This week I found time to dive into some braindead Instagram scrolling on my food-filled timeline, only to be handed a sleepless night.
I found the usual cooking videos, some cool art here and there, stellar food pics, some Kendrick vs. Drake beef clips, some more drool-worthy cooking videos, and finally a picture that led me to restless nightmares — a chicken sandwich with the sauce ready to drip off the bun.
It wasn’t the sandwich that gave me bags under my eyes the next day. It was the one after. Little did I know this picture was a ruse, a sort of hack by a prominent food content creator who goes by Moribyan. She has more than 2.2 million followers, so she knows what she’s doing. She used the very simple trick of posting a slide with a picture of a home-cooked chicken sandwich with the caption on the photo saying ‘Here’s how to make Dave’s hot chicken copycat’.
As an ex-Californian, my subconscious recognized the famous chicken sandwich joint named Dave’s Hot Chicken. So I used my greasy thumb to smudge my screen with a leftward swipe because I was interested. The second slide was a video, which is the trick to boost a post in some way I still don’t understand — but this video had nothing to do with that chicken sandwich.
The video showed several dirt-covered children who lived in the Rafah tent camp before it got bombed. The next slide was a caption saying how the International Court of Justice ruled for a halt on attacks in the region. And she wrote, “[..]If you are trying in any way to justify this, you have lost your humanity entirely.” The next slide continued with another caption that said, “[..]You will never convince me that burning children alive in tents is necessary to ‘protect’ another country.”
Then came a sketch of the image that came from Rafah of a man holding a child with a flower in place of the head. Haunting.
Moribyan fooled an all-controlling algorithm that doesn't favor such trickery. She used her platform to share her message. She questioned those in power allowing this to happen and the moral apathy of ordinary people who fail to value Palestinian lives and those of children. And how can you not feel pain or outrage?
I was overwhelmed by my anger. Heaven forbid anything like this happen to anyone’s worst enemy. I was ashamed of humanity, who we are, and what we are capable of — human’s recurring theme of war. Depending on where you are, life can easily be hell.
I couldn’t sleep. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be imprisoned with bombs dropping all over. I had nightmares of that happening to my family, to my love, to my daughter. I lost feeling in my lower lip and felt my pulse come back hitting against the wall of my teeth. My chin was tense as I heard a little girl outside my window in our courtyard asking for her papa.
I have the supreme luxury of returning to my life’s monotony. Heading to work on the metro the next day, I felt powerless but somehow heard the world rallying, crying for peace. Fighting however they can, through social media, protest, writing, talking, graffiti, or anything with the tools you have
Because if not, the passive state of apathy is being complacent to the horrors of war. We have the right to be enraged. As Moribyan said, if you are not angry, devastated, or feeling anything at all about this, before and especially at this point, then are you even human?
Peaceful-ly yours,
The Greasy Pen.