Letter to Mizuki-san (After the Sunset)
"Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, at the moon only when it is cloudless?" (Yoshida Kenkō, Essays in Idleness) Libya, 26 July 2026 Dear Mizuki-san. I begin writing these words only a few minutes after, for the first time, we crossed the threshold of my apartment in Piazza 6 and walked out of it together. I am writing this on the assumption that there is a strong chance we will never see each other again. As I have just told you, it is curious that, the first time we leave the house together, could be perhaps also the last time we will ever see each other, as if it no longer mattered whether people knew, whether the security cameras—whoever may have access to them in this everyday Big Brother—might catch sight of us together. I could never have imagined that, amid the ferocity of mankind, amid the perpetual instability of the Libyan lands, amid the categorical impossibility of escaping a stalemate that is not political but existential, our being together c...
