This is a short story I wrote back in August 2020, shortly after the devastating blast in Lebanon.

The explosion ripped into his left side and lifted him into the air effortlessly.  He had but one moment to register what had happened before his body was engulfed by dust and his ears were bombarded with screams.  Through the haze, he glanced down at his blue overalls and discovered his own blood on the outside of his body.  As his mind registered that, so came the pain.  The excruciating siren of his nervous system starting to wail.  All was not well. 

“Why didn’t I die?” Omar thought.

It wasn’t a whim of gratitude, but rather a sarcastic remark of resentment.  It would have made things so much easier.  He wanted to die.  He had wanted to die for a long time.  Instead, here he lay - wounded but alive, hurt but conscious.  Oh, the irony.

His life in Beirut had been overwhelming him for a long time now and he simply could not escape the demons in his mind.  He had tried everything: therapy, meditation, exercise, marijuana, positive affirmations - everything that the annals of self-help promised as solutions.  Yet, here he was, lying in the dust hoping to die.  The joyous memories of years ago seemed so distant now. 

When he married Maya, he had the world at his feet.  He had convinced the love of his life (and himself) that he would deliver her the lifestyle she deserved.  He was holding down a stable, yet meagre job in the docks but dreamed of finding something more substantial.  They didn’t have much in terms of possessions, but they had a small place to themselves and let the romance of early marriage fulfill every need.  He actually felt immensely proud about what he had managed to wrangle up for him and his new wife.  He had escaped the horrors of his childhood and had rebuilt himself as the man he wished his father could have been.

But that was years ago.  Fate did not hold the same optimism that he once did.  Life just kept striking him across the face, again and again.  It would tease a future of happiness borne from the rubble and the rags but would yank that from under his nose every time he thought he had figured it all out.

His relationship with his parents continued to disintegrate, their house was badly damaged by a fire, the city continued to be ravaged by conflict and his wages became more and more sporadic as the economy continued to limp along. 

And all this before the miscarriage.

Maya’s miscarriage was what finally broke the camel’s back.  She had always wanted to be a mother and Omar knew that she would be an excellent one.  When one night she sat him down with stars in her eyes and told him that she had conceived, it was one of the happiest moments of his life.  They held each other and cried for hours, revelling in the mix of excitement and nervousness. 

To then watch the only light of his life go through the most heart-wrenching of losses left him empty.  In the weeks that followed, his mind replayed the same old story: ‘Everything will fall apart’.  It always did.

It was the same attitude that dominated dinner table conversations in his childhood home and it’s the exact worldview that he vowed never to repeat.  His teenage self had promised adult Omar that he would leave behind the pessimism that soaked his upbringing.

And for years he did.  He found untapped reserves inside of himself to remain positive and proactive, he built some capacity for resilience.  But even this did not survive repeated contact with the roll of fate’s dice.  With time, the naive optimism that he once held dear had been chiseled away by a thousand cuts and his 19-year-old sensibility had been replaced by a nihilism that was hard to shake.  The depression that had sunk in had tainted every potential moment of comfort and instead, he had begun to feel helpless, worthless and even a burden on Maya.

What do you do when everything has actually fallen apart?

So, as the sirens and the sounds of footsteps brought him back to the present, he saw an opportunity present itself.  Here was a chance to give Maya the out that she so desperately deserved.  By stepping out of the way she could get a clean break so that she could find someone to give her the life that he could not provide.  She deserved so much better than the shell of a man that he had become, but she was just too kind and selfless to admit it. 

Resolved to his plan, he lifted his eyes and peered through the smoke.  He saw people running past him in terror.  The cacophony of sound played like a symphony narrating the disaster that had rocked the country’s largest port.  Slowly, he raised himself to his feet and started to walk against the current, straight towards the source of the explosion.

Giant warehouses lay in ruins.  Piece of glass, metal, and wood were strewn about as far as the eye could see.  Every structure within a 10km radius had been devastated.  The dead and the soon-to-be-dead littered the streets.  But Omar didn’t care about any of this.  He walked on, a ghost to become.

He found his spot and knelt down amongst the rubble.  His hands were shaking.  He removed the gritty gold chain from around his neck, the security pass from his shirt pocket, and the old handkerchief tucked into his belt.  These personal effects found new homes underneath the pile of debris that lay in front of him.

He left other things too.  His wife.  His home.  The demons in his mind.

With one last glance back towards the city in flames, Omar fled.

—

Maya’s head was in her hands, her tears long dried.  The chain adorned the table next to her.  Her beloved city would never be the same.  Her life would never be the same.

The news that trickled in explaining what had caused such a tragedy was mostly ignored - it simply didn’t matter.  Whatever had happened, whoever had been at fault, it was now too late.  She had lost him.

For days she hung on to the hope that he had survived.  In her desperation she joined the rest of the city in combing through the remnants, but to no avail.  She trawled the morgues and pestered the hospitals - ticking off her list as she moved down it.  No luck. 

It wasn’t until she received a phone call from one of the first responders that she got the answer she had been dreading.  She drove to collect his belongings and when she held them in her hands, it was the loneliest she had ever felt.  The surreal nature of the past couple of days turned to mourning and the fires of hope were extinguished.

—

3 years later.

“I can’t go back.  How am I supposed to explain myself?”

“It doesn’t matter what you say Omar”, Andreas replied.  “You just walk up to her and open your arms.  The rest will come later.”

“But she thinks I’m dead.  She has moved on.  It would be heartless to appear like a ghost from the past - after all she must have been through.” 

“Ok, then stay here.  And for the rest of your life, you’ll wonder what could have been.  But for goodness sake, make a decision and stop moping about.”

Omar smiled and bumped Andreas with his shoulder.  His burly colleague was right, of course, he had been talking about going back for weeks now.  Lamenting the emptiness, he felt he spoke day in and day out about what could have been if the chips had fallen in a different way.  He had thought that he would escape the guilt that he felt and console himself in the knowledge that Maya was better off.  But that peace of mind eluded him.

Rebuilding his life in Cyprus was supposed to be a fresh start for him.  He could escape the responsibilities and drowned nature of his old life and let Maya move on to someone more suitable to her stature.  Here, across the sea, he didn’t have to pretend that he could provide a life that he could not.  He didn’t have to strive for more.  He could just wallow in his own pity, safe from the prying eyes of a lover who wanted more from him.

But his new life had shown him just how naive that was.  He had made some friends, found himself a job and started afresh – but he missed her and what she meant to him.  He had interpreted the stress, anxiety and guilt of how his life had fallen apart in Beirut as a punishment he was needlessly inflicting on her, rather than the signs and manifestations of how much he cared for her.

“Maybe she needs you in the same way that you need her?” Andreas interjected into his inner monologue.  Omar realised he had been daydreaming.  “It’s easy to tell yourself that she’s better off without you because it will justify what you did.  But to live the rest of your life by that lazy assumption will eat you up inside.”

It was eating at Omar already.  He didn’t need the rest of his life to admit to that.  It was dawning on him that the nihilistic drama of faking his own death and the abnegation of his responsibilities was exactly the behaviour that he despised in his father.  In his own way he had become him, and it sickened him.

Perhaps he could build himself again.  He had done it before.  All it would take would be a belief in a capacity for self-determination.  Well, in fairness, it would take a lot more than that.  But, as lead dominoes go, it was somewhere to start.

He resolved to return to the place of his death, to be a ghost no more.

—

He peered over the hedge towards his old house.  It stood exactly as he remembered it.  But it felt completely transformed.  It wasn’t his anymore.  It was the home of a mistaken widow, his wife, and whatever changes she had made to her life in the years since the explosion.  It was nostalgic and foreign at the same time. 

He had made it as far as the hedge, but could go no further.  He just couldn’t will himself from his perch.  The excitable optimism that Andreas had instilled in him hadn’t survived the journey and his mind was up to its tricks again, talking him out of walking up to that front door. 

What would he say?  How would he explain himself?

He played out various scenarios in his head.  Maya would have changed her stead.  She would have moved onto greener pastures.  She had to go on with her life.  While it felt like time had stood still for him, it certainly hadn’t for her.  So, what right did he have to walk up, as a ghost, and knock on her door?  Why open up old wounds?

The thoughts barged in one after another.  Each one more self-deprecating and guilt-ridden than the next.  The negative thought patterns spiralled and overwhelmed his rational brain, leaving him stuck in the mire once more.  He was right back where he started, his progress wiped away in a moment. 

It was almost as if those painful memories were attached to the land he stood on.  Just standing within the vicinity of the house brought back everything that had scared him away.  The inferiority complex, the anxiety, the depression, the unworthiness.  What he thought had been exorcised announced itself once again.

He heard a noise as a window was opened and he quickly dropped again behind the hedge.  Breathing heavily, he hoped that she had not seen him. 

He waited. 

After some time, he peeked out again and found the scene exactly as it was before - peaceful and quiet.  His internal scene remained stagnant as well.  Omar couldn’t outrun his mind.  And he couldn’t will his legs to the front door either. 

For hours he stared over that hedge, looking for signs of movement.  Maya’s car remained in the driveway, so she was definitely home, but he never saw her.  She remained cloaked behind the walls of the home that he had bought.

Evening came, and then the dark and finally the surroundings fell into slumber.  Omar remained immobile behind the leaves.  He remained in place as each light on the street was extinguished one by one, until only the streetlights remained visible.

No one knew that the ghost of Omar had returned.  No one cared.

Courting the embarrassment he felt at having travelled so far for such a cowardly showing, he retreated with his tail between his legs, making his way down the road to an open clearing which would do as his resting place for the night.

After selecting the flattest section he could find, he wrapped his jacket around him, snug as can be, and laid his head down on the grass.  The waning sounds of Beirut slowly whisked him away to an unearned but desperately needed rest.  “Tomorrow”, he told himself “will be the day.” 

“I will try again tomorrow.”

—

Omar felt a hand on his shoulder.  Startled, he flailed his arms toward the sleep-disturber and as his eyes opened, the headlights of a car flooded his vision.  He raised an arm to block the light and attempted to re-orient himself.  Adrenaline rushed to bring him back into consciousness, the sounds of the early morning came online in his brain, and then he saw the silhouette.  The light of the car formed a halo around the body that was crouched down in front of him.

His eyes finally adjusted to the light and, wearily, he made eye contact with the person who had woken him.

And he saw her.