On: Netanyahu orders Israeli army to seize ‘70% of Gaza Strip’, violating ceasefire

The rain on the windowpane at half past three in the afternoon is the only honest thing left in this city of mirrors. I watch it slide down the glass, each drop a small parliament of its own, debating whether to join the others in the gutter or evaporate into the grey air. Netanyahu’s voice, transmitted through whatever contraption they call radio these days, is another kind of rain - harder, more deliberate, each syllable a bullet aimed at a ceiling I cannot see from my third-floor room in Rua da Assunção. The ledger on my desk shows a balance of 127 escudos and 45 centavos, which is less than the cost of a cup of coffee at A Brasileira, and that is the only arithmetic I trust.

I am not moved by this order to seize seventy percent of Gaza. The self that reads the news is the same one that writes it down in a notebook with a broken nib, the same one that will later cross it out with a line so heavy it tears the paper. Another self, the one that does not read newspapers but stares at the damp awning across the street, wonders if the water will ever stop dripping, if the awning will rot, if the shop below will close before the year is out. This second self is quieter, more permanent. It does not care about Hamas or ceasefires or political survival. It only notes the awning, the rain, the ledger, the fact that the tram has just rung its bell three streets away and is now moving north, carrying people whose names I will never know toward destinations I will never visit.

The first self, the one that listens to the radio, feels something like anger, but it is a borrowed anger, a costume hung in the back of a closet and worn only on Tuesdays. The second self, the one that watches the awning, feels nothing at all, which is a kind of feeling too, the most honest kind. Between the two, there is no synthesis, no resolution, only the ledger, the rain, and the damp awning that will still be there tomorrow, still dripping, still indifferent.