Who among you has endured what the poet endured when he said:
I hallucinate in my sleep unconsciously and suspicions play in my imagination
As if thought in a deep ravine presents the impossible as reality
A reality akin to a grim fantasy, in all its forms and colors, tampering with minds. Are we on the brink of the Hour and the start of an era of tribulations, like pieces of a dark night, where a man wakes a believer and by evening, disbelieves, or as the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said?
In our current reality, just a giant mural, like World Cup screens seen hanging in markets, shops, parties, seminars, compensation claims, and formal gatherings... in joys and sorrows.. everywhere... a dark black painting whose profound darkness scatters out of the frame to the viewers.
Everything you see or perceive in this surreal painting, or trying to decipher its cryptic code and interpret it leads you to more hallucination and delirium. This is the last painting of the nation trying to tear apart its lovely narrative, and to obscure its bright features, the weariness of years mingled with patience and tears.
Anyone contemplating the lines of this distorted painting sees nothing but a high black ladder with two thresholds: a lower one crowded with feet and eyes, and an upper one at its end, where a few individuals and their families in fancy clothes and gleaming white teeth look down at those below and laugh!
They fashioned their ladder much like the government's salary ladder! The abyss is profound, and the scales are unbalanced between our government institutions, private, and autonomous bodies, and there is no salvation except through a white revolution to restructure the salary ladder and remove its apparent distortions in a logical and fair manner that excludes no one.
Our current salary ladder is like a musical keyboard with broken keys except for the “DO” and “Si” – imagine the number of discordant sounds between decision and response and the disappearance of the remaining notes!
Looking at today's national bus as it leaves the old station, one might think it's full, yet foolishly, one does not realize that to get on, one must sneak in through one of its windows! Because boarding does not recognize a queue system, nor the passengers’ cunning and vitality, all you need to do, my fellow passenger, is not to look at the poster hanging in front of you: safety in caution... we await you... and patience is the key to relief. All you have to do is read the bus route instructions and memorize the trip’s special barcode by heart and ensure the elegant (controller) checks you.
As for exams, certificates, competencies, and resumes, these are unlike the courses of souls; keep them for better coming days when you will definitely need them for day laborers’ interviews, choosing ministry guards, nominations for influential kiosk owners, or recommendations from bribe and extortion providers.
Stand at the roadside and scrutinize faces where you will see only wrinkles of despair and frustration; search their pockets and you will find nothing but old unpaid water and electricity bills, and loan documents awaiting a guarantor for signature.
Civilizations are not built with slogans nor with noise, drumming, and senseless tribal puffery, not in events celebrating millenniums and centuries, not in property settlements on the bereaved, widows, and orphans' account, not in cars flavored with escalating interest rates, nor in councils emitting naive nepotism and abhorrent prejudice, and not in some government institutions stripped of fat, with uprooted teeth and nails, management corroded by corruption and injustice to people, all while ignoring the Corruption Perceptions Index according to Transparency International, and goals of the Anti-Corruption Agency.. All these signs are mere deceptive lightning bringing nothing but illusion and mirage considered by the thirsty as water.
We have no option but to say:
The land will rain someday despite its aridity and from the bellies of tragedies hope is born
Or find solace in the words of the speaker:
I console my soul with hopes I await How narrow would life be without the expanse of hope
