By Dr. Adnan Bouzan

Here we are, walking on—not because the ground is paved with serenity, but because our souls refuse to be reduced to rubble. We tread over sharp gravel, our feet pierced by silence, carrying calm faces as if they had never known storms, while in our depths volcanoes rage without erupting. We gather our fragments with care, stitch our tears with threads of defiance, and mend the voids left by absence, so that no one sees how secretly we have been broken.

We strain our chests to keep them upright, pack our pulses with resolve, and stand on the edges of collapse as though we had never fallen into an abyss. We bear the weight of days like forgotten soldiers—no one hears their groans, no one turns to look—yet they keep marching, because the battle does not wait.

We do not continue because the road is easy, but because we were shaped in the image of those who do not know surrender—those who have learned how to breathe beneath the rubble of disappointments, and how to smile when on the verge of falling. We break the silence of pain with a smile that hides what cannot be spoken, and we lock our tears behind the doors of our eyelids so they will not escape before strangers.

We have grown accustomed to living in the heart of the battle, to lifting our faces into the wind, to planting a thousand trees of patience in the chambers of our hearts, and to bandaging the bleeding of our souls with the dressings of hope. We walk, worn and weary, yet we appear fine to passersby, for long ago we understood that survival is not for those who never fall, but for those who master the art of rising after every fall—even the final one.

We carry on not because we are strong, but because we do not know how to stop, and because within us lies a seed that resists even when all the fields have withered. We are the ones who carry in our chests a pain enough for entire cities, yet we distribute it evenly across our heartbeats so that our hearts do not bear more than they can endure. We walk on, even if our souls are shattered, and we say, “We are fine.” Not to convince others, but to convince ourselves that we are still here, and that we are still alive.

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