Tight quarters

Mobile and video technology virtually shortens distance, making people thousands of kilometers apart seem to be together. That’s what the New York City-Dublin livestream “portal” does.

Through the 8-by-8-foot video screen set up at the Flatiron South Plaza, people in New York City can see in real-time those in Ireland’s capital, and vice versa, via the counterpart portal on the Irish side across the vast Atlantic Ocean. The electronic screens are a joint public art project of Portals.com, the Flatiron NoMad Partnership, and the Dublin City Council.

Ironically, a shorter distance does not make face-to-face contact easier or possible even with modern technology. It happened to a 45-year-old Algerian man who was separated from his family.

The guy, Omar bin Omran, went missing and was believed to have been kidnapped or killed during the country’s civil war.

Algeria’s Ministry of Justice announced that Omran was found alive on 12 May and reunited with his family after going missing 26 years ago, when he was 19 years old.

A neighbor had apparently abducted Omran in 1998 and kept him hidden in his house’s cellar. The victim’s whereabouts was revealed by the kidnapper’s sibling on Facebook after they had a spat over inheritance. The post alerted police who went to the alleged kidnapper’s house, which was only 200 meters from Omran’s family home in Djelfa, Al Jazeera reports.

Why Omran failed to return home when he was just nearby was supposedly due to a spell cast on him by his captor, who escaped and was being hunted by police.

Al Jazeera quoted Omran telling rescuers he could sometimes see his family from afar, but he felt incapable of calling out because of the “spell.”