The plan was to meet author and New York Times opinion writer Megan Stack in Washington DC at the end of August, a hot and slow month for the US capitol when the National Mall is encircled by tourists on electric scooters. Sick children and an unexpected and immovable work deadline, however, thwarted our attempts to meet in person before I flew back to Lebanon. Two weeks later, I video-called Stack from Beirut during a period of retrospective calm, a time before communication devices used by mostly Hezbollah operatives detonated across the country, tens of thousands of people fled from…

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