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The epidemic that started in the far east broke out and reached most of the countries of the world. Our world was turned upside down, which changed faster than we imagined, in a matter of a few weeks, the form of life changed and had a face other than the one we knew for an entire age. The question that is now in the minds and above the tongues is: When will everything return to its state?
But even after the end of the stone that is now imposed on millions transformed the world, and perhaps even after the end of the epidemic, life will never return to its previous era. We are talking about a change in the balance of international powers and an earthquake in the dominance of economic globalization. We are talking about a change that will last everyone. This is the case with crises and disasters of a global nature, leaving nothing as it was before (1).
And away from those changes of a huge nature, from the beginning of the epidemic and the stone, other changes of a less visible nature began to look into ourselves. The meanings of our homes have changed, and the relationships that bind us to others have changed.
New relationship with the home
Between the blink of an eye and its attention, our relationship with the home has radically transformed. One month ago, the house was that dead space where there is never new. At the end of a long day we spent working or having fun outside, our tired bodies harbored the couches to rest, then to the beds to sleep and prepare for another long day we spend most of it outside. For years, the culture of going out has been the dominant one. We have to get out of our safe spaces, from our homes, discover the world, learn, work and make friends and engage in new experiences. Silence - this is how we thought - stands on the opposite side of life, so that life lives to its fullest, you have to You are always in motion, a movement the size of the outside world.
But all of these concepts suddenly reversed, faster than we imagined. Now, the outside world - from that abundant range of life’s promises - has turned into a deadly space. It was occupied by creatures too young to see them, who could return us in a mere two weeks to dead bodies, and we were exiled from them for a time that no one knows. The outside world has turned into a battlefield for our bodies more fragile than to fight them, and as an inability to fight refugees, we have come home.
The meaning of the house has changed in this way too, and it is no longer that dead area that it was a month ago, but it has become our first opportunity to survive, in life, regaining in this primitive connotations as a nest sheltering from the nature of alienation and dangers that we cannot face. As writer Fathi Al-Maskini says: “The fear of the epidemic has brought home its primitive function: protection from the threat of extinction under the threat of predatory or wild animals that are loose in the vicinity. It is true that“ savage ”has taken another indication, but the fear of extinction has not changed. Therefore, we are witnessing an exciting return of the "cave" relationship with our bodies: where "staying at home" becomes an explicit activation of the saying "return to the cave", it is "staying in the cave" temporarily because the outside world has become a danger to the bodies "(2).
Suddenly, our lives shrank to the small spaces of our homes, the borders of our world stood at the doors of the house, and the romantic question: “How do we inhabit the world?” Is a poor and poorly asked question, suddenly we have to ask: “How do we live our homes?” (3). But our homes have proven to us that they are more spacious and spacious than we thought, so that above their harboring of our bodies from danger, they take many other roles throughout the day, their pillars turned into offices through which we perform our work, and the sofa facing the TV became a private cinema after the theaters closed their doors, and it is sufficient to singularly A small rug and we practice exercises to transform into gyms, and the closed kitchens of many of those days also came back to life, so that the home food would spread the atmosphere of the house with a touch of warmth.
As the only preventive method that we have until now, home stone will remain a period long enough, perhaps, until the signs of the home and the outside world change in our minds even after the epidemic has passed, so a part of us feels a hidden threat throughout his stay abroad, and the feeling of complete security does not return Unless you go home and close the door tightly, all the evils of the world remain outside the home.
The most isolated disaster
With the same radicalism in which the epidemic changed our relationship with the home, it also altered our relationship with others. For the first time in our lives, we cannot turn to others to find solace, as it has transformed the other Corona virus from a source of comfort to a possible source of infection. The human being as a social being has always found solace, even in the darkest conditions, in his presence in multitudes, crowds praying in mosques and praying and praying, or crowds chanting in churches and asking God to raise the calamity, or even crowds gathering around their favorite soccer team and chanting together happily When the nets shake and forget their grief for a while, and crowds envelop the dark in the cinemas, and they fully identify for two hours with an imaginary world and leave their life in crisis abroad.
But the epidemic prevented all of this, because the masses have become impossible today to hotbeds of disease, and we lost the consolation that we were seeking in the presence of others, to make the Corona virus the most isolated catastrophe. Thus, as Al-Maskini writes: “The approach to any foreign body has become an unsafe encounter with the consequences after human and non-human bodies have recovered their“ last ”root and all have become suggestive of the threat of“ my enemy ”. The“ other ”in general has lost a large part of his“ safety ” He suddenly became an unbearable guest. (4)
Perhaps if the crisis drags on, some of our precautions and suspicions about us will get stuck to us, perhaps, as professor of linguistics Debra Tannen says: “Our sense of comfort in the presence of others is replaced by a greater sense of security in their absence, especially those whom we do not know closely”, we may think carefully after This year before we reached out in peace, "We now know that touching things, being with others, and breathing in suffocating rooms are all factors that put us at risk. The speed with which these concepts will be deposited in people's minds will vary, but it is impossible to completely disappear for anyone who lived through That year "(5).
It does not take long for us to acquire new habits, and we also do not need to ignore an old habit until we completely drop it from our lives. Who knows, maybe after the crisis has ended, something as simple as shaking hands will die (6). With all the things whose meanings and connotations changed in that short period, the handshake, that innocent gesture that has accompanied us since ancient times, has transformed from a sign of affection and trust to one of the main sources of transmitting a deadly virus. Prior to the imposition of the embargo, at our meetings, the confused moment in which the hands mattered to come was spread out and delivered by habit, so our fear of contagion withdrew and suddenly shrank. That moment will extend after the end of the ban and be repeated, until sudden confusion is replaced by a new habit of fear of touching any foreign body. Then, that abysmal habit will begin to die, after it has lost its innocence.
Perhaps the glossary of our expressions, which we are used to expressing by touch, may also shrink. For all of those things that we were unable to pronounce and that we have summed up in gestures and touches, after this we will have to find another way to express them, or we should rather be silent. No, of course, the epidemic will not eliminate our ability or desire to communicate with others, but it will make it more targeted to secure electronic spaces, as Tanning writes: “Instead of asking: 'Is there a reason why we should do this on the Internet?'” Then we will ask: “Is there a reason for us to do this on the ground?” (7).
There, in conversation and video chat applications, you will not be afraid of someone sneezing and a deadly spray will fall on your face, and you will not fear that you will approach you too much without intending to transmit the disease to you, you can there to speak and communicate with others without fear, this is a space in which we can approach From each other we are actually thousands of miles away. The distance, the distances between us and the one we love, are all things we used to hate, but now we are the only way to safety in a fragile present to the maximum extent in which survival means isolation.