Note from Cyrus: The following is an email from a friend of a friend studying Arabic for the summer at the American University in Beirut. I’ve edited it slightly for spelling. You can read the whole email here.
From: Gabriel Nevin [himynameisgabe@hotmail.com]
Date: 19 Jul 2006 08:35:43 -0700
Subject: To:While it has been far from continuous, and I honestly have not been scared for my safety much since this war has started, I have for the first time felt a six story building rumble as bombs explode near it. This is an eerie feeling, which I hope nobody else has to experience. Four days ago I was sitting in my room with the doors open. From very far off I heard the noise of a plane engine. The noise of Israeli aircraft is everywhere over Beirut these days, and this time it sounded like the jet was coming from behind my building and would shortly fly directly over our heads. We have been hearing a lot of this war but have seen very little of it, and I was excited to see one of the fighter jets my tax dollars pay for. I went out and stood on my balcony looking up at the sky and waiting. the thing still sounded very faint like it was far away. But it was growing louder very quickly, and I thought maybe I was going to get a sonic boom as well. It kept getting louder and louder until I had to cover my ears to stand it.
Then something about the noise changed; it is difficult to explain, but I had the experience in the next moment of my brain processing so many very intense things in such a small period of time that they could only be unpacked and examined after the fact. I still don’t know why, but I suddenly knew that the sound was not an airplane but rather a shell and it was very very close. This thought was running through my head at the same time that my hearing which had been completely over powered by the screeching went blank, and as I saw a black shape rocket across the sky and into the ground, and as my body forced itself to the ground it seemed faster than gravity could have taken it; the blank was replaced with a roar, and I felt the ground shaking the building all the way up to the sixth floor so hard that doors slammed shut and everything metal was humming.
I think it took about as long as snapping your fingers.
