they started at all, and sees issues that can be solved by clear decisions but remain hanging, and files that open and then close, and promises announced and then forgotten, as if obscurity itself has become part of the way of governance. The citizen does not demand that his leadership possesses a magic wand, but he asks them at least to be transparent, to tell him where the problem lies, who is responsible for it, and what the plan is to exit it, instead of him remaining the only one paying the price while responsibilities are dispersed in the air.

Yet, this country wakes up every morning. The baker opens his oven, the farmer goes to his land whenever he can, a mother carries her child’s bag to school, and a young man plants a new tree knowing that it could be uprooted, and an old man smiles at his neighbor despite everything. Not because life is easy, but because the people of this land have never mastered surrender. They know that dignity is not a slogan, but a way of living, and that resilience is not a speech delivered, but a daily act practiced in the face of all this weight. But this resilience, praised by all, must not turn into an excuse to justify failure, nor should the people’s patience become a shield for the impotence of those in power. The people who endure do not absolve their rulers of their responsibilities; rather, it makes their responsibility greater... Yet even the patient tire. This is a truth that many neglect. Patience is not an inexhaustible resource, endurance has its limits, and a person, however rooted in their soil, needs to feel that someone sees them, hears them, and bears part of this burden with them. To leave them alone to confront all these crises together, and then ask them to applaud, to express gratitude, and to smile, is a burden that only nations can withstand before individuals. It is unfair to ask citizens to always be patient, while nothing is required of the official except to be stern, and it is unacceptable to ask people to sacrifice, while real solutions remain postponed, radical decisions are absent, and crises return each time with a new face...

To whom it may concern... These words may seem just another set of letters added to a long archive of complaints, but they are not actually complaints. They are a final attempt to remind the world, and to remind decision-makers more than others, that homelands do not only collapse under the weight of wars, but can also be exhausted by the small details that repeat every day. A salary that does not arrive may defeat it, a road that does not open, water that does not flow, fuel that is unavailable, a bank unable to perform its function, a bridge that becomes a gateway to anxiety and waiting, a responsible person who remains content to observe, and an official leadership that is satisfied with managing the crisis instead of uprooting its roots. For a state that cannot solve its small crises, or does not want to solve them, will one day find itself facing a crisis bigger than its ability to manage, and at that point, statements will be of no use, nor slogans, and it will not suffice to tell people to just be more patient... The people here do not ask for miracles, nor do they await a paradise on earth. All they want is to live a normal life, to have a father go to work without fearing the road, and to return at the end of the month knowing that the fruits of his labor will arrive fully, for a mother to open the water tap without fearing its interruption, for a young man to fill his vehicle without standing for hours in queues, for a citizen to enter his bank and find his money a means of life, not a besieged number, and to be able to leave his homeland if necessary without the journey turning into humiliation, and to return without feeling that his homeland has become a closed door in his face, and for everyone to feel that those at the forefront of the scene share the same concern with them, not in another world. They only want leadership that knows that governance is not a privilege, that responsibility is not an image, a post, or a statement, that the people are not just numbers in statistics, and that the patience that has lasted too long is not a blank check to infinity. They want their leadership to acknowledge that there is incapacity when there is incapacity, to acknowledge when there is no real desire for a solution, to stop recycling crises and postponing them from year to year, and to finally begin addressing the roots instead of just soothing the symptoms. Because the homeland does not need those who tell people every morning that the crisis is under control, but needs those who actually end the crisis, and does not need those who ask people to continue enduring, but needs those who make resilience less necessary, life more humane, and the future more believable.