There was a pattern in this circus. While the centaur was delivering his speech, his assistants were throwing clusters of paper birds into the air, bringing these artificial creatures to life, and flying around the platform.. Other men were unloading tree trunks from trucks, planting them in potassium nitrate soil behind the crowded masses, and they had set up a cardboard façade of fictitious red-brick houses with glass windows, hiding behind them the true miserable shacks.
Is this the real picture of the state as we see it?
Are the institutions firmly grounded, or are they merely "paper birds" that fly during celebratory moments to deceive our eyes? Does the system really work well, or is what we see just a cosmetic cover for many institutions corroded by corruption, acting like the cardboard façades that dazzle onlookers from afar, and hiding behind them an incapacity and misery unseen by the eyes until the disaster strikes?
I have borrowed the text above from the "magical realism" literature to express a big question that has been sharply knocking on our heads: Are we on the brink of an abyss? And is the nakedness that the raindrops revealed the true model of our state, away from the noise of festivals and the promises of "red bricks" that build us palaces of illusions?
Throughout a month in which the Jordanians faced consecutive shocks affecting the core of their safety system. Shocks that shook every corner from Wadi Abdoun to Iraq Al-Karak, revealing that we live in a large "circus," where "the centaur" continues his speech filled with achievements, while the reality bleeds behind the worn-out curtain.
Forgive us, oh Lord... we did not know! When we pleaded for you to shower us with rain, we did not know that the heaters we buy to embrace the warmth in winter nights, would turn into silent killing machines that choke the breath of families. We did not know that the walls of our historic castles, which had stood for centuries, became frail and close to falling in the face of a few raindrops because the hand of negligence reached them faster than the hand of restoration.
And we did not know that the land would grow too narrow even for a shepherd.. that a shepherd with his lambs would resort to the "embrace of the mountain", fleeing from the harsh weather, only to be betrayed by the mountain this time, which he thought of as a refuge. We did not know that the cave, which remained a symbol of safety, would collapse on hundreds of lambs that died under the debris of rocks.
Not for any reason, but because the safe barns grew too narrow for the sheep.
The rain revealed that "the caves" no longer protect, that "the castles" no longer stand, and that what was built from "cardboard brick" was just an illusion masking the nakedness of institutions corroded by rust.
We did not know, oh Lord... so we called upon you with broken hearts to pour water on us, thinking that the rain would cleanse us, but it instead peeled the thin layer off our bitter reality, leaving us face to face before the "miserable huts" they long tried to convince us were safe havens.
Now that we know, it is a mercy rain revealing flaws, calling us for a review and accountability, to fix the matter and entrust it to its rightful people, who comply with the words of the prophecy ("By God, if a sheep were to stumble in Iraq, I would fear that God might question me about it"))
