Disappointment in Our Arab Societies

Feb 6

Morning reflection
In the morning, I search for meaning that does not settle for chanting. I realize we mastered repeating the anthem of unity, but never learned how to walk to its rhythm. We memorized the words and neglected the meaning.

Evening reflection
In the evening, when the noise fades and the question rises, disappointment appears not as an indictment of the people, but as a clear mirror reflecting the painful distance between what we were promised in books and what we lived in the streets.

Our dreams were not small, but we drew them on the sand of slogans. Waves of sectarianism and narrow interests came and erased the lines before they had time to dry. From the moment of major exposure, we entered an era of testing. Revolutions opened the doors, but we walked in carrying old equipment: a language of exclusion, a memory shaped by fear, and a politics driven by spoils.

We did not fail because change is impossible, but because our tools were broken.
The margins overtook the center. Disagreement turned into identity. The ability to compromise eroded the way wood rots when left to moisture.

Sectarianism is not a fate sent down from the sky. It is an economy of fear, fed by postponed ignorance. When a just state is absent, people go searching for a smaller homeland: a sect, a tribe, a party. The larger nation shrinks into hostile maps sustained by the memory of wounds.

History, when it repeats itself, is not mocking us. It is reminding us that whoever fails to build a new civic contract will eventually return—no matter how much time passes—to the caves of primal loyalties.

The way out does not begin with weapons, but with ideas. With a quiet war on extremism—not through insults, but through deconstruction. By drying up its sources in schools, in pulpits, and in the media. And by building a culture of life that places the human being before the slogan, the law before identity, and citizenship before spoils.

The world learned, after rivers of blood, that salvation does not come from victory for a sect, but from victory for the rule of law. As for us, we face a clear choice: either we choose civic rationality, or we continue—under new names—to recycle defeat.

English

Osama Shakman

Forty years in the sky were not merely a profession, but a long meditation on the meaning of existence. Borders drawn on maps dissolve, and the world becomes a single, living whole, where everything seems small except the human being.

In that altitude, I learned to observe and to understand before I judge, to see turbulence as part of a greater order not immediately visible to the eye. The sky was my first teacher: its vastness teaches humility, and its silence awakens the art of listening.

Today, I exchange the cockpit for the pen—not to recount a professional biography nor to stand on a political platform, but to open a window for reflection. What I write is not borrowed theory, but thoughts born of lived experience—of long flight hours and quiet moments between takeoff and landing.

This space is simply a free ground for thought, where words are kept from noise and the human story is honored, however simple it may seem. For every life, no matter how fleeting, carries a meaning worth telling and a voice worth hearing.

Welcome to a new journey—one measured not in miles, but in depth of thought and breadth of vision.

٤٠ عاما في السماء، عمر من المراقبة

أربعون عامًا في السماء لم تكن مجرد مهنة، بل تأمّلًا طويلًا في معنى الوجود. تتلاشى الحدود التي رسمناها على الخرائط، ويغدو العالم كتلةً واحدة نابضة بالحياة، حيث يصغر كل شيء إلا الإنسان.

في ذلك العلوّ تعلّمت أن أراقب وأفهم قبل أن أحكم، وأن أرى الاضطراب جزءًا من نظامٍ أكبر لا تدركه العين لأول وهلة. كانت السماء معلمي الأول: اتساعها يعلّم التواضع، وصمتها يوقظ الإصغاء.

واليوم أستبدل قمرة القيادة بالقلم، لا لأروي سيرةً مهنية ولا لأعتلي منبرًا سياسيًا، بل لأفتح نافذةً للتأمل. ما أكتبه ليس نظرياتٍ مستعارة، بل أفكار وُلدت من التجربة، من ساعات الطيران الطويلة ولحظات التأمل بين الإقلاع والهبوط.

هذا الفضاء مساحةٌ حرة للفكر، تُصان فيها الكلمة من الضجيج، ويُحتفى بالقصة الإنسانية مهما بدت بسيطة. فكل حياة، وإن بدت عابرة، تحمل معنى يستحق أن يُروى وصوتًا يستحق أن يُصغى إليه.

مرحبًا بكم في رحلةٍ لا تُقاس بالأميال، بل بعمق الفكرة واتساع الرؤية.

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