The Uncertainty of it All: Day 63

Day 63: May 28, 2020
Global cases: 5,900,907; Deaths: 361,549
Egypt cases: 20,793; Deaths: 845

Amira El Biltagy
Jameel Leadership Program Manager
School of Global Affairs and Public Policy

It feels that we’re being violently pranked. Everything that used to be a mundane day-to-day chore has either stopped or became an issue that needed extra measures to get done, speaking of extra measures, I need to finish this and go perform a deep disinfection process for the super market bags lying on the kitchen’s floor before emptying them on the counter.

During the first couple of weeks of lockdown, no one felt their actual selves; everyone was trying to diffuse the rage and the inability to comprehend the situation with activities that may not have been part of their everyday lives before. Baking and yoga were suddenly constituting a big chunk of the lives of most of the people I know. What was happening to our lives, the lives we once knew and mostly complained about?

Suddenly, we’re bound to our homes, the homes that we had barely occupied in our pre-quarantine routine. We used to roam the streets all day juggling work, duties, social commitments, kids’ activities and God knows what. Now, we have to make peace with the idea of just staying at home for our own safety and the safety of our loved ones. This restriction in your own home and the sentiments of missing your parents, who live less than 10 minutes away, the helplessness and giving in to the daily news announcing the number of deaths and the number of the newly infected people with the novel coronavirus was at first all intriguing and at the same time numbing.

I had just moved to a new house less than two months before the lockdown, and of course I still had a lot of boxes to open, a lot of things to get done that I hadn’t had the opportunity to do. So yes, being at home was a golden chance for me to get things done. It was my very own personal silver lining out of the whole miserable situation of the quarantine but still, staying at home had its toll on me and I couldn’t help but be bloused into the shadow of the anxiety that was dominating the rhythm and the dynamics of our days.

My mind is rushing with ideas, emotions and contradictions, but what I am sure of is that the clearest signifier of these unprecedented times we’re living in is ironically the uncertainty of it all.

This prevailing sense of ambiguity and vagueness makes one dwell on thoughts of what used to be in comparison to what’s currently happening. Since the beginning of this state of isolation, I couldn’t help but be dragged into a constant state of comparisons and questions that are persistently starting with “what if we were in our normal days?”.

For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.

This emotional and mental rollercoaster that has been navigating through my mind knocks on all the doors, my personal day-to-day activities, the provocative local and global news that we’re subjected to, the sense of helplessness and giving in, the feeling of denial, as well as the dwelling of big ideas that may seem too big for the moment, but are still inescapable.

Again, it’s the irony of the uncertainty, the feeling of being overwhelmingly provoked yet passively helpless.

Ramadan just ended and we’re celebrating the last day of the Eid-al-Fitr holiday, a time of the year that used to be packed with social gatherings, outings, and family visits. I cannot help but recall the pre-corona me complaining about having iftar outside my house more than half the days of last Ramadan and how it felt so tiring and hectic. I remember being irritated last year from the number of family visits we had to make during the first couple of days of Eid, the kids’ gifts from the toy store, the whole planning for the Eid vacation, maneuvering outings, visits, and errands. That is the utter uncertainty of the whole situation; is this really a break from what we used to complain about?

Or is it a wake-up call to appreciate and be thankful for the blessings that we once saw as tiresome? Do we want this to be over to go back to our normal lives or is there a new normal awaiting us?

I wanted to write about Eid but this year it is a sad Eid, a blessed one though, it only gets down to my parents visiting us for less than two hours in the garden, no hugging or kissing and only cold waves upon rushed goodbyes before the 5pm curfew. I wish everyone a very blessed Eid and I sincerely hope we celebrate next year healthy, happy, and satisfied after all this bizarreness is over.