Major crash cases were not written to be narrated from the mouth of fire, but from the black box that silently survives, waiting for the moment it is summoned not to comfort the victims, but to reveal how the decision was taken, and why those who should have spoken remained silent!
In this precise sense, I do not understand the Jeffrey Epstein case as an isolated moral scandal, but as a massive social and political black box, which accumulated the voices of the elites, the complicity of institutions, and networks of influence, until the "pimp" himself became merely a detail within a much larger structure!
Epstein wasn't the owner of an intellectual project nor a scientific genius, and he didn't need a university degree to rise. His real capital wasn't a surplus of knowledge, but relationships, and it was not technical intelligence, but the ability to combine what should not be combined!
In such structures, "pimping" is transformed from an individual crime into a socio-political tool, a means of penetration, extortion, and connecting interests between money, power, and prestige. When a person becomes a vault of secrets, he becomes a bridge and a link between what is declared and what is managed behind the scenes, and between the ethical discourse and the mechanisms for its disruption!
When the story exploded, it was managed as disasters are managed in the age of public relations: confining the fire to the cabin, not the flight system! And the question shifted from: How did the system allow this? to: Who deviated? Who slept with whom? Who.....Who??!!
Thus, the crime is reformulated to become content for sensation rather than content for accountability, a scandal that is consumed instead of being investigated!
Here begins the true work of the black box: not in the bedrooms, but in the hallways of justice, in the deals, in the immunities, and in the silence that wore the robe of procedure!
The most dangerous moment —in my opinion— was not the leaking of names, but the establishment of a rule: when power intertwines with money, ethics are reengineered to become mere linguistic decoration, and the law is reduced to damage management!
This is not considered a slip of civilization, but a real test of it! Because societies are not measured by what they say about themselves, but by what they do when values become a burden on influence; then, the moral discourse is not canceled, but used to postpone the truth and recycle anger until the public loses its appetite for questioning!
At a certain period in history, some Arab security organizations misused power, exploiting individuals in various fields—including art and media—for security and political purposes.
These practices relied on pressure and extortion to achieve goals far from any legal or ethical standard, leaving a significant impact on people's lives, reputations, and careers. With political shifts and the advancement of investigations, it became clear that what seemed to be a shining ascent was often just the shadow of a hidden "control"!
Here, the case of Suad Hosny is summoned as the most famous model in Arab memory for the exploitation of security power to dominate the artistic milieu in Egypt, when "control" remained a mystery that linked —in narratives, investigations, and accumulated readings— between the rise of influential politicians and the tragic end of the Arab screen's "Cinderella"; a tale that was not so much a personal story as it was a management style: when an apparatus holds what is personal and intimate to shape a public trajectory!
And this pattern is not limited to one context; in other arenas, reports and testimonies have emerged about actresses thrown into the arms of oppressive regimes, or about relationships with influential leaders—including leaders of the Fourth Division and at its head Maher al-Assad— to obtain personal protection, business facilitations, and dominant artistic roles. Here I am not talking about isolated individual choices, but about a market of influence where bodies and reputations are traded as negotiating currency.
After "bunga bunga" Berlusconi and Qaddafi's tents, the names and accents changed, but the mechanism remained the same!
In all this, the Jordanian absence from these narratives is a sign of a silent sovereign signal; no claim of sanctity! Nor denial of the complexity of society; but a result of a trajectory that did not turn influence into a circus, nor power into a spectacle; in a world filled with celebrations of naked power and smooth networks of extortion, absence becomes testimony that needs no declaration!
The clear dividing line that does not accept ambiguity: rape is a crime criminalized in all laws, but how much more so when it involves a minor?! Here there is no gray area, no mitigating context, and no discourse that recycles sin!
When bodies —especially those of minors— are used as tools in a game of influence, the black box does not suffice with moral condemnation, but exposes a system collapse!
The black box, when opened, does not search for a single culprit, but for a pattern! And the Epstein case is not a story of a "pimp" who fell, but of a system that survived more than it should have!
And the question this black box leaves open is not: Is the West ethical or not? but: Are ethics still capable of holding themselves accountable when they become part of the game?
Those who do not dare to open their black box will continue to interpret every crash as an isolated incident... until there is nothing left that can be saved!
