In a small hospital within a besieged or neglected area, a doctor performs a complex surgery under dim light. The wound is deep, the infection has spread, and resources are scarce. He cannot close the wound completely, nor can he excise the infected part. He decides on something in between: he cleans what he can, leaves the wound partially open, and bandages it in a way that allows for drainage. The patient will never be fully whole again, but he might survive.
This surgical image encapsulates the state of the Levant today. It is not in a “post-confrontation” or “post-war” phase, but rather in a state of coexisting with an open wound. This condition, which is neither recovery nor death, has a name in the philosophies of Gianni Vattimo and Martin Heidegger: “The Twist” (Verwindung), or distorted recovery, or endurance.
Although the forms and intensity of this “twist” vary from one country to another in the Levant—there is a difference between a twist under occupation, a twist in the shadow of frozen civil wars, and a twist under fragile authoritarian powers—the common denominator remains: a forced coexistence with a wound that has not healed, and the transformation of a state of emergency into a normal way of life.
What is the Twist?
When Vattimo borrowed this concept from Heidegger, he distinguished it from “Overcoming” (Überwindung). Overcoming means moving beyond a stage to a new one, a rupture with the past, a rebirth. As for the “Twist,” it is a continuation with a change in form—like a bone that healed crookedly after a fracture. It is the bearing of the past rather than the overcoming of it; we do not leave the past behind, but carry it with us as a scar, as a bodily memory—a recovery without healing, a return to life, but while carrying a disability.
In the Levant, the “twist” is not an abstract philosophical concept, but a lived daily reality. Societies and countries are like twisted bodies. The state has twisted upon itself; it did not recover from its previous crisis, but rather bent over it until it “twisted,” distorting its features. It shifted from policies and values claiming secularism to explicit sectarian policies that do not deny their sectarianism; from authorities claiming national representation to authorities that reduce the nation to loyalty and obedience; and from states whose misery lay in formal institutions to states that no longer even need the institutional facade. The transformation was not into something new, but into a distorted version of the old. Systems that used to say “one people” still utter the same words, but the “people” have shrunk to a faction, and the “leaders” have become warlords amidst heavy, extended, and complex wars that are never resolved.
The Twisted Identity
Identity, which was already distorted, did not transform into a new identity but was torn and distorted further: from “citizenship” to “sectarianism,” from “national belonging” to “regional or tribal belonging,” and from a “shared memory” to “discordant memories.” Each group remembers what suits it and forgets the rest. Even language has twisted: words like “homeland,” “freedom,” and “dignity” have lost their original meanings and become hollow slogans or weapons in a war of meanings, thrown about by everyone and believed by no one.
The Economy of the Twist
The economy today is a glaring model of the economy of the twist: it is neither a war economy in the classical sense (production for weaponry and confrontation) nor a peace economy (genuine reconstruction). Rather, it is an “economy of the scar”: an economy that lives by converting destruction itself into a source of profit (trading in rubble, brokerage over destroyed lands, etc.), and remittances from exile as a substitute for local production. Hundreds of thousands of families now depend on “remittances” from their children abroad for their survival.
This distorted scene is completed by a rentier economy under the banner of violence networks, where militias and influential parties control crossings and resources, turning sovereignty into a commodity and protection into extortion. Thus, the economy spins in a vicious circle: devastation creates opportunities for quick profit for these groups, and their quick profit deepens the devastation, sterilizing any hope for productive reconstruction. Corruption appears as a major economic driver. This economy does not build a future; it manages the present as “open wounds” and generates, in turn, a strange sense of time.
Twisted Time
In the twist, time bends upon itself; the past does not pass but remains present as pain. Every day is a memory of some destruction, some loss. The future does not arrive but fades into the horizon. There are no long-term plans, only survival from day to day. The present is not a fleeting moment but becomes a permanent state: the crisis is no longer a phase, but the “new normal.” Thus, the Levant lives today in a “circular time,” not like the ancient mythical time, but like a nightmarish time: a cycle of painful memories, frustrating expectations, and identical days.
Society as a Twisted Fabric
If the body of the state has twisted, the fabric of society itself has not been spared. The social fabric has not been completely torn, but it has twisted in strange ways. The distortion of national identity (from citizenship to sectarian subservience) does not remain confined to official discourses but seeps into the veins of daily life, transforming into: relationships of forced coexistence between people who hate each other but are forced to live near one another; a shared-divided memory where the same event is remembered in two contradictory ways in the same area; and overlapping-discordant identities.
Even families have twisted. You may find members of a single family in different regions, holding different narratives, perhaps carrying different flags, and living different lives. The phenomenon of “Double Talk” serves as an expression of this twist: the same person might use sectarian language in the street and moderate language at home, or vice versa, as a strategy for survival.
The Limits of the Twist
However, this strategy comes at a heavy price: the “normalization of the inhuman,” such as becoming accustomed to poverty, fear, and the loss of dignity. The greatest danger is that this twist transforms from a “forced transitional phase” into a “new permanent nature,” where the origin of the wound is forgotten and distortion is accepted as the natural shape of things. Here, the twist threatens to turn into “permanent damage,” killing not only the ambition for change but even the ability to imagine an alternative. This leads us to the core question: Is this “permanence” a choice or a forced destiny?
In this context, the twist is not a failure but a survival strategy consisting of: the ability to endure, to live with the impossible. This is not merely bowing before the storm, but an amazing capacity for endurance, for creating a routine of life within chaos. It is a resilience that does not aim for growth or improvement, but for survival alone, which empties it of its positive energy and turns it into a mere long-term reaction to trauma. This manifests as: distorted adaptation—changing the self to fit a harsh reality, even if this change disfigures the self—and living on the margins by finding small spaces for life within the grand devastation.
The Difference Between the Twist and Surrender
The twist is not complete surrender. Surrender means: “This is our destiny, we accept it.” The twist means: “This is our reality, we endure it, and we seek to live despite it, and perhaps we change its shape a little.” In the twist, a “sliver of hope” remains—not the hope of radical change, but the hope of improving the conditions of living with the wound.
Why “Permanent”?
We described the twist as “permanent” because there is no power capable of or willing to enforce an “overcoming”: the internal is helpless or unwilling, and external parties benefit from the continuation of the state of tension and conflict. The economy of the scar and sectarian loyalties serve their geopolitical calculations more than the existence of stable, cohesive states. Society has lost its transformative energy; the people are exhausted, fragmented, and living in a state of continuous shock. The economy does not generate alternatives because the economy of the scar does not produce a middle class, does not produce developmental projects, and does not create ambitions for change.
Thus, the existential price of the twist is exorbitant: it produces a nightmarish circular time, a split memory, and a defeated, distorted, and self-divided human being. The scene may seem hopeless. However, realizing the truth of the twist—as a survival strategy and not a natural form—is in itself a resistant step. It prevents us from final normalization with distortion and preserves, under the ashes of passive resilience, a spark of rejection. A rejection not necessarily of reality itself, but of accepting this distorted reality as an eternal fate.
Living from the Scars
Perhaps our task today is not the search for a “final solution,” but learning the art of living with scars. This does not mean contentment with the situation; it means acknowledging that the wound is very deep, that the scar will remain with us for a long time, and that we must learn how to live a meaningful life despite the scar, or perhaps sometimes through the scar itself. For the scar is not just a mark of pain; it is also: a testimony to survival (that we did not die), a bodily memory (that cannot be easily forgotten or forged), and a foundation for a new identity (we are people who carry scars, and these scars are part of our being Levantine or living in the East today).
We must not forget a critical distinction: the “twist” for Vattimo or Benjamin is an interpretive concept of history and culture in the postmodern era. In the Levant, however, this abstract concept has turned into a “harsh biopolitics.” We no longer carry our history merely as a scar in the collective memory, but as physical ruins beneath our feet, distortions in our bodies, and sectarian maps engraved in the geography of our neighborhoods and hearts.
Perhaps from this permanent twist, from this coexistence with the open wound, a “new humanity” may be born: a humble humanity that knows the fragility of life, knows the price of peace, and knows that the homeland is not just land, but the shared memory of pain and hope, even if the memory is twisted and the hope is distorted.
We have not overcome; we have twisted. But perhaps in this very twist, in our acceptance that we are a people carrying deep scars, we find that “we never start from zero.” Perhaps here we begin a different journey: the journey of “slow recovery,” which does not promise a return to what we were, but promises finding a new form of existence, where the scar is part of its broken beauty.
