I have worked in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Dubai, I’ve seen enough to understand that, at moments like this, what must endure the most, must bear the highest level of hardship, pain, and difficulty without breaking or giving up, is not ideology, nor the rhetoric of power, but ordinary life.
I was in Cairo during the Arab Spring. Smoke hung over the city. Sirens cut through the dusk. Tanks lined the streets. My client’s building burnt to the ground. Tear gas, gangs of armed militia, fear and uncertainty were everywhere. No one quite knew where the line was , between protest and peril, between solidarity and chaos. Gun fire echoing throughout the night. The curious shimmering sound of shattered glass failing onto pavements. Wreckage on the streets in the morning, blackened and distorted by heat and explosives..
There is a particular vulnerability when a city is under fire. Streets that once held commerce and conversation become thresholds of risk. Balconies become watchtowers. Corners become fault lines. You feel it in your body, the exposure, the fragility. The built fabric remains, but the social contract evaporates. A city at war is not simply loud; it is disoriented. Its geometry no longer reassures.
Then they switch off your phone, then your electricity, then your water.
And yet, even then, there were moments of extraordinary humanity. Strangers guiding strangers. Concern for the disorientated foreigners. Water, food and safety provided. A ride across town, dodging curfew. An instinct to protect one another that felt older than the turbulence of the current troubles.
Having worked across the region, from the medinas of Morocco to the glass towers of the Gulf, I think often of the innocents on the street. The worker heading home. The child crossing a square that should be nothing more than a square. The quiet rituals of daily life that war interrupts without mercy.
Conflict is always described in terms of strategy and power. But on the ground, it is confusion. It is fear. It is vulnerability. It is ordinary people navigating extraordinary danger.
My wish is simple and unwavering: that the noise subsides, that the streets return to themselves, that the architecture once again holds only light, shadow, and human presence, not threat. That peace, and life, get a chance.
