The City Under Wraps

I remember the morning the power went out in my childhood home. It wasn’t the darkness that struck me, but the silence. The usual hum of the refrigerator, the distant drone of traffic, the ticking clock—everything had been swallowed by a thick, heavy blanket of snow. We spent the day huddled in the living room, watching the world outside lose its sharp edges. There is a strange, temporary grace in that kind of weather. It forces a city to pause, to stop its frantic pacing and simply exist in a state of quiet suspension. For a few hours, the familiar streets become foreign, and the landmarks we walk past every day without a second glance suddenly demand our attention. It is as if the earth has decided to hit the reset button, offering us a rare, fragile permission to stop being productive and start being present. When the world turns white, do you find yourself feeling smaller, or more connected to everything around you?

Bashar Alaeddin captured this exact feeling of stillness in his work titled Snowing in Amman. It is a beautiful reminder of how a sudden change in the weather can transform a busy intersection into a place of wonder. Does this scene make you want to step out into the cold, or stay tucked away inside?