Breaking News: The War Has Begun!

Nothing new in the phrase. But this time its weight is different — the speed of its rhythm tears through me.

We all call each other to make sure.

The replies come in like a daily ritual:

We're fine, you?

Fine!

As if the word were a spell we shelter behind.

My mother. Fine.

My older brother and his family. Fine.

My younger brother, at his Gulf posting. Fine.

My sister and her family, here. Fine.

Those my heart holds and those I love. Fine.

Fine! We write it, we repeat it until it goes numb.

My relatives who came from France to spend a week in the land of Cedars — among them some we were meeting for the first time, the children especially — are going back in a few hours.

The suitcases are at the door.

Two children ask: Aren't we going to the airport?

A mother trying to smile so her panic doesn't cross onto the faces of the little ones.

Fathers pretending to hold.

The three o'clock flight — cancelled. The door to a direct return — shut.

I saw in their eyes that worry we, the children of this earth, have learned: a worry that doesn't scream. That calculates.

We gather, we decide fast — because time in crises does not grant the luxury of hesitation. After cascading calls and a search through whatever options remain, seats are found out of Beirut at nine-thirty at night to Istanbul, then Belgium, then Lille.

Ten hours of travel and transit through several airports seemed better than staying in a city whose shores and sky the flames of the region were closing in on.

Beirut, which I had been walking only days ago like a tourist, searching its stones for some trace of the past, now seemed to be standing on tiptoe. The city that knows how to fall and rise was steadying its breath, once more. I understood: safety is not something you own. Only something you borrow.

Their plane took off.

They landed in Istanbul.

A short message: we're fine.

A photo — they're on the floor, or in airport lounge chairs.

The children are smiling despite the exhaustion.

Then the road to Lille.

I breathe. Not for long.

The breaking news keeps coming. I read, I don't believe it, I read again: the region is burning. Arab capitals are being bombed.

My people are there — my mother, my brothers, half my family. I pick up my phone. I hesitate. I don't want to pass on what's shaking inside me.

And I return to the same question, the family ritual:

Are you fine?

But what kind of fine is measured by the number of airports crossed in peace?

And what kind of reassurance needs confirming every few hours?

Fine — because the plane took off and landed.

Fine — because the sky stayed open before the shells came and the ground shook.

Fine — because the danger stayed a possibility. For a few more minutes.

I think of that moment in the square, hearing myself explain Beirut to my relatives. I didn't know that a few days later I'd be living a new lesson in how fragile geography is.

The city whose history I told in my French laced with English comes back to remind me: its chapters are written as we walk through them.

Are we really fine?

Fine how?

What country is this?

What region?

What peace?

What life?

We are a generation that tracks flight patterns and the maps of zones about to be bombed and the trajectories of missiles — the way others track the weather.

We have mastered the art of backup plans before daring to dream of a plan.

We live on chronic exhaustion. We carry a strange, wordless capacity for waiting.

We love, we shake, and we try to survive each day — from everything.

That evening the region began to burn…

And at the dawn of Monday, Lebanon burned.

And I — I am still holding on to a small phrase:

Let me see your faces. Fine.