“I have almost given up trying to plot the changes and the turns [in Lebanon], each of them denser and more complicated than the preceding ones, each of them astounding me with Lebanon’s capacity for money-making, conspiracy, and both individual and mass murder. Yet the so-called traditional leaders and their variously mediocre progeny remain unchanged, as they forge and almost immediately betray alliances with each other, as well as with the Syrians, Palestinians, Iranians, Americans, Israelis and Saudis (who seem to be bankrolling everyone). There is no one to admire or trust in this too long and too sordid spectacle of idiotic violence and limitless corruption. Even the innocent civilians who have gone on and on, with their brave routines, their ability to rebuild and restart their lives a dozen times, their courage under fire, must have secretly connived, one feels, with the leaders who have kept the war going. Otherwise, how could it have continued for such a long time?” [After The Last Sky – 1986]