Saga

The unpredictable and arbitrary rages of a novel coronavirus make any society, no matter how peaceful, into a potential minefield. Ours has been in bedlam even before the landing of this virus. This sounds like an extra blow of tornado during a heavy snowstorm.

The city shook.

I started my family trip two days after the news of two patients diagnosed with the China coronavirus in Hong Kong. It felt frustrating and spoke to some truth I couldn’t express: survivor’s guilt. It reminded me the most recent social upheavals coinciding with my summer Croatia vacation. And then my overseas training in Montreal when SARS struck the city more than a decade ago.
That memory of paralysing SARS could have repeatedly retuned to my colleagues over the years. I wasn’t in the battlefield and that makes the misery burn less intensely in my memory.

But our homeland is close to the heart of mine. I’m away and will be back one week later.

It will be, I knew, my turn.