Dear applicant,

We trust this finds you in good spirits. 

Thank you for submitting your request for voluntary relocation. 

Your identification number is AE0221G776.

We have successfully received your down payment, and your profile is almost complete. Please take a moment to answer the questions enclosed in this message so we can best cater to your needs. We take your data privacy very seriously and treat your information with the utmost confidentiality: read our policy here.

Once you provide us with the requested information, we will proceed to calculate your level of risk appetite. Along with the personal data submitted in your request, we will use it to generate your personalised map of potential destinations for relocation as well as tailored financing plans. 

Our services combine the latest cutting-edge predictive technologies with an exclusive and dynamic global geographic intelligence database to provide you with an optimised and fully-customised migration scheme that is suited to your profile and financial means, whatever they may be. This process will yield a calculated set of data-driven recommendations with a guaranteed success rate of 99.8% – almost none of our customers come to regret complying with their schemes. 

We know that the world is full of choices. We thank you for choosing our services and eagerly await your response.

Cordially,

Intake Officer 603118

Complementary Questionnaire - #00491F

ID no. AE0221G776

Please answer the questions below using a scale from 1 - 5 where 1 signifies (very false) and 5 signifies (very true). It is crucial that you be as genuine and transparent as possible in your answers so that we may recommend the product package that is best adapted to you! 

1. I am willing and prepared to never return:

2. I am willing and prepared to change my first name:

3. I am willing and prepared to relocate again when necessary:

4. I am willing and prepared to work with others in the event of a catastrophe:

5. I am willing and prepared to live on a moving vessel (seacraft, aircraft, etc.):

6. I am willing and prepared to be a team player:

7. I am willing and prepared to respond to a flash flood and/or wildfires:

8. I am willing and prepared to respond to long periods of drought:

9. I am willing and prepared to respond to a volcanic eruption or seismic event:

10. I am willing and prepared to live at a maximum distance from all current coastlines:

11. I am willing and prepared to comply with regulations on the production, collection, and domestication of fauna and flora: 

12. I am willing and prepared to comply with regulations on scavenging:

13. I am willing and prepared to trade personal and political freedoms for infrastructural and/or financial stability:

14. I am willing and prepared for occasional religiously and/or racially-motivated crimes:

15. I am willing and prepared to bear arms in the name of the public interest:

16. I am willing and prepared to be an agent of progress and human advancement:

17. I am willing and prepared to pledge allegiance to a sovereign:

18. I am willing and prepared to live under martial law:

19. I am prepared for the possibility of armed conflict:

20. I am willing and prepared to perform physical labour:

21. I am willing and prepared to claim and defend land as private property: 

22. I am willing and prepared to live to the average life expectancy:

23. I am willing and prepared to be banished as a form of punishment: 

24. I am willing and prepared to take my own life:

25. I am willing and prepared to donate my organs in the event of my death:

26. I am willing and prepared to be immortal:

27. I am willing and prepared to live in silent solitude for extended periods of time:

28. I am willing and prepared to participate in extraterrestrial exploration colonies:

29. I am willing and prepared to give up religion, magic, and/or other forms of spiritual, ritual, superstitious or paranormal beliefs and practices:

30. I am willing and prepared to follow the recommendations produced by this process:

dear officer…

i apologise for my delayed response…the questionnaire is taking longer to complete than i thought it would…i understand the necessity of the questions… but to be frank…some of them caught me off guard and required a bit of thinking on my part because i had never asked them myself…i really want to believe that this process will yield the best possible outcome but i may need ur help…maybe if u get to know me it will make things easier…i hope that the information provided hereafter will clarify some of my concerns and needs……. 

i do not remember my first migration… i was born on a side of the atlantic I would only return to more than two decades later…i have vivid memories of my first migration from lebanon but my first encounter with the grief of separation precedes my own displacement…when i was between the ages of 5 and 8 my father left to the gulf in pursuit of work opportunities and we followed him soon after… before that he left his village and his small strawberry farm in the north to study engineering in the city… throughout their lives my father’s parents refused to leave their village for longer than a day’s time even after all six of their children migrated they never travelled to see them instead they held firmly onto the belief that they would live to see their children return one day but they did not………..when the americans invaded iraq in 2003 my father began stockpiling bunsen burner cartridges in one of the kitchen cupboards and when i asked what they were i was told don’t worry…to be frank i didn’t feel the impending danger until i found the sealed envelopes in our fridge labelled (((antidote)))…….i often forget that we had to relocate back to lebanon temporarily for a few months that year…my father taught me to drive through hypothetical catastrophe scenarios like what do u do if ur tyre explodes while driving at high speeds? what do u do if the car slips and u lose control of the steering wheel? what do u do if the car in front of u suddenly stops? what do u do? and so before i ever touched a steering wheel i learned the protocols for responding to these incidents reciting and rehearsing them from the passenger seat on weekday mornings while my father drove us to school……..when i think of my mother i am led to believe i became a migrant the moment her father left for south america and in a way i wonder if I ever had a chance at staying put when relocation is always in the back of one’s mind as a possible next move generationally engrained one is a migrant without ever having to go very far for years i was convinced that the monument to the lebanese migrant looking out over beirut’s port or what’s left of it now was a likeness of my maternal grandfather who passed away the same year the statue was erected i think i later found out that the sculpture was a replica of the emigrante statue commissioned in 1979 by the centro libanés in mexico and over the years numerous others have been set up around the world celebrating the reach of the lebanese diaspora… from lebanon to the world it says…the statue made it hard for me to come to terms with the deep wound of displacement or what ghassan hage calls the primal diasporic injury…….i don’t care much for the personification of countries and even less so when they are turned into motherly figures but i recognise that we expect our countries to care for us and nurture us we expect them to do their best we expect to not have to look for a place to live and when they repeatedly fall short of these expectations for whatever reasons the wound never scars yet all the statue can talk about is the successful immigrant who went after opportunity and made it abroad and changed the taco…….to my dismay so far i seem to have belonged to a category of migrants who live two lives unable to stay we leave but we are unable to cut ties and remain tethered by duty and labour of care for people lands and homes my father spends his trips tilling the lands in the north so they can one day be sown and my mother spends hers fixing leaks in the house she never lived in for more than a month at a time and as i grew up i was unable to mythologise my place of origin or find in it the enjoyment that a vacationing member of the diaspora might and even today i suspect i and many like me are incapable of nostalgia because we are exhausted by the perpetual pendular motion had we been born on the right side of geography had we pawned all we had it might have afforded us a more comfortable and conclusive relocation on some level it is this tether that performs and reassures us that a return is possible or that a claim indeed exists if leaving is equated with relinquishing the tether acts as an obstacle to the complete separation a form of material constance or maybe self-punishment….i don’t fetishise life but maybe i am seeking a more dignified death although what dignity means at this point in time is unclear to me….to die on one’s own terms? that’s not it… as though anyone were capable of ever truly setting the terms of their death…when one accepts to go on living surely one is delaying dying on one’s own terms……but this didn’t begin with the question of where or how to die but of where and how to live if i must in an unlivable world a life that is not so adjacent to death for once i’d like a categorical clarity life or death stay or leave give me boredom give me certainty give me the guilt of desiring a less excruciating life instead of asking for strength resilience and steadfastness… thx.

Dear applicant,

Thank you for your continued engagement with our service. 

We understand that the questionnaire might be challenging, and we appreciate your efforts. We thank you for your enthusiasm and detailed personal insights, but we must stress the urgency of responding in a timely manner and adhering to the specified format. Information provided in other formats may not be successfully processed into your application, which may in turn delay subsequent steps. If you have specific concerns or uncertainties about any of the questions, please feel free to highlight them, and we’ll do our best to address them. Remember that this process is designed rigorously and with your best interest in mind. There are no right or wrong answers as long as you follow the instructions.

We regret to inform you that since our last exchange, some of the options that were previously available to you have gone out of stock or fallen outside of your range of affordability. If your capital availability has changed since you submitted your application, kindly update your profile here. As you know, the world is changing at a rapid pace, and we do our best to keep track of the latest developments in order to provide you with personalised, future-proof migration projects. For over 100 years we’ve known that everything that can go wrong will go wrong and at the worst possible time. This is arguably the worst possible time. 

We are however delighted to present you with exclusive plans which may be of interest to you based on the set of baseline preferences that we have identified in your responses and triangulated with your profile. Below are some highlights that we have curated for your perusal. The full updated list including the details of the latest offers within your range can be found in the attached brochure. Should one of these packages be of interest to you, simply include its reference number in your upcoming reply.

Live in total freedom while contributing to scientific progress – Join one of our floating biotech farms and benefit from the latest end of life services.

Looking to accrue assets? Nothing drives down the price of a property like a good up-close sea view. Nowadays, mountain bunkers are all the rage. 

Want to start over new? Opt into our Settlements to Terraform the Arctic Newlands.  

You now also have the option to add consenting family members and/or friends to your scheme. Find out more about our rates and requirements for groups here. Terms and conditions may apply. 

Please understand the importance of streamlining the communication process. Remember that places are limited and we need to act fast. To that end, kindly return the responses to the previous questionnaire in numerical format to the best of your ability and at your earliest convenience. We eagerly await your response to move forward with the next steps of your application. If you face any challenges or concerns, please let us know, and we’ll do our best to assist you. 

Thank you for putting your trust and confidence in our enterprise. We are grateful for your business and hope we meet your expectations. 

Cordially,

Intake Officer 603118

dead officer…

thank u for ur prompt response…i apologise for my long emails thank u for bearing with me…i will do my best to provide u with some practical information related to my request……..

i hold passports from two countries that i watched collapse one after the other over the last 35 years……..i sometimes joke about my seven-year curse which is the longest I’ve been allowed to stay consecutively in one country…i often think about what it must have felt like for my parents and so many others who fled the war in lebanon in the nineties only to end up in the middle of desert storm on the other side of the arabian peninsula…maybe there’s no such thing as the right place to live maybe places are only ever right for some time maybe all the switzerlands of the world will eventually turn into argentinas and venezuelas…my high-school science teacher once told us that it would be a good but long-term investment to buy real estate by the red sea rift because even though it didn’t look like much back then the bay grows one centimeter wider each year and would eventually acquire an oceanside vista and i have since been thinking about what it means to plan for the long term……my cat on the other hand is a two-year-old common european shorthair and holds a valid passport issued to her by the european union and my active sourdough starter is almost fifteen years old but the flours that have fed it along the years have come from every country i ever visited yet it has never faced any issues or border difficulties while travelling but i’m unsure what its situation would be in this case…my neighbor won’t let me add him to my scheme he says some countries are in the business of exporting people and others only welcome them to fill shortages of bodies he says we’ll have to be workers, soldiers, or settlers then he says the only way he’ll move is if we move the entire neighborhood with us but he’s only joking even though he says he’s not and it reminds me that in truth i don’t want to go anywhere i hate all countries equally and i have come to realise that i have no desire for the kinds of migration that i can financially afford and i know there is no exit as long as ur alive and i have felt the violence enacted upon me in the name of others and i have seen the violence enacted upon others in my name and i am suspicious of any relocation plan or nation-state that will accept me and i have no doubt that there will come a day where my subscription fees or my taxes will be used to fund wars against my own kin and it just goes to show u everywhere is unlivable if somewhere is unlivable and make no mistake after labouring to make a life worth living u only consider leaving after the windows of ur home suddenly turn to daggers and dust on a scorching summer afternoon when u try to arrange ur furniture based on the corners marked safe in the last catastrophe and fail to reengineer those ten square metres only then….after submitting my request to u i re-read ghassan kanafani’s letter from gaza and i wept…was i ghassan or mustafa or nadia or her amputated leg? i couldn’t tell…then i remembered the words i once saw in a photograph of graffiti on a wall in homs in may 2014 that said…and when i leave be sure to know that i did everything i could to stay…and i wept again……anyway i will be brief…i am not sure i want to know the outcome of ur calculations…i suspect that even if i knew what the logical next move should be i would not want to make it…i would be too tired and it would be too predictable and u can keep the down payment…thx.

Dear applicant,

Thank you for your continued engagement with our service. 

We understand that the questionnaire might be challenging, and we appreciate your efforts. We thank you for your enthusiasm and detailed personal insights, but we must stress the urgency of responding in a timely manner and adhering to the specified format. Information provided in other formats may not be successfully processed into your application, which may in turn delay subsequent steps. If you have specific concerns or uncertainties about any of the questions, please feel free to highlight them, and we’ll do our best to address them. Remember that this process is designed rigorously and with your best interest in mind. There are no right or wrong answers as long as you follow the instructions.

Based on your latest correspondence, we have detected that you may be dissatisfied with our service. We are certain that we can clear any misunderstanding through open and honest communication. Schedule a call with Customer Service by clicking here.

Your loyalty is our greatest asset,

Cordially,

Intake Officer 60311