Graeme Wood on the geography of war zones

He’s been to the most dangerous places on earth in recent years, so I was interested by the response of The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood to my Tahrir experience. As you may recall, I was stunned by the fact that there were popcorn, cotton candy, and even a few kids on one side of Tahrir, and lethal street combat perhaps two blocks away. Graeme’s interesting response was as follows:

“The most remarkable thing I notice about war zones is that they are almost never distinct from areas of peace. In Baghdad there were always ice cream shops open, and in Kandahar there are stores selling stunning wedding dresses, even as the bombs explode half a block away. I warn people who go to war zones for the first time that the dangers are generally not apparent until they are overwhelming and unmanageable, so don’t be deceived by the semblance of calm. You seem to have observed this for yourself. In long-running wars, the difference between a visitor and a local is that the local person often knows that the dangers are near, and can react quickly and effectively, whereas the visitor is stunned and frozen for a minute or two when violence occurs. In revolutions like Egypt’s, everyone is shocked by violence, and confusion reigns as a result.”

One of my taxi drivers in Beirut who had lived through the Lebanese Civil War reported much the same thing. He’d simply have to walk through areas of gunfire while carrying out a normal day, yet only once was he in any immediate danger from doing so.