This morning news came that the relative by marriage is not doing well. His organs are shutting down. His child sent me a heartbreaking voice message asking me to recite a prayer for him, holding his face and name in my mind. It is the prayer of Jonah in the belly of the whale, a last-ditch prayer of submission to the divine when hope is fading. I thought back to Lebanon, where I saw the bay where Jonah returned to land after his prayer was granted, where a Turkish power barge was moored offshore. It was then a country holding its breath, waiting for the jolt that would cause the house of cards to tumble.
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