Every day at 3 p.m., the automated blinds rose with mechanical indifference, flooding the boardroom with afternoon light. The motor’s harsh whir cut through the conversation, forcing a brief, collective pause, as if the room itself needed a moment to…

In a remote island village, Gerold is known as a drunk, a jailbird, a man to avoid—but the narrator sees something else: a quiet strength and freedom forged through hardship and labor. As glimpses of his life unfold—ploughing fields at dawn, enduring prison without bitterness, living on the margins with dignity—the narrator is drawn to him but never quite bridges the distance. What remains is a portrait of a misunderstood man, and the lingering regret of a connection that never happened.

I look at it remotely and remember only the flare in the sky when the bombs exploded in Beirut, the checkpoints or the nights when we slept in the shelter and Monsieur Selim listened to Oum Kalsoum whispering on the radio in the most melancholic way, “Anta Omri”, ‘You’re my Life’, as the shelling happened outside.

The lifelong process of writing GOODS & EFFECTS by Al Schnupp