Meet me in the void
A personal note on the whiplash of war and re-locating a sense of self
For the listeners
I
It’s around midnight. Feels like a Sunday.
I’m at my desk in a diverse pocket of a rapidly sprawling Dubai. I’ve been anchored here for what feels like forever, trying to make sense of things.
When I first sat down to write to you, it was to let you know that 'Notting Hill re-watch season' had officially begun. But, that same day, missile interceptions entered the chat, and any desire for discourse left the building. It's safe to say that life has been a bit of blur since, but I'd like to let you in on it anyway. The blurry bit, that is.
To be honest, I wrote this to let myself in on it, too.
•
Let me start by telling you a little about “here”.
In this pocket of the Gulf, neighbourhoods within neighbourhoods are coming up at a dizzying speed–complete with parks, playgrounds, food trucks, and a curiously high number of gift shops. I didn’t know we needed so many flowers and chocolates. I’m into it.
Men on tiny motorised trolleys breeze around delivering this-and-that to so-and-so; while those in uniform—from more demanding services like Noon, Careem, and Deliveroo—zip about more urgently, dodging unmet targets five stars at a time.
Joggers, walkers, toddlers, and dogs manoeuvre around endless construction; while workers manoeuvre around the clock. Cats roam freely and communally fed around these parts, too, unfazed by busyness as a matter of principle. To be a cat.
Revving and screeching and hooting are never far behind, alleviated only by the call to prayer pausing the city five times a day. There’s a constant whirring of people and things, and there are simply too many accents to place.
Life is being lived here in all its little ways.
II.
At some point while writing this, a child was yelling somewhere on my street. Nothing new–probably chatting to a cat, or chasing a shadow, or feeling the woosh of a car driving by.
I can’t help but smile whenever I hear it. How freeing it sounds: to scream a little scream in awe of the world. This time, though, it lands a bit differently—as does just about every other alarm, boom and siren.
Did you hear that? Is that a car? A jet? Did something fall? Construction, or—? Did your building shake? Was that an interception? Do we even know what an interception is supposed to sound like?
I wonder who in the Gulf hasn’t asked some version of these questions; or who isn’t bracing themselves, consciously or not, for the next missile alert to pierce through their phone. I wonder who hasn’t been wrestling with hope and fear, spiralling one way or another (admittedly or not).
By now you might be aware that we’re (still) in a war-zone. A heavily defended one, from here, but a war-zone nonetheless.
On Saturday, the 28th of February 2026, an assault by Israel and the US was launched on Iran, which set off an escalating chain of events that has impacted countries across the GCC and the wider region.
Since then, Iran has faced relentless bombardment, and Lebanon is now also under Israeli attack again. Gaza continues to be subject to genocidal collective punishment. Settler attacks have rapidly escalated across the West Bank in a continued effort to illegally annex Palestinian land…
– DAZED MENA, 28 February 2026
III.
We’re now six weeks into that “escalating chain of events”, and reality itself seems to have fractured in almost every way. From this pocket of the Gulf, I’ve been at a loss for words.
This is not to suggest that there are no words. There’s an avalanche. (Please bear with me here.)
There are the words headlined, expert-analysed, geo-poliTik’d, and forwarded multiple times as news snowballs into narrative; and narrative hurtles toward a vanishing point called HistoryTM:
Epic Fury; Roaring Lion; When the world’s most precise missile chose a classroom; Double-tapping; Miscalculated; Eliminated; Martyred; Wiped off the face of the earth; Black skies; Acid rain; Environmental catastrophe; Escalations; Evacuations; Gaza Strategy; Boots on the ground; Forever Wars; Holy Wars; Force Majeures; A new map of the Middle East; A billion dollars a day; President of Peace
Then there are words I didn’t know I’d need to know as intimately as I do now:
Multi-layer defence network; Interception; Falling debris; Shelter in place; The fundamental differences in the Doppler Effect between a passenger plane and a fighter jet stem from their opposing goals: efficiency vs. performance; How to Desalinate Water: A Survival Guide; You may resume normal activities
There are also the words that have emerged anxiously, gently, and all the other ways love tip-toes into a crisis:
Just checking in; Thinking of you; Praying for you; Stay safe; Come home; Here: a poem; Here: some good news in the world; Here: postcards from the places the news only shows you in rubble and ruin; Here: sweet vibes
And then there are words that may never fully form, suspended somewhere between fight and flight and freeze:
What exactly is—? Everything is fine. What should I do? Everything is fine. What stays and what goes if we had to—? I don’t want to hear it. I think I need a nap. How do I explain that something has shifted inside me–again? I think a need a hug.
I wanted to tell you—never mind. How do I untie the knot in my throat? I’m fine. I’m lucky. I’m nervous. I’m devastated. I’m lucky. This is nowhere near as bad as—Nothing sounds the same anymore. I think I’ll just wash the dishes.
And so it goes.
IV.
The surest way to survive an avalanche is to side-step out of its path as quickly as one can. That’s what National Geographic tells me.
If this is not possible, reach for a tree. As a last resort, try to ‘swim’ up out of the snow…If buried in an avalanche, try to clear some space [to breathe]…then punch a hand skyward.
Is it any wonder that we’re swerving all over the place; punching around for air, reaching for things that feel like safety, dodging war-slop and fake news, deflecting misrepresentation, negotiating how to say (or do) anything at all?
Millions of us—each with our own complexities—all trying to outwit-outplay-outlast yet another avalanche.
Chaos.
I’ve had one eye on Vic Mensa with his progressive oranges, reminding us that many things can be true at once, and another on an Angela Davis lecture I’ve had on repeat, calling it what it is:
It’s some depressing shit, isn’t it? But it won’t always be this way.
Still, it’s some traumatising shit.
V.
Then there’s the thing the avalanche of information opens up: a void. Perhaps you’ve sensed it, too.
It’s in the quiet between missile alerts, and in losing track of what day it is. It grows between what is broadcast and what is experienced; between what’s happening around us and what is happening inside us.
It morphs between ideas of us and them, and for millions, it stretches across timezones between community, home, and home home.
It’s not new; it’s only getting a lot harder to ignore. Silence can be menacing here. Joy can feel criminal. Grief can feel illegitimate. Dreaming: reckless. And bringing a pen to a gun-fight? Cute.
But it’s also liberating here. There’s room to exhale; to shake it out like no one’s watching; to re-imagine it all.
There’s late-night karaoke to scream into the night that, yes—it’s true—We Belong Together. There’s long walks where we take turns holding each other’s worries. And there’s sitting together—no words needed—just looking.
VI.
This could be the part where I give you a plain description of what I’m referring to here. Instead, I'll refer you to the words of Dr Gabor Mate, author of When The Body Says No:
There is a deeper sense of something that’s happening…the mind can only experience it in terms of thoughts and images.
So, I’m leaning into the void—not to be here forever–but for a kind of internal readjustment between the shell-shock of what is (and has been), and the future-shock of what any ‘return to normality’ will surely be.
To detach from the noise; to pay close attention to our own instincts and desires; to examine our hard-wired beliefs about what we can and cannot do in a world of man-made crises: that's what I'm here for.
Who, for example, sets the timer on ‘moving on’? Who gets to move and who does not? Why? Can we adjust the boundaries of ‘normal’–of our own possibilities? Can we try?
These are the some of questions bouncing around this void of mine, along with the questions Samuel A. Adeyemi asks of us in the haunting poem, Beyond the Body:
“What am I truly capable of?
We talk about our lives
often in theory and metaphor. But the real world
outstands us, breaks us bitterly. The mockery of
the hopeless perplexes me. It takes something beyond
the body to wish for a joyous life in a world
that ruins us.
What logic is there in optimism?…”
VII.
At this point, I can’t say I know much about logic. I brought a pen to a gun-fight, remember.
But I want to understand what forces are shaping our imaginations of what we are truly capable of. I want to be able to recognise the ideas that distance us from our own capacities to think, to contribute, and to create the world we live in, too.
I want to meet the Thought Police inside my head. We need to have a chat.
I see this as an exercise in devotion to the things that make us human: the things that make it worth screaming a little scream in absolute awe of the world.
Anyway, this is me, writing to you from the void. Perhaps we can meet here every now and then.
xx
P.S. a playlist for a gentle spiral
About this letter
You're reading the first instalment of Emotional Attachments. This is where I'll be sharing research, studio notes, and the occasional postcard from my work exploring the language shaping our ideas of love and power.
It may not always be in the form of a letter, but it will always be some kind of note-to-self. This is to say that I'm very much in the chaos of it all, too.
If you're into it, please sign up below. If you're moved to, please bring someone new along.
Thank you for taking the time, bby.
AI Disclaimer
AI was not used directly in the making of this essay. Any use of this publication (including, but not limited to, all existing and future work by the author) to train, develop, or be inputted into to generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.