Ezzideen Sheehab is a young writer and physician who has been posting on Instagram and Twitter and who has recently had a book published about his eye witness accounts - Diary of a Young Doctor (which I haven’t yet read). Each time I read his posts I am floored. This is a middle excerpt from I think his latest post in which he describes a physician who has been released and returned to work alongside him. It doesn’t do Elzzideen justice to cite in part; would really recommend reading all of each and every one:
They say, with astonishing audacity, that the war is over.
But for him, and for his family, and for tens of thousands bearing invisible wounds, the war has only shifted battlegrounds.
The shells have ceased, yes, but the devastation carved into the nervous system, the moral injuries imprinted onto the soul, the psychic ruptures that no surgeon can suture, these recognize no ceasefire.
This war has rewritten us. It has rearranged our inner architecture.
It has stolen from us our trust, our clarity, our innocence, our ability to believe in mornings.
What was taken will not return, for certain wounds do not heal; they become the very shape of the life that remains.