Not every day feels like a story worth telling. Some days feel like dust. You wake up, perhaps drinking your coffee too fast, and maybe forgetting to eat at all. The sun comes through the window the wrong way and you just… feel off. Like something’s missing but you can’t name it.
I had one of those days yesterday. I kept checking the news, hoping to feel informed or angry or something at least—but it all just blurred. Bombings here, elections there, another scandal, another name I don’t recognize. It’s not that these things don’t matter. They do. But sometimes you’re too tired to hold the world up.
So I went outside. Not far, just down the street. There’s this old man who sells used books on a blanket next to a busted-out pharmacy. He’s always there. Rain, heat, doesn’t matter. He smells like old tobacco and jasmine tea. I never really talked to him. But yesterday I sat down next to him. Didn’t say much. Just sat.
He offered me sunflower seeds. I didn’t even want them, but I took some anyway. And we sat there, chewing quietly, while the cars passed and the world kept moving and nothing really happened—but also everything happened. It felt like a memory I didn’t know I needed.
I guess what I’m trying to say is… this site, Arab Post Online, it’s not just about the Big Things. It’s not trying to scream louder than everyone else. It’s more like that old man with the books. Always there, always waiting. Sometimes the stories here will be loud, and sometimes they will be soft. But they’ll be honest.
We’ll share what we can. A snapshot from Damascus, maybe. Or a tiny piece about a woman starting a soap business in Nablus. Or just some weird late-night thought someone emailed us from Dubai after watching the rain.
You might not relate to every story here. That’s okay. I don’t always either. But I read them. I sit with them, like I sat with that book seller. Not to fix anything. Just to be there. To hold space. Because sometimes that’s all we really need.
If you’ve ever felt invisible in the news cycle, if your name never made it into headlines, if your moments felt too small to share—this is for you. We see you. We’re listening, even when we don’t know what to say.
And if today feels like dust… that’s okay. There’s room for that here too.
