"Then after that will come a year in which people will receive abundant rain and they will press" (Surah Yusuf, Verse 49)

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

And seven lean years have passed - passed over the land, over people, over homes, over cities, over countryside, over Lebanon, over Palestine, over Sudan, over Yemen, over Syria, over Iraq, over Ukraine, over north and south alike. They have passed after seven lean years that passed, after seven, after seventy cycles of years, passing beyond Haifa and what came after Haifa, after boredom upon boredom, after despair, graves and tombs, ruin and ruined land, wandering and loss, confusion and mirage. They have passed and they deepen, and they rage while the sky does not open, the curse does not cease, nor blood, nor poverty, nor violence, nor injustice, nor corruption, nor terrorism, nor killing, nor tyranny, nor occupation, nor genocides, nor gangs, nor cruelty, nor the grinding of human dignity into the dirt. Thieves do not stop.

So until when?!

Do not say “take it easy and beware of laughing, beware of cackling, lest you laugh at yourself, at your life, at your years, at this unmoored existence, at pain. Do not say “Smile, and the world will smile back at you.” We smiled. We tried again. It did not smile back. It did not stand neutral. It scowled, darkened, thickened, and it still does. And here we are on the penultimate edge, perhaps the last, perhaps beyond the last, no one is relieved, not the earth, not tears, not hearts, not minds, not empty pockets, not feelings, not wounds, not malfunctions; neither drought is relieved, nor hunger, nor disease, nor crops, nor udders, nor deposits, nor debts, nor sleep.

So until when?!

Are people relieved by rulers, by kings, by tyrants, by madmen - Trump, Putin, Khamenei, Xi Jinping - by generals, by pimps, by libertines, by bank pirates, by stock-market guards, by arms manufacturers, by AI contractors, by destroyers of natural intelligence, by looters of gold and rare minerals, by deniers of self-determination, by bloodsuckers and until when?!

Will a cosmic truce be declared, lasting seven years that are not lean, and will it be extended to seven more, then seven more, then seventy cycles - without end, without fatigue?!

Will people be relieved, when there comes after that a year in which people are relieved? Can the world that has become almost entirely evil truly be overcome?

We are living the lean years, all of evil, cruelty, the trampling of human dignity. What awaits us is not years of abundance but more lean years, and evil intensifying, prevailing. And yet - we will smile. We will keep smiling. We will not despair. We will not grow weary. The world will never be beautiful one day, the sky will not feed us manna and quail, poetry will not bring us bread. Yet we will keep saying that the world will one day be beautiful. We will keep writing poetry. We will keep fighting windmills. The rocks that forever roll back to the bottom. We will keep lifting them toward the mountains. No truce. I will persist in stubbornness as I do in hope, until whatever may be, whatever will be.

I do not expect rain, but I rejoice in rain when it falls, and in the rescuer when rescue comes.

I do not expect peace, but I rejoice in peace when it arrives, and I will rejoice in the one who overcomes the world - when the world is overcome.

This, then, is the conclusion. It is neither disbelief nor faith. I do not assassinate hope; I see, I witness, I reason, and I draw a conclusion that is nothing but a conclusion - nothing but a bleeding mind, nothing but evil prevailing over the world.

Madness, not reason, rules the world.