My city exploded on 8.4.2020, with my family, friends and memories right in the middle. I wasn’t in Beirut, I was in Brooklyn. Though I never felt a pain as great as the one felt at that moment, I somehow didn’t cry. At all.

“Aren’t you guys used to that?” a friend asked me after a halfhearted “hope your family’s ok” text. “No” I responded.

But then I wondered, aren’t we?

I’ve been through bombs and war, but I don’t actively remember them.

Upset and lonely in my tiny Brooklyn bedroom, I decided to distract myself with a romantic movie that night. …