under siege

2026 is definitely the year of blogging for me. I already published twice as many posts as I did last year. Last Friday I published a post in my technical blog in the same vein as this post: a reflection on the week. Today I posted another one there about the women who shaped me in my career. Happy Women’s Day to all women around the world!

I’m writing this while my neighborhood is under siege by law enforcement. There’s a bunch of police officers in every corner just because the women of Istanbul want to have a rally to celebrate March 8, express their anger and mourn the losses of their fellow sisters who were killed by men.

As politics affects citizens of privileged countries more and more, I see more people writing about it on their personal corner of cyberspace. But for some reason it always comes with an apology for bringing up political issues. That’s the primary reason why we feel powerless in the face of the political crisis we are currently in: political space is treated as something separate and political issues as something you should almost feel ashamed for caring about. The collective person is forgotten in the pages of history. What we have now is a radically atomized individual who can only relate to others by their choice of commodities and lifestyle.

In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political
I must listen to the birds
and in order to hear the birds
the warplanes must be silent.

Marwan Makhoul