I can’t stop thinking about the story my friend told me last Wednesday.
(Let’s call my friend Apple)
It was mid-July, and Apple couldn’t stop feeling like something bad is going to happen. She felt trapped, scared, and unsafe; she knew she needed to leave Lebanon. She talked to her boyfriend and wondered if they could go on a work trip to Turkey for a few months, so they decided to leave.
Before leaving, Apple was swimming in the sea on a hot July day when she felt an ocean current sucking her in. Normally an excellent swimmer, she felt completely paralyzed. “Instead of swimming parallel to the shore, I could not move. The current was slowly drowning me, and I could not do anything.”
Luckily, somebody saw her hand in the air and swam to her rescue. But she could not get over the incident. She woke up every night feeling trapped again in the current, and she just wanted to feel free.
But she got out. Apple and her boyfriend moved to Turkey for two months; they left a few days before the Beirut blast. She was able to explore herself and meditate. “Apple is in a yoga retreat;” her boyfriend jokes.
I’m pretty sure what Apple went through is PTSD, after the drowning incident. But what about the feeling before? The feeling of escaping Lebanon before the blast. What about the feeling of drowning for consecutive days after being saved by a stranger?
I feel like Apple has turned the abstraction of the metaphor “trapped and drowning” into an actual reality.
I wonder how many poor souls drown every day but are not lucky enough to escape. I wonder how many times they need to drown until someone finally sees their hands in the air. I wonder if they ever get out, out of the current, the country, the sea.
I can’t but wonder how many people never had anyone to save them and to see their hands and swim towards them. I wonder if they ever felt freedom.
I’m happy for Apple, that she was able to get out, because she deserves freedom and yoga and everything in the world. I’m happy that some can still fight despite the current, that some still raise their hands asking for help instead of giving up to the sea and its unpredictable tornadoes.