What time is it now in the time zone of disappointment?

The hour of betrayal does not turn its hands to count time, but to know the true nature of people and discover the truth about them. Its timing is not about time, but disappointment; its minutes are measured by the number of stabs inflicted, and its seconds by the number of hands that abandoned.

In this hour, time is equalized; yesterday is today, and today resembles tomorrow. The past is a painful memory, the present an open wound in its vastness,
and the future postponed disappointments.

The timing of betrayal features faces that are bitter, painful, and cold, exuding the smell of rust. These faces wear various masks, mastering the game of piety, donning the robes of ascetics and worshippers to be able to pounce on victims' weaknesses, and their tongues repeatedly swear by God throughout the deceit. In the timing of betrayal, traitors are not seen under bright lights, but darkness reveals their veil.

In the timing of betrayal, the school of life is harsh and mocking; the exam comes before the lesson. It surprises us with the test, then slowly teaches us its harsh lessons, leading us to the ranks of self-sufficiency and caution.  After the fact, we discover that there are pure, sincere, and giving hearts, but unfortunately at the moment when we have closed our hearts from excessive pain and no longer need anyone. At the moment when we can no longer give the keys to our souls to those who light the lights for us in the darkness, because the shine of the traitors has made us lose comprehension under the
bright lights.

In the timing of betrayal, the clock hands are not ordinary but poisonous hands that spin around themselves like a snake, choking our trust until we only survive if we turn into a compass. The timing of betrayal shatters the mirrors of trust and embeds their shards in our souls, turning homelands into pain, safety into a harbor of fear, and the faces around us into fake windows of abandoned houses inhabited by

suspicion. In the timing of betrayal, moments of silence become an empty space clouded with questions that grind the heart and then rearrange it anew. When we listen to the pain of our silence, we wear the garment of stillness and learn how to face storms of treachery without being defeated or broken.

In the timing of betrayal, major betrayals do not come from outside but from within, from the close and the closest, from where we think we are safe. Safe ships are not sunk by violent storms but by small holes hidden in their hulls. It is the inside, fragile and quickly revealed and collapsed, that teaches us that true pain is made by the close one we trusted, because major betrayals come from the circle of trust. Where the stab is closer and more severe from those whose treacherous hands surround us, those to whom we wave for help from drowning, and they wave goodbye.

In the timing of betrayal, we do not discover everyone at once, because it is a timing that excels at slow stripping, stab by stab. A timing that tests us with pain and trial to show us who stood with us and who was only there in moments of ease. A timing that tests us by falling into the traps of betrayal. And the hardest thing about betrayal is that we learned the lesson and understood it well, but after it was too late. And
in the end, we do not have control over life's tests and their sudden timing, but we have the ability to learn from its disappointments and betrayals, and to choose well whom we give the keys to our trust and hearts. To realize that loyalty is a genuine metal that does not shine under the lights but lights up when the lights go out. In the timing of betrayal, those who stand with us in the darkness deserve to be with us under the lights; they deserve to be kept as rare metals that are priceless, for they are like the compass that points to the right direction when all maps fail. As for those who practiced disappointments and betrayal on us and fell at the first test, we will leave them to the calculations of time — whose cycles turn with complete justice — and it will tell us about them in the future.