The Ardent Swarm

by Yamen Manai

The country remained mired in poverty and its young people in unemployment, while the violence of a fringe of radicals and their hate-filled discourse proliferated with the leaders’ complacency. Within the dream of prosperity and tolerance, nothing remained of fragile democracy but the illusory right to talk shit.

“Like our bees that have to coexist with the giant hornets, we are a people who must coexist with the flaws in the earth—earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions—and with war, the flaw of human nature. We know that our archipelago is fragile, that our existence is fragile, and that the survivors must always rebuild. We are a people well versed in catastrophes, Professor. The ‘other’ is none other than ourselves, a survivor and a partner.