Thus it began. For years, a silent bell chimed its way across the city, but woke no one. Surreal days were spent with invisible chains, but all dreams will eventually rise from the settled dust. Years later, on a day not so long ago, a flash of light fused with the echoes of an explosion which shattered the country’s self-accepted walls, and they rose, a single wave. As that wave broke into ripples, the explosions never stopped, and those that fell are plastered on the buildings of Lebanon. Many latched onto the dissolving strands of optimism, and the drained emotions left the nation with a crust of frustration. Beings pawns on a chessboard threw it into a horizontal sense of time. Change, the constant that it is, dwindled into a word thrown. Truth? It is here, but the ignored truth is that we have simply been waiting. Generations have gone, and we still wait. We may have been awake for a short time – we may be awake now, but that will not veil the reality that those who fell have gone to waste. Self-proclaimed shepherds have grown old yet still snake their flocks around the country. Not for long. The day will come – it must come – when the silent bells ring loud and clear, when the chains are broken, when a fair reality settles on all, and when the dying remnants of hope grow into expectation.