One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

The essay collection opens with a scene of a young girl being rescued from bombed ruins. The child, bloodied and disoriented, believes she has died as men carry her away on a stretcher. El Akkad uses this narrative to introduce a discussion about violence, sharing insights from a former soldier about how explosion blast waves kill and how distance offers the only real protection. This parallels the soldier’s personal revelation that his most terrifying experience was not combat but rushing his injured toddler to an emergency room, highlighting how personal connection transforms an individual’s relationship to suffering.

El Akkad then examines language as a tool of power, contrasting the physical barriers surrounding conflict zones with the “fortress of language” that allows violence to be sanitized and justified (5). He argues that manipulative language primarily serves not extremists but the “well-meaning” “middle” who need linguistic distance to accept violence as necessary (5). Throughout the introduction, El Akkad emphasizes the limitations of translation to convey cultural meaning, which is illustrated when a rescuer tells the girl she is “like the moon” (6)—a phrase carrying emotional resonance that transcends literal translation. The Introduction concludes with the observation that when something has ended, something else begins—the dead continue to influence the living.