Donate NowAs I hunched over a borrowed desk in the sixth floor office of Beirut's Daily Star yesterday afternoon, it may have been the computer's pale glow that warmed my face, but the joyful, smoldering embers of my heart came from a warmth only a reporter knows: I had a front page scoop.
It was a small story by world standards, affecting only about 3,000 Palestinian refugees. But it had regional implications and I was proud at having wrested it from the pressed lips of PLO officials and the leaden silence of the country's bureaucats.
I hardly noticed the muffled, distant boom outside. But soon the first wisp of smoke appeared in the orange sky, rising slowly and flickering like a black tongue against the backdrop of apartment buildings and shopping centers in Beirut's hushed northern suburbs. The office was still. Televisions came on. Everyone stood in silence as they waited for a newscaster to break into the cartoons, for a flood of calls to jam the phone lines, for the wail of approaching sirens. My editor looked at me as if to apologize: my story would be bumped to page two. "Welcome to the Middle East," he said.