Addiction A story by: Abdel Latif Moubarak – Egypt
The street noise filtered in like a distant whisper, unable to pierce the sealed glass windows of Iyad’s room. The forty-year-old man sat before four massive screens casting a cold blue glow onto his exhausted face. The displays showed constantly moving charts, sharply oscillating red and green lines, and relentless financial indices. For Iyad, those monitors were not merely work tools for the stock market; they were the last protective wall erected between himself and the world. Clutching his now-cold cup of coffee, he observed the movement of the stocks without betraying a single emotion: no joy for the rises, no panic for the crashes. Over the past five years, he had perfected the art of converting every human interaction into a dry mathematical equation. Numbers were his safe haven—logical, rigorous, and leaving no space for sudden feelings or unexpected disappointments. In that dimly lit room, Iyad practiced his daily ritual of anesthesia. He did not use drugs or chemical substances; instead, he administered massive doses of data and grueling fifteen-hour workdays. He lost himself in the most insignificant details just to drain any mental energy that might reopen the chapters of his past, wrapping his mind in a fog of numbers to deny his thoughts even a single minute of respite. Iyad put on his dark coat and left the apartment. In the elevator, he stood motionless, staring at his reflection in the side mirror: relaxed features, passionless eyes, and hair sprinkled with gray. As soon as he set foot on the crowded street, he put on his noise-canceling headphones. A subtle classical melody flowed out, acting as a barrier to keep him from perceiving the hum of life around him—the street vendors, the car horns, the laughter of passersby. He walked through the city like a ghost programmed to follow predefined paths. He ran his errands with the same mechanical routine, paying the bill without ever looking up to catch the cashier’s eye, before rushing back to his golden isolation. The roots of this psychological numbness traced back to a traumatic event years earlier, when a severe financial crash had wiped out the project to which he had dedicated his youth, coinciding with the end of his only love story. That double blow had generated an unshakeable conviction within him: emotions are the source of pain, and integrating into reality is the first step toward defeat. He decided then to close every sensory channel, choosing to live in a neutral territory devoid of joy or sadness, hope or despair. Believing he had protected himself from new wounds, he failed to realize that he had reduced his existence to a mere biological function, lacking a true heartbeat.
Nighttime arrived—the hardest hours for someone practicing voluntary anesthesia. As the financial markets slowed down, Iyad found himself confronting the dense silence wrapping his home. Here began the second phase of his defensive strategy: immersing himself in a marathon of video content on the big screens, leaving not a single moment free for thought. Sitting on the leather sofa, he watched documentaries and TV series back-to-back. The content mattered little; the important thing was keeping the screen on and his mind occupied with external voices and images. He avoided answering calls from old friends and accumulated messages from relatives without even reading them. He continually invented excuses related to his workload to justify his absence from every family event or social gathering. In that house, the furniture seemed mummified: magazines in the exact same spot for months, dishes washed instantly so as not to leave traces of life, and curtains permanently drawn to prevent the street from violating that shell. His apartment had become a cocoon of ash, inhabited by a being connected to the outside world only through internet cables and trading platforms, convinced he had tamed life by keeping it beyond his borders. On a Tuesday morning of pouring rain, his rigid routine broke unexpectedly. A sudden storm caused a blackout across the entire neighborhood. The four screens went dark instantly, leaving Iyad in an unreal twilight and a tomb-like silence. He attempted to start the emergency generator, only to discover it was broken. For the first time in years, he found himself face-to-face with absolute silence inside his home: no numbers, no screens, no music in his headphones. Anxiety began to creep through his body. That silence he had always fled from now besieged him from all sides. Sitting in his chair with his hands gripping the armrests, he felt his heart rate accelerate and his thoughts overflow like a roaring river after a dam burst. Memories of old disappointments, the faces of people he had let down or pushed away, and lingering questions about the meaning of his existence all resurfaced at once. To escape this sudden mental vulnerability, he put on his coat, grabbed his laptop, and decided to go out in search of a place with electricity and an internet connection to resume work. He walked briskly down the wet street, overcome by deep discomfort because his protective armor had, for the very first time, revealed a crack. Iyad entered a quiet café on the street corner. The place smelled of roasted coffee and emanated a pleasant warmth, while raindrops tapped against the large windowpane. He chose a table in the most hidden corner and quickly opened his laptop in an attempt to reconnect to his digital universe, but the network was extremely slow, preventing him from immediately immersing himself in work. While waiting for the page to load, his eyes inevitably fell on the adjacent table. Sitting there was a young woman named Rania, who emanated a singular energy in stark contrast to Iyad’s extinguished aura. She was drawing in a large notebook, stopping from time to time to look out the window, observe the movement of colorful umbrellas, and savor a sip of warm tea. Rania noticed Iyad’s fixed stare and the tension painted across his face. It was not a glance seeking contact, but that of a shipwreck survivor staring at the opposite shore. She offered him a faint smile, but he quickly averted his gaze, forcing himself to stare at the computer screen that continued to spin in vain.
The rain kept falling, and Iyad remained trapped in his fruitless connection attempts, feeling like a stranger observing the world. He watched life inside the café: people chatting warmly, others laughing, couples sharing a drink. Everyone appeared engaged and connected to the present moment, while he remained on the margins of time, protected by his fears and frozen in his thoughts. Rania prepared to leave; she packed away her drawing supplies, closed the notebook, and put on a yellow raincoat that brought a note of warmth to that gray setting. Before crossing the threshold, she paused for a moment beside Iyad’s table. She placed a small folded piece of paper next to his cup, gave him one last serene smile, and left without saying a word. Iyad stared at the slip of paper suspiciously, as if it were a foreign body capable of threatening the balance of his perfect system. He hesitated for several minutes before reaching out to open it. The paper contained a quick sketch of a man who looked strikingly like him, sitting inside a thick glass box with a sharp shield in his hands. Beneath the drawing, clear handwriting read: “Living inside a glass box certainly prevents impacts, but it deprives you of the breeze of life, forcing you to watch the world without ever living it.” Those written words had a far deeper impact than he could have anticipated. They were a precise, direct diagnosis of the condition he had called “self-protection” for years. Staring at the drawing, he saw himself with utmost clarity: a man entrenched in a galaxy of his own creation to avoid suffering, but who, in doing so, had canceled any possibility of feeling joy or wonder. He snapped his laptop shut, giving up on connecting. He sat in silence listening to the rain wrapping around the café, the creak of chairs, and the soft chatter from nearby tables. He discovered that those sounds did not hurt him as he had deluded himself into believing, and that the outside world was not a perpetual battlefield as his frightened mind had made him think. The effect of the psychological anesthesia began to fade gradually. Images of his old disappointments returned to his mind, but this time he did not try to bury them under trading numbers; he let them pass, felt their residual bitterness, and accepted their existence. For the first time, he recognized the scope of the solitude he had imposed upon himself and the years wasted chasing the illusion of absolute security. Iyad paid the bill and stepped out of the café. This time he refrained from putting on his headphones, leaving them in his pocket. He stopped on the threshold to look at the wet street; he did not put up his hood or open his umbrella. He took his first steps on the sidewalk, letting the cool raindrops wet his face and clothes directly. The sensation of cold on his skin gave him an intense shiver, as if his dormant senses were suddenly reactivating all at once. He inhaled deeply of the city’s damp air, impregnated with the smell of earth and asphalt, and listened to the concert of the street in its entirety: the footsteps of pedestrians, distant car horns, and the pitter-patter of water on tree leaves. The rain was no longer just a series of streaks of water to observe from behind home glass, but a tangible reality to interact with. Iyad understood at that moment that pain and vulnerability are an integral part of the human experience, and that risking mistakes is infinitely better than withdrawing from life and dying slowly under the effect of oblivion. Iyad returned to his apartment. The power was back on, and the four monitors had lit up again, resuming their display of moving charts and figures. This time he looked at them through an entirely new lens: they were no longer a temple in which to take refuge, but simple work tools with well-defined boundaries and hours. He walked over to his desk and switched off three monitors consecutively, leaving only one on for what was strictly necessary. He threw open the windows that had remained closed for months, letting the clean air and scent of rain flood the room, sweeping away the stagnation of past days and the oppressive silence that had dominated the house. He picked up his phone and opened the list of forgotten messages. He hesitated for a moment, then began replying to old friends, writing simple words to express his desire to catch up and proposing a meeting soon.
Facing the past or the present no longer posed a threat: he understood that his true suffering stemmed not from former failures, but from continuing to live in a voluntary torpor that deprived him of his present. Several weeks passed since that rainy day. The face of Iyad’s apartment had changed: the curtains were opened every morning to let the light in, and a few green plants had found a place in the living room for him to care for—a symbol of a new life growing slowly. Work no longer consumed his entire day; he established a regular schedule, after which he would go out to walk through the city streets or read in the parks. He was now sitting on a bench in a public garden, book in hand, watching children play and passersby chat. In his pocket, he kept the slip of paper Rania had left him; he no longer needed to read it, for its meaning was now etched into his consciousness. The effect of the anesthesia had completely vanished, and with it, the abstract fear of failure or sadness. He took a deep breath, savoring the warmth of the afternoon sun on his hands. He smiled to himself—a genuine smile that had not touched his lips in a very long time. He knew well that life would not be free of obstacles and that the future would bring moments of discouragement as well as joy, but now he was ready to face them openly. He had rediscovered the courage to feel and had, at last, returned to living.
