“Heroism is not always in attacking, but it may also be in patience and steadfastness. Courage is not always in fighting the apparent enemy only, but it is also - and especially - fighting the inner enemy, that is, that a person fights within himself despair, lethargy, and the love of comfort,” as the late nationalist thinker Michel Aflaq said.

With the fire of the holocaust extinguished, or with its flicker remaining dim under the ashes of the brazier, the greater jihad begins, which is the greatest challenge for those competing to impose sovereignty over the ruins, in the south and in the north, and in every place in the dismembered sector, riddled with wounds, and burdened with sorrows.

People return with the eagerness of lovers to the destroyed houses and the half-hanging houses, searching among the rubble for memories and the remains of loved ones who died in their beds while in their nightclothes, hoping to hear the echo of their voices and their last supplications and cries for help before they breathed their last.

The displaced return, light and heavy, walking and riding, carrying their pain and sorrow, their dreams, their joys and their sorrows, reliving their fear and terror that will never leave their memory.

The returnees rejoice, and our hearts rejoice with them, but their joy soon turns into sighs after a few moments, in the midst of the search for the house that has become a thing of the past.

It is the greater jihad in which souls overcome their desires, hearts mend what has happened between them, and resolve their matter, after the enemy is in front of us, the sea is behind us, and Trump threatens us after our prayers against him “May your home be destroyed” have turned against us with a counterstrike to destroy our homes and scatter our gathering, after he quarrelled with us and promised to entertain us; by sending us temporarily away from our land, until he finishes rebuilding our homes that he destroyed over our heads, so the real estate man and father of deals strikes again.

Fasten your seatbelts...