Friday, December 27, 2013

Sequence of events after a Beirut blast

This is literally what happens every single time:
  1. When you hear the news, experience shock and moment of silence. Heart sinks.
  2. When you recover, immediately - and irrationally, contact your partner/significant other/loved ones via Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter (phone lines are usually down) to make sure they are fine, even though you're not sure exactly where the explosion was.
  3. When the initial panic wears off, try to determine the general vicinity of the blast and remember if anyone you know works, lives or may be in the area at the time. Repeat Step 2 for those people.
  4. When you are sure everyone is fine, start getting angry at the cowardly assholes with no clear agenda except terrorizing people who are just going about their lives, when they already have enough problems.
  5. When you realize that this was an assassination and not a random blast, secretly breathe a sigh of relief for one second but then decide that this only means one thing: we are as irrelevant and insignificant as we have ever been in this damn excuse for a country, and only serve as collateral damage in a decades long conflict that has nothing to do with us.
  6. Get frustrated and depressed.
  7. Repeat ad infinitum.