As a journalist, I’ve been on the periphery of quite a few wars: for example, I went to Bosnia as the war ended in 1995 (at a time when snipers were still a threat). I was in Egypt during its 2011 revolution, with its jubilant but scary air of lawlessness. And smouldering buildings in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Just once, before now, I have plunged into the heart of a war, when, with a photographer friend, we persuaded a reluctant cab driver to take us from Beirut to south Lebanon during one of the Israeli invasions. As soon as we arrived, in a small mountain town called Machgharah, we were seized by gun-toting Hezbollah soldiers. They thought we were Israeli assassins posing as idiot tourists. They interrogated us in the neighbourhood Hezbollah HQ, even as the Israeli forces bombarded the town all around.
I know, therefore, that war produces moments of jarring strangeness.
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