It had been three days since the woman on the screen had dressed, and she was crying. Her therapist, a Brooklyn-based clinical psychologist with 19 years of experience, told me that she now frequently encounters this type of situation. She always saw that, not the crying. The pajamas. The hair was unbrushed at 2:00 PM. Weekdays and weekends blend slowly, almost imperceptibly, into what looks like a long, beige tunnel. “She used to come into my office in heels,” the therapist recalled. “Now I’m not sure she owns a pair anymore.” We’ve been telling ourselves a story about working remotely…
Author: Jack Ward
Smoggy mornings and a sort of bureaucratic stillness are typical of late winter in Beijing, and this year was no exception. However, missiles were falling on Tehran from all over the continent. The contrast seemed almost intentional. Chinese state media continued to report on agricultural targets and provincial congresses while Washington and Tel Aviv conducted press briefings regarding Operation Epic Fury. Beijing seemed to want the world to take notice of the quiet. It turns out that the silence is a tactic. These days, analysts refer to it as strategic opportunism, which is a diplomatic way of saying that China…
It was a Tuesday when I first saw people hoarding cooking oil at the corner store close to my apartment. Not very dramatic. The shopkeeper, who usually complains about slow afternoons, was suddenly counting inventory under his breath while a woman in her fifties was packing four tins into a plastic bag. Three weeks had passed since the closure at that point. The gesture has by now quietly spread from kitchen to kitchen, as these things do. It’s difficult to ignore how the anxiety has permeated everyday situations. Dinner conversations now revolve around the Strait of Hormuz, a stretch of…
When I first saw someone update a brokerage app over dinner in 2020, the world had just taken a strange turn. His thumb would twitch every few minutes while he kept his phone face-up by the bread basket. The figures were in red. He placed another wine order. He didn’t eat much. Even back then, I recall thinking that this could not possibly be a healthy way of living, but after six years, it has almost returned to normal. Nowadays, a whole generation of investors views market news in the same way that previous generations did the weather, with the…
Nowadays, the majority of therapists describe a similar moment. A patient takes a seat, turns on their phone, and places it face down on the side table as though it were radioactive. They sigh. Then, as though it had happened to them directly, they discuss an event that occurred eight thousand miles away. It’s difficult to ignore how frequently this scene occurs in different cities, at different income levels, and in different political contexts. There is no agreed-upon clinical term for what is occurring. Some refer to it as anxiety related to war. Some people favor moral harm, vicarious trauma,…
When the index turns red, a certain silence descends upon Dubai. It’s evident in the DIFC tower lobbies, where men wearing pressed shirts spend a bit too much time staring at their phones before entering meetings. It’s evident at Madinat Jumeirah brunches, where the laughter is still present but seems a little staged. Between February and mid-March of this year, the Dubai Financial Market lost more than a fifth of its value, officially entering bear territory. The city has been reacting to the news in the same way that Dubai typically handles bad news: with calm on the outside and…
Around dusk, you begin to notice the little things when you stroll through any neighborhood in central Tehran. With the composure of someone who has done it a hundred times, a shopkeeper resets a generator. Before the tap dries up once more, a woman fills plastic jerrycans. Kids working on their homework under a phone’s blue light. It appears that no one is shocked anymore. That’s the part that merits a pause. Due to sanctions, internal mismanagement, aging power plants, and the more recent shock of military strikes, Iran’s infrastructure has been deteriorating for years. Power outages are no longer…
When the topic shifts from policy to family, a politician experiences a certain kind of silence that John Swinney attributes to a quiet science. Sitting opposite Brian Taylor in front of an Edinburgh Fringe audience at The Herald’s Unspun Live event in August, he refrained from making the customary political digressions. Simply put, he stated that things at home are “not too good.” Elizabeth Quigley, his wife, has had secondary progressive multiple sclerosis for more than 20 years, and the way he talked about it that night—calm, a little worn out, almost apologetic—suggested a man who has long since stopped…