Thread by @arash_tehran

You want to know how I feel about all this ink I have to spill about the Middle East & its conflicts?

I wish I didn't have to do any of it. I wish I could be in Tehran, Beirut, Tel Aviv or Gaza, writing about poetry, cinema and wine, just as I did when I was a teen in Tehran

I wish I never had to know what are different types of drones and missiles, who is Hezbollah and who is Hamas and what murderous impulses motivates Khamenei or Netanyahu or Haniyeh.

I wish I didn't have to imagine the pain of children in Gaza or families of hostages in Ashkelon

I wish my timelines were filled with fights not about killing of children and whether it's justified but about whether you like Mehjoee or Kiarostami, whether Nazar Qabaani's love poetry is cheesy, whether you are a Murakami or an Ishiguro kind of person

I wish when a shopkeeper in Madrid or Atlanta asked me where I am from and I said 'Middle East', they said: oh, I love your poetry, your food, your cinema, your novels. I wish that's what we were known for.

I wish I and thousands like me were not driven from our homeland just because we don't like the rulers. I wish I could be getting drunk in the vineyards of my uncle near Arak, I wish my Egyptian friends could teach in their own country whenever they wanted.

I am not alone in these wishes in this wretched region. One day enough of us will set the agendas for the guns to drop silent and for us to breathe again.

When Gaza will be known first for its great beaches, Tel Aviv for its great cafes, Tehran for its excellent bread.

We are in an abyss now and it's hard to imagine a different world is possible. But we are too hopeless to ever give up on hope.