“Corona: The Virus that Made Us Strangers in Our Home”

I never imagined that I would feel that way... fear, estrangement and disorder, yes, this is what I felt when I first left my house after 80 days of quarantine... I put my mask and closed the door of the house... During those few seconds in the elevator between the floor where I live and the outside door, my thinking was only that of the feeling that I was going to feel after a long absence from the street... The elevator stopped and I woke up from the mindset coma that was controlling my imagination, I got out of the

house and although I walked a few meters I wasn't fully aware of what was going on around me. 

But a short moment later, I turned upside down when someone I didn't know passed by me, and even if I knew him, I wouldn’t recognize him, because the masks made us unknown to each other... In my everyday life, I used to exchange smiles, greetings and peace, but this is no longer possible because I see only eyes that touch me. I don't know if they are smiling eyes or aggressive, and I don't know who they are. For me even if they are my neighbours or family, they are just people with masks.

It wasn't easy for me to live that unusual moment, in the middle of my mind, and when I was looking into its details, I was struck by another shock. it awoke in my soul; I was strolling on enemy territory. I remembered that the street was the kingdom of the enemy, which he settled in and expelled us from it, Not outside, but inside. He closed us in our homes and prevented us from leaving. he was the cruellest and most deadly enemy! We don't see him and we don't know where he is, he hits roughly and hard, he doesn't make a difference between a young or an old, a man or a woman, strong or weak, he enters gently and quietly into our bodies, maybe with a cousin's sneeze or a lover's touch or a friend's handshake or something we don't pay attention to. He sneaks in and enters with his military plan that leads him to our respiratory systems and makes a hell of suffering and pain between us and the happy and sane life that we used to live.

I know that you know who or what I'm talking about, this Coronavirus that has turned the whole world and the life of this person who tells this story upside down. At the first I took it for a joke because he was thousands of kilometres away from me and from my homeland, I didn't even try of discovering it, because I couldn't believe that he was going to become an unwanted guest in my life, and only a few days passed I find him tyrannizing in my bolted city, and here I started the 80 days of quarantine that I didn't cut until today when I decided to go out. As I was making steps that took me away from my beloved home, from my shelter, I was still wondering whether I was brave or reckless! After the first person passed by me, he was followed by many people who shared me the road ... And besides the fact that they were strange to me, I felt them in the depths of myself, above being strangers: Enemies, the coronavirus wasn't just tyrannizing, it was tyrannizing and recruiting! Yes, he was recruiting! He was recruiting soldiers and ambassadors to serve his plan without their knowledge, carrying him in and feeding him with their food, spreading him wherever they walk or move on and increasing his strength and sovereignty,  of a and in a certain moment he took advantage to take control of their lives, and they are those who resisted and defeated, and those who gave in to his power and martyred, and what scared me the most was that he would be among those on the street one of those recruits who could approach me and held me above my will to “the CORONA Fleet”, so the closer I was to someone, the farther away I escaped, and the more someone looked at me I was terrified.

I walked into the neighbourhood mall, it was never the way I used to know it was, I found it very different! All of its doors were blocked and only one door is used to go in and out to organize customers and keep them safe, I've started checking the shelves and I find them unusually full, even some of the goods were on the floor. And between these shelves, I saw nothing but shopping carts full of theses goods, And there's a bunch of things on top of it that the owners are pushing slowly and with difficulty because of their large size, they're afraid of losing the balance, so it fall down, and become a pile that fills the narrow hallways of the centre, I wasn't going to the mall for shopping I was just looking for paper towels, and because I hadn't been shopping for months, I forgot where it was, I looked and looked until I found her, I picked up the box very quickly, went to the Payment box, and I pulled back to my house very quickly.

I went back home and my family greeted me as if I was really in a war battle and I just came home, I went in and started the sterilization ceremony, took off my clothes, took a shower, and then I put my clothes under the sun to make sure that the enemy would not penetrate our house. These ceremonies ended, and I found myself exhausted, as though I was already fighting, I took a glass of water, and I sat down and I replayed the tape of these minutes that I spent like a terrified stranger on the battlefield, I had a first sip and then second sip, but the third sip was very weird, I felt the glass was dancing in my hands, I was shaking, I was shaking so much! I've never experienced this before, I didn't know why, is it my fear of the Coronavirus? Or my feeling of foreignness in the street of the neighbourhood where I grew up and among its people?

It was a good, weird question, and the only one who could answer was me. I put the glass on the table next to me, I brought a soft pillow, I raised it on the edges, I made it flat to receive my head that would be thrown in her bosom, I threw my head in her lap and threw my mind that was inside my head in the lap of the journey of looking for a convincing answer, I started thinking and thinking, and whenever I found a thread that led me to a logical truth, I lost it was next to the glass on the table next to me, my phone, which never stopped shaking and whistling because of the many notices and messages I get every second, a moment of silence! Not in the room because my phone kept making noise, but in my mind, who finally found the answer to that question. I remembered that the 80 days I spent in my room in the house, I spent most of it online in the internet so I wouldn't break my connection to the outside world, WhatsApp was a social place for family and friends, and Facebook in many groups was the place I went to exchange ideas and maybe laughter and entertainment videos, while Instagram was where I share my daily life and follow the other’s lives, waiting for a new picture to be published, or a Story where they say something, or sing, dance, or do sports in their homes, and LinkedIn was my place for work, where I saw only the elegance of posts, letters, and the ties that filled personal accounts photos  and my favorite place was YouTube, which was my landfill to the capitals and continents of the world, where I was enjoying Vlogs and documentaries, and of course Udemy was my school where I learned something from time to time, all these virtual places made me Virtual, too, I was  familiar with it and I enjoyed the time I spent in it what made me feel like I was home and forget how people lives in real life. It made me feel a stranger on the street frightened of everything, but this feeling was born only because of the Coronavirus 19, which made our lives a long, painful and strange story.

Published: 30/06/2020