Day 81: Q.U.A.R.A.N.T.I.N.E.
Day 81: June 15, 2020
Global Cases: 8,108,667 Deaths: 438,596
Egypt Cases: 46,289 Deaths: 1,672
Sana S.
Sociology Alumna
Research Assistant, Department of Sociology, Egyptology, and Anthropology
Quarantine was an alien word the first time I read it. Some words are heavy on the tongue when I am not used to pronouncing them.
Qua-ran-tine, I now realize it is a word like all others. I eventually learn to familiarize with newness. It is hard to find a word synonymous to newness, but with less positive undertones – one that explains the true conditions of the current ambiguous situation. It is a word that lies nowhere along the spectrum of optimism, pessimism, or nihilism but somewhere along those and in between.
There is difficulty in grasping the power a word could have, and its ability took over every corner of our lives. Quarantine is one that has shaken our little economic, political, social, and environmental worlds.
More important than those external worlds are the internal ones; mind, emotions, and the body that have also been shaken. My words make it seem like there is a binary between these two worlds, when there might be a fine line, or perhaps no concrete way of separating them at all, beyond reflections.
It was in March when I started to face the realities of being left with so little of the exteriors and so much of that blackhole-ish interiors. At this point, there was no way to escape a body and a mind that rarely felt like my own. It is also at this point, that external worlds were unveiled as tools to resist acknowledging my naked self. My mind spit its darkest repressed thoughts at me, to which I stood upset, angered, or offended. Little did I know then, they were mine to receive, to handle, and to embrace.
For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.
The abstractions of self-care, of self-love, of self-confidence, seem like the best place to go in such situations when they are in fact one-dimensional inexactitudes.
They are words admired from afar, bathed in glitter. The words’ materializations are the complete opposite. They are painful, anxiety-ridden attempts to hold one’s own hand. They are talking to others, and often to oneself, listening, letting one’s mind go blank, getting disappointed by people close to the heart, and often by oneself, self-enforced restraints, admitting,
Having the courage to try, having a hard time trying, self-allowed missteps, taking a stand or not taking it at all, and finally realizing one is human, and so is everyone else.
The word quarantine means going through processes that give the space to contemplate and understand the human condition. My body becomes a light possession to carry, my thoughts are easier to listen to, my conversations are less painful, uncharged of resentment and piled up emotions. My life is no longer just someone or somewhere else’s, it had also become my very own, as it should have always been.
