59 How One Year of Lockdown Felt like Four Years.

Thinking back to my time during COVID, this era in my mind is sort of an empty void. I can remember some small eventful and uneventful moments here and there but the majority of them seem to not even be real. This gap in my memory is so impactful that I sometimes believe that I am still 17 years old; despite nearing 21. I have had to go back to my diary and talk to my parents to help me piece together my pandemic life.

To start it off, when COVID came to Saudi Arabia, I was living in Jeddah with my parents and a younger brother. I was around 16 years then while my brother was 10 years old. When the first cases of COVID were announced on the 2nd of March 2020, I was in my second semester of grade 9. That was when the government declared all schools would end early. However, as the cases seemed to keep on rising, by the end of the month, the government went into full lockdown and ordered that all schools be suspended for 2 weeks. But we all know that wasn’t the case. From that point on, it would be over a year before I could step foot in my school again.

This was followed by 6 months without any schooling before online classes began in September and the start of my 10th grade. This involved me, and my brother, picking a place in the house and spending 6 hours of your life mostly sitting there. Back then and even to this day, online school is the most boring and annoying thing I’ve ever had to endure. In school, I had all my friends together in arm’s reach and the atmosphere it creates CANNOT be replicated by messaging with each other in WhatsApp. Furthermore, I am in that category of people that need to be in front of the teacher to properly learn. I believe that being able to see their facial expressions and hand gestures conveys their teachings far better than hearing their voices. But my most significant impact from online school was how I developed backpain from a year of constant sitting, and it still affects me to this day. If I stand up for too long or I sit improperly, there is a slight pain right in the middle of the spine.

It was also during this time that the government announced all offices, malls, or any place where people can gather were put under complete lockdown. Combined with online school, I was completely trapped inside my house. The only time I was allowed out was to throw the garbage. My daily life rotated around school, study, chores, games, and repeat. At least for the first month after school was suspended, it felt nice not to have to go to school or work but soon it dawned on me how miserable it was. I had developed cabin fever and wished nothing more than to go outside just for the sake of being outside. This feeling persisted until the lockdown became less strict and I had more chances to go out. 

One interesting change brought about by COVID was how over-conscious my father became of the pandemic. So whenever we bought groceries inside, he would make sure to deep clean everything along with the floor where we placed the groceries bags. In my opinion back then, it felt somewhat over the top but thinking about it now I somewhat understand why he did all these things. I had an uncle back in Bangladesh, he was the embodiment of health and joy but even he got COVID and soon passed away. If someone like him could get coronavirus, we are likely as equal to get it too, so being extra careful might not be a bad thing during a pandemic. 

While each person’s COVID experience might vary a little, there are some situations where all of us faced the face issue. In Islam, it is a tradition for everybody to pray in congregation in a row but as this could contribute to the spread of COVID, we all began to implement social distancing into our prayers. This change also extended to a much larger scale where the government put a limit on how many people could perform pilgrimage to the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. Overnight, a place that I could easily go anytime became an appointment only access. This was possible because the government created a health app to show the security guard if we were vaccinated, which then allowed us to enter public spaces like malls, mosques, or hospitals. Another example of this cultural change was how we began greeting one another by bumping our elbow instead of a handshake, and some of my teachers still prefer to greet in this way. Although they don’t look like much, I find it interesting how we humans have managed to adapt to difficult circumstances now or in the past.

In the end, all this boils down to one phenomenon, the unending fear of losing someone we care about or we ourselves having to say goodbye to our loved ones. Death comes to everybody but with the number of people dying worldwide, it felt like death came much much closer to us than before. And how many of us found different ways to cope with this fear…