8 sincere sayings about the life the coronavirus has changed

Today, the world of many has shrunk to the limits of their own home, but at the same time, people are more connected to each other than ever. We experience fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, dissatisfaction and anxiety. Uncertainty about the future makes you look for metaphors and images that will help you comprehend what is happening.

But with everyone, something different happens. Everyone is adjusting in their own way to the pandemic and its consequences. Acquaintance with someone else's experience, even frightening, eases loneliness and fear a little and reminds us that what we ourselves experience is simultaneously unique and shared by everyone.

"For some, starving to death is a much more pressing problem than the virus."

Ali Bhutto

A journalist from Pakistan.

For the first time since the nineties, when there were fewer people and fewer cars, I don't hear the car noise from my bedroom window. Silence replaced him. The curfew is imposed from five in the morning until eight in the evening. But during the day, the streets of Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, are far from empty.

The old part of the city is eerily reminiscent of the tightened military measures of the past. The silent tranquility hides the feeling that society is unsettled, and the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians are watching like spectators following a slowly unfolding performance. People stop at intersections and in the shade of trees under the watchful eye of the military and police. […]

Not everyone can afford self-isolation. For some, death from hunger is a much more pressing problem than the virus. A young guy sweeping the driveway of our apartment building comes in every other day. Buses no longer run, and he rides his bike from home, one of the many slums that lie within prosperous neighborhoods. […]

In February, prior to the virus, a toxic gas leak at the port killed 14 people and sent many more to hospital. The state structures investigating the case did not find an explanation for this, and over time they stopped mentioning it. In the eyes of many, the coronavirus is just another threat to life in a city that strides from one crisis to another.

"My mother was discharged from the hospital, but I won't be able to see her for many weeks."

Alessio Mamo

Photo reporter from Sicily. After his wife Martha confirmed the coronavirus, she is in quarantine with her.

The doctors asked for a second test, but again a negative result. Maybe I have immunity? The days in the apartment seemed black and white, like my photographs. Sometimes we tried to smile, pretending that I have no symptoms because I am a virus. The smiles seem to have brought good news. My mother was discharged from the hospital, but I will not be able to see her for many weeks.

Martha began to breathe normally again, and so did I. I wish I could photograph my country in the midst of this catastrophe: battles waged by doctors on the front lines, crowded hospitals, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. Instead, the enemy knocked on my door one day in March.

“Passers-by who meet us on the way do not know that we are guests from the future”

Jessica Lustig

Works for the New York Times Magazine in New York. Her husband suffered an illness a week before the threat was taken seriously.

We stand in the doorway of the clinic and watch two elderly women chatting outside. They are completely in the dark. Wave at them to get away? Scream for them to go home washed your hands, did not go out? Instead, we just awkwardly stand still until they are removed. Only then do we leave, starting the long - three blocks - road home.

I point to early magnolia, blooming forsythia. Tee says he's cold. The grown hair on his neck, under his beard, is white. Passers-by we meet on the way do not know that we are guests from the future. Vision, warning, walking God's punishment. Soon they will be in our place.

“At first I lost touch of other people, then air, now the taste of bananas”

Leslie Jamison

New York writer. Directs the Non-Fiction Program at Columbia University.

Virus. What a powerful, secret word. How is it in my body today? Shivering under the covers. Hot sand in the eyes. I put on three hoodies in the middle of the day. My daughter is trying to cover me with another blanket with her little hands. Muscle pain, from which for some reason it is difficult to lie motionless. The loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. First I lost the touch of other people, then the air, now the taste of bananas. […]

When I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding, the sheets in my bed are wet with sweat that must be full of the virus. This virus is now my new partner, the third inhabitant of our apartment, wetly wrapping my body at night. When I get up to get water, I have to sit on the floor halfway to the sink so as not to faint.

"For those who have lost track of time: today is an unclear, the eleventh of the day"

Heidi Pitlor

Writer from Massachusetts, USA.

During isolation, the actions that usually set the boundaries of our days - driving to work, getting the kids to school, hanging out with friends - disappear. Time becomes flat, continuous. Without at least some structure of the day, it's easy to feel disconnected from reality. A friend recently wrote on Facebook: "For those who have lost track of time: today is the unclear, the eleventh mapplaya."

Now, when the future is so uncertain, it is especially important to give shape to time. We do not know how long the virus will rage: several weeks, months, or, God forbid, it will return in waves for several years. We don't know when we will feel safe again. Many are held captive by fear. We will stay there if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives.

"I am afraid of everything that I cannot see"

Lauren Groff

Writer from Florida, USA.

For some people, fantasy is played out only from what they can see. My imagination works the other way around. I am afraid of everything that I cannot see.

Fenced off from the world at home, I am afraid of suffering that I do not see in front of me: that people are running out of money and food, of how they choke on the fluid in their own lungs, the deaths of medical workers who become ill while doing their responsibilities. […] I am afraid to leave the house and spread the disease. I am afraid of how this time of fear is affecting my children, their imaginations and their souls.

"This is a portal, a gateway from one world to the next."

Arundati Roy

A writer from India. Author of books "God of little things"And"Ministry of Supreme Happiness».

Who now, without a slight shudder, can say about something that it “became viral”? Who can look at ordinary objects - a doorknob, a cardboard box, a bag of vegetables - without knowing how they are teeming with invisible to the eye, not living and not dead creatures with suckers, waiting to cling to our lungs? Who would kiss a stranger without fear, jump on a bus, or send a child to school? Who can think of ordinary pleasures without assessing their risks? Who among us is not a self-styled epidemiologist, virologist, statistician or predictor? What scientist and physician does not secretly pray for a miracle? What priest does not submit to science?

And who, despite the spread of the virus, is not delighted with the birdsong in the cities dancingCoronavirus lockdown: Peacocks dance on Mumbai streets. Fantastic pics and video on the streets of peacocks and silence in the sky? […]

Previously, pandemics forced people to break with the past and re-imagine their world. The current pandemic is no different. It is a portal, a gateway from one world to the next. We have a choice: to walk through it, dragging with us the remains of our prejudice and hatred, our greed, our dead rivers and smoky skies. Or we can walk through it lightly, ready to imagine another world for ourselves. And ready to fight for him.

"Now I take care of my neighbors in the same way I express love for my mother: I stay away from them."

Nora Kaplan-Bricker

Journalist, critic from Boston, USA.

On Saturday I talked to my mom, then to my brother, and then I went to a virtual bachelorette party. I tried to pretend that each interlocutor sits opposite me, that the office with unkempt bookshelves in my image opens into the rooms that I see behind them. I ended the call with the feeling that everyone I know is now sitting in the same room and having a common frightened conversation.

It's a nice illusion: it's great to feel like we're all together, even if my real world has narrowed down to just one person, my husband, sitting with his laptop in the next room. As enjoyable as reading articles that rethink social distancing like cohesion. […] If you squint, you can almost see in this quarantine an attempt to straighten (along with the sickness curve) the differences that we make between connections with other people. Now I show concern for my neighbors in the same way that I show love for my mother: I stay away from them.

At times this month, I have experienced a love for strangers with an unaccustomed intensity. On March 14, Saturday evening after the end of my usual life, I went out with the dog and found that on the street quiet: no queues at restaurants, no kids on bicycles, no couples walking around with glasses ice cream. To create such a sudden and complete emptiness, it took the joint will of thousands of people. I felt incredible gratitude and incredible loss.

How has the coronavirus changed your life? Share in the comments.