Translated from the Arabic by Adam Lebzo.

Twenty hours passed before Adam decided to wake up. He’d had a long day that felt more like half a week. And so, Adam had to compensate by getting 3 nights worth of sleep in one night.
Many hardships have pushed Adam to see a psychological counselor, or so he calls him, since the more accurate terms make him feel mentally ill. He told the counselor about the cumulative pressure at work, his unhinged marriage that reached an abrupt end after 7 disastrous years, and the stifling loneliness that always remind him of his miserable school years and those bullies who used to kick him around during recess.
The Counselor advised Adam more than once to do away with the color grey. It was everywhere! On the walls, bed sheets, sofas, rugs, the only two suits Adam owns, and even his office and stationary at the Postal Office where he’s been working since he graduated from Arab Community College.
The Counselor suggested switching to the color green. He even likened this change to transforming the house to a garden. Green walls could open Adam’s appetite to life. The green sheets could make his dreams more merciful and lighten the dimness of his nightmares, and the rug would look more like grass.
However, Adam still stands at his table every week, and recites to himself in his striped, black and grey pajamas:
“The neoliberal system, which has turned the world into a field of experimentation, has rendered changing the colors of my home a major dilemma. My decision is going to benefit the major countries that manufacture and export furniture to the Middle East, wage several wars in the region, claim the riches of the land, and trap people in crippling loans they can never escape. All of these conspiracies sow the seeds of conflict between one and his wife, leaving one alone, eating from McDonald’s every day, getting fat like a snowball rolling down the cliffs of life, and sleeping throughout the weekend.”
This weekly speech is perhaps the only thing keeping Adam alive. He spends his week days running like a wild beast, but he doesn’t seem to lose weight, which according to the counselor, is due to his irregular sleeping pattern, and the unhealthy junk food and candy he’s been consuming every day since his wife left him. This speech gives Adam a space to release all the pent-up stress. A space that is even bigger than the one he finds at the counselor’s.
Today is a special day. Adam fell asleep effortlessly and awakened to a deafening sound of huge airplanes cruising back and forth through the sky. The sound was so loud and unearthly that Adam was eventually sure that it was just a nightmare, and that he was still asleep.
At this moment, Adam recalled that the tiny realm between consciousness and unconsciousness was the perfect place to let his imagination loose and turn it into a basement in which he could discard all of his recent problems. He remembered a letter that had arrived at the office the other day with a rather odd address. He contemplated opening it or sending it to the mailman, but then decided to deliver the letter himself to what turned out to be his home address.
The letter foretold the end of time, where the grey economy would turn earth to a time bomb that could explode at any minute. The only escape for mankind, it suggested, was to migrate to Mars. This trip would naturally be rather expensive, which is why the letter urged Adam to stop wasting his money on candy and food, and start saving up for a ticket to Mars, before the tickets ran out.
Ironically, the letter was sent from the city of Yiwu in China. One of the largest cities in the country, and one with the highest level of carbon dioxide emissions world-wide. And to make things even more ironic, Adam has seen the same announcement on Facebook, posted by a company in Silicon Valley, San Francisco. However, the American advertisement distinguished itself by selling private vehicles with super engines that could take you to Mars, instead of offering only tickets.
This time, Adam started his speech furious at the people of the east who were destroying the planet with their harmful emissions, and the people of the west, who had withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement, only to adopt more destructive solutions by travelling to Mars and using the “Life injection” – which, according to both advertisements, allows the human body to adapt to the climate on Mars.
In his speech, Adam stressed that these countries have abandoned earth, the home of his father’s rural house where Adam learnt to respect and preserve the earth. Adam remembered how his father was deeply attached to his land, taking care of his plants as if they were his own children – a memory that drove Adam to proclaim that these countries were forsaking earth for the sake of investment and exploitation, even exploiting mankind itself. They wanted to sell their products even when humanity was drawing its last breath!
Suddenly, Adam realized that no one was listening to him. So he started singing in an attempt to overcome the noise of the giant metal monsters carrying the wealthy to a new red land and a new dawn of destruction.
Adam sings, the monster ascends into the sky, and the earth turns into hell and fire. Adam’s head cracks and blood comes pouring out of him, but he continues to sing with the madness of soldier approaching the moment of conflict. His boiling blood raises his temperature to match the feverish temperature of the earth.
The cracked man started walking backwards in an attempt to rewind history. He recalled everything his forefather established between the two rivers, and sang. He sang and wept, sang and howled, until he reached a hill and faced his fate: a lone man howling at a downfallen and deserted planet!
Adam was still surrounded by grey cement walls, and infested by pain in his head, joints, and jaw, while the sound of the spaceships masked all other sounds in the earth’s final moments.

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