I am glaring at you, small man with the big gun

that is too large for you

You look stupidly out of place

You carry the gun with an ease

but not the kind that fools me

It’s the ease of routine

made possible by your confidence—no, your brattiness

or, to be more precise, חוצפה

the kind instilled by arbitrarily assigned power

It is the same story

Only a stick and a pair of glasses

And suddenly ordinary dumb people

are transformed into tyrants

I wonder if you feel it

the change in your spine

the tightening of your jaw

the twitch in your smirk

Your shoulders square with inherited entitlement

as if that uniform were stitched into your bones

You petrify me

more than I’d like to admit

But don’t flatter yourself

It’s not you

not your weapon

not your might

that frightens me

It terrifies me that you’re too real

too close

A horror film come to life

Nothing is scarier than helplessness

I wonder now

Couldn’t the prisoners have done something?

Couldn’t we do something?

Couldn’t anyone do anything?

Will anyone do anything?

I think of the voices. You know, the voices?

Voices in Arabic

pleading, bargaining for a shred of life.

أمانة، أمانة، أمانة

Do their cries echo in your mind

as you walk through these streets

where Arabic is not just a language

but a rhythm of existence?

Do you hear the familiar words and feel

your fingers twitch?

Do your instincts sharpen?

Am I a threat in your eyes?

Do you see me as something to be subdued, silenced, erased?

Or am I invisible? Just another face in a crowd

you’ve long since stopped noticing?

No, I am too visible

I myself, my furrowed brows and

my dark eyes and the weight I carry

of history, of grief, of anger

My shoulders finally droop

But not from the absence of power

From the burden of carrying it

You have your gun. I have my voice

Your fingers twitch for blood. Mine for action.

Whatever you clutch is an illusion

Your power is an illusion

Your authority is an illusion

Even if you feel it

Even if it was enough to reshape the world around you

You are an illusion

Just like those guards in the experiment

And I wonder

As I regain my sight and stomp away

If I will ever stop seething

Not just at the experiment

Or the dumb short man with the big gun

But at the realization that

The realest horror movie was not produced in Hollywood

It didn’t need a script

It was filmed in the halls of a prestigious university

And nobody had to do any acting