From Beirut to Khartoum, the Arab world is changing beyond our recognition | Nesrine Malik

The Arab world is increasingly divided between those who are losing everything, and those who have everything

For the past few months, there has been a grim new ritual whenever I meet people from some Arab countries. It's a sort of mutual commiseration and checking in. How are things with you? Where is your family? I hope you are safe, I hope they are safe. I hope you are OK. We are with you.

There is a comfort to it, and also an awkwardness. Comfort because the words are earnest, the solidarity almost unbearably meaningful. Awkward because the scale of what many are enduring is too large to be captured in those words. Everything feels shot through with survivor's guilt, but also with a little bit of resolve in the knowledge that the calamities tearing apart our nations have closed the distances between us.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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