Everywhere she looks, there are people with masks
walking hastily in all directions avoiding each other’s gaze as if by a sole
glance the virus would jump from the contaminated and possess the fresh healthy
host. She was aware that she must keep her distance; a safe space of nearly 2
meters from each person she encounters, but people keep violating that vast
personal space. It’s not like we have one of those large sidewalks that would
make avoiding people less stressful. However, every time she passes dangerously
enough near someone or when she accidentally stood right next to a random person at
the grocery store, she tries her best to hold for as long as possible her
breath, so hopefully she won’t inhale the deadly virus-charged air around him.
She went out this afternoon to purchase some milk,
pasta and cheese in order to prepare her favorite meal for dinner: creamy
chicken and mushroom pasta. It’s everything she needs to cheer up in the midst
of this chaotic global ordeal.
Her eyes wide open, her heart squeezing inside her
chest, her breath accelerating, and her hand quivering while reaching out for the last
bottle of milk remaining in the fridge. She took the other two ingredients and
quickly headed to the counter:
“No more milk I see!” She asks in a low voice fearing
to spit the virus all over the place if she allows herself to speak more casually
“So we are indeed running out of food!” she adds.
“Oh Sofia, how are you?” shouts El Houssin, an old
grocery store keeper of the neighborhood, “We are running out of humanity and
solidarity you mean, as to the milk, it’s right behind you, that lazy boy
didn’t stuff it yet” Then addressing to the guy who was chatting in the corner
of the store, he shouts even louder: “NABIL WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING IN THERE YOU
MORON, HURRY AND FILL THE FRIDGE GOD DAMN IT” “I’m sorry miss Sofia, is this
everything you need? What's the matter? You look petrified my daughter?”
“Oh, I’m fine!” Recollecting herself from the brutal
shock. The virus could be all over her face right now; she was not wearing a
mask and neither was the old good fellow. Being outside is indeed a suicide
journey, one can never be careful enough; this nasty Corona can strike at any
moment and get you off guard. Corona…what a pretty name though. With a yielding
smile Sofia continues: “That’s everything for today, thank you uncle, and be
safe!”
Swiftly dodging the entering customers on her way out
while holding her breath; Sofia has finally escaped the highly infected store
area. She looks down at her hands, and she can almost spot stains of the
virus on her fingers waiting for her to rub her eyes or scratch her nose so it
can infiltrate her body and damage her lungs. Suddenly, her skin start to itch,
her nose tickled, and her eyes tingled. “Seriously, I never felt such an urge
to scrub my face so fiercely in my entire life, and now is definitely not a
good time to do so!” She thought, anxiously diverting her attention from that
irritating sensation, but ending up rubbing her face promptly against her left
shoulder anyways.
The virus seems to be terrifyingly everywhere; on the
ground, the walls, the doors, the plants, and even flying in the atmosphere that the only practical way, when out, is to dress up in a plastic bag covering
you up from head to toe. As to people, they appear like a machine gun heavily
loaded with Corona bullets.
With hasty steps, Sofia approaches her resident, she turns
to take a look at the empty small park across the street; she could clearly hear
the wind passing smoothly through tree branches and choreographically moving them on the harmonious birds’ melody. “Has it always existed, this peaceful and
relaxing sound?!” Sofia wonders. She could also inhale deeply and almost feel her
lungs burning inside with the freshness and purity of the air. Now that there were no
more passing cars, screaming children, people’s gossip, and loud noises of
different devices, nature seems to take over and made its voice audible and its
system balanced again.
“We are running out of humanity and solidarity you
mean!” This sentence kept resonating in Sofia’s ear ever since she left the grocery
store. How ironic it is; a common enemy to all humanity, and yet, the world
seems to be divided more than ever before. Countries are closing borders, even
stealing medical supplies from one another, and people are slamming doors,
avoiding each others, and competing to massively hoard food supplies at their
homes even if it would mean leaving nothing to the others in need. Why people
are growing more arrogant, aggressive and irresponsible in the midst of a
global crisis? And why this deafening silence around the world resembles to the alarming
calm that occurs before the turbulent storm?
Sofia turns the key, locks the door behind her, and
the game of ‘spot me if you can’ begins. The keys and doorknob are now
infected, she takes off her shoes, her coat, her jeans, and left them by the
door. She discharges the tissue bag content into the sink, and takes the bag to
join the bunch of clothes hanged close to the apartment door. She returns to the
kitchen and washes the bottle of milk, the wrapped slice of cheese, and the pasta
package with liquid soap. She passes then the soap on the tap, and mission
accomplished! Victorious, she gets out of the kitchen only to look at the front
door and get irked: “Yes, the door, the clothes, the shoes, this is a highly
infected area, do not touch; leave it there till my next suicide journey” she
sighs, washes her hand a second time along with her face, and then collapses in
the couch, scrolling up and down on her phone.
Today was an easy task for Sofia; however, it’s not
always the case. When she buys for instance vegetables, fruits or groceries
that would not tolerate a thorough scrub with water and soap, Sofia is usually
left puzzled. She stocks directly the filled bags into the cupboard and the
fridge. The game of ‘spot me if you can’ becomes thus complicated and hard to
win. “The virus can be anywhere: on the bananas, the surface beneath it, the
flour paper bag, or the items beside it… let’s just leave it there, hopefully Corona
will get bored waiting and dissipate into the air!” She concludes at every
time desperately.
On the feed news, every single post was about the so
named COVID-19, when they put it that way; it looks utterly serious and
dangerous. Sofia was overwhelmed by the enormous flow of information about this
dreadful pandemic. She was compelled to swing back and forth between hope of promising
cures and terror of skyrocketing numbers. Seemingly, the extremely contagious virus
will likely kill millions of people worldwide before the official release of a
proper vaccine, and that is frightening. After nearly a month of confinement,
Sofia still wakes up in the middle of the night in cold sweat realizing that
this nightmare isn’t over yet, and that’s merely the beginning of it.
Nevertheless, this crisis was inevitable, even mandatory
in a world we took for granted, in a life where we feel entitled and deserving,
and on an earth we consider ourselves superiors. It strikes us to think that
even if our technologie and knowledge have reached fascinating levels, we are
still vulnerable and weak beings in the face of that microscopic virus. We were trying
to exclude ourselves from nature, use it instead as a trivial mean to our greedy
ends, but it turns out that we are mere actors amongst other species on the
theatrical hand of Mother Nature; she allows us to benefit from her resources,
and she is powerful enough to deprive us of it, intimidate us, and remind us that
we are but one of the whole.
In the kitchen, Sofia already started chopping onions
and boiling the water. Waiting for the bit of butter to melt in the hot pan,
Sofia’s mind strays: “A year and half before an available vaccine, people buying
guns, economic powers shifting, conspiracies, hidden strategies and lurking
enemies… What’s all that for?! I guess the biggest enemy of humanity is
humanity itself after all, and it seems like the world will never be as before!”
She adds the sliced onions and fresh mushrooms to the melted butter, and
satisfyingly listens to the produced sound of hissing and popping as she moves
the ingredients with a wooden spoon. An appetizing smell rises to her nose,
Sofia decides to shun all skepticism for tonight, and gratefully relish these peaceful
moments, one more time.
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