The tyrant used to guard the map. He caused its disorders to multiply but kept it united. When the storm uprooted him, the map was left alone and frightened. All sorts of demands, identity crises and buried dreams came to life. The guardian of the big cage fell and the aspirers for small cages rose. The lack of opportunities for coexistence in light of the freedom and justice offered a golden opportunity to those who aspire for estrangement. Thus, the maps were torn apart under the strikes of their own children and looted by the hands of the roaming fighters. The tyrant had played on the contradictions and changed the elements into bombs ready to blow up and commit suicide at any moment. In the sick city of Beirut, I read the news of the region. I hear the maps weep and I smell the small cages and the territories. We are steadily heading towards an abyss deeper than the abyss of tyranny and the tyrants: the abyss of the failure to coexist between the religious sects and the races and the abyss of going for the choices that leave no room for the others. Dear Arab, I feel like asking you an annoying question. All those maps that we were taught were sacred and stable, is it true that they have grown old and tired? Is it true that they always need a tyrant to prevent the citizens from messing with their unity? Is it true that what the teachers used to tell us is just an official lie and that the real maps are smaller than the map we inherited? Is it true that we are hiding our true maps because we are afraid to show them and that we are waiting for the right opportunity to reveal our true borders; the sectarian, racial, and ethnic borders? Is it true that our countries have always been divided and that we were forced to cover our divisions under the tyrant's hand of steel? Is it true that we used to pretend that we accepted the inherited map, and that we secretly learned that we have another map where the others do not live and are thus unable to corrupt or threaten it? Did we learn that the real map is the one that includes those who resemble us to a great extent, those who read our books, those who sing our songs, and those who have the same dreams and enemies that we have? Did we learn that the mixed cities such as Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut or any other city are only a choice when we are the majority, one that is able to impose its own colors and will, and one that asking the minority to give away its features and colors in exchange for a kind of security? Is it true that you now hate the city as its demographics changed and as the streets that resemble you have shrunk? I am writing these words in light of small scary sentences I heard in several capitals, sentences that every journalist may hear if he or she promises their source to abstain from carrying their name. An Arab official told me that the threat of dividing Syria is a real and present one and that the continued confrontations there are further deepening the already existing estrangement. He sketched the features of a new map that will organize the divorce between the Sunnis and the minorities that used to belong to the old map. He further admitted that the establishing of the new map requires rivers of blood. Another official told me that the South Yemenis “will not go for anything less than the breaking of the northern occupation and their return to the independence." He also thought it was likely that the Houthis “will not accept going back to their former situation during the days of Ali Abdullah Saleh." A third official told me that the real reason for the Al-Anbar protests “is the refusal of the Sunni Arabs to live as second class citizens under a Shi'i Iranian-affiliated rule. The battle is open to all possibilities and threats." In Lebanon, I heard that the real members of the parliament must win through the votes of their own sect and that winning through the votes “of the others" will cause them to lose their real representative nature. In Cairo, I heard that “the only option for the Copts of Egypt is to migrate" and that “the MB's victory will speed up their departure." We are heading towards the abyss. This is the most dangerous Arab situation. In the absence of democracy, institutions, and justice we are witnessing the ordeal of the maps and forms of civil wars that only promise poverty, death, and rivers of blood. The injustice and discrimination have exhausted the inherited maps. Those suffering from injustice considered these maps to be stifling cages. They had a dream to break free from their partners. They dreamt of small cages.
