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I jog the packed streets of Hamra, around the American University, down to the sea and along the corniche as a dying sun bleeds into the salt waters. The streets are intimate and hushed. Fingers of trees lace overhead, casting shadows so cool and quiet they remind me of childhood woods, the secrecy of weeping willows, summer dusk, and the pock, pock of a tennis ball. But it is awful. Men and women wander lead-footed with their children. Their bodies and clothes are dirty; their faces hang slack as they drift homeless in their capital. They watch me, listless and resentful, as I jog past.

One night there was a middle-aged man. He looked worried and decent. His hair was thinning and he had the quiet posture of an engineer, or maybe a schoolteacher. His daughter’s frilly dress was streaked and rumpled, and he was walking her down a quiet street, holding her hand, as darkness thickened under the twined fingers of the trees. I saw them coming from a long way off, and knew from their slow, heavy steps that they had nowhere to go. I had been to the shelters, where old men slept on filthy pads on school playgrounds, where the toilets overflowed and babies screamed and the smells of food and sweat and heat could knock you down. Even the worst shelters were full, and refugees slept skin to skin in city parks, under bushes, on sidewalks. I met the father’s eyes as I jogged past and felt sure they had been sleeping in such a place, and that he wanted to distract his little girl, to walk with her in the fresh air and tell stories under the trees. Their feet fell like steel onto the concrete. He looked back at me, wooden and humble, and I saw myself through his eyes, my clean cotton clothes and running shoes springing light off the sidewalk. Saw myself there and not there, slogging untouched through the murk of desperation, moving past, and I had to keep on running because I was drowning in shame.

We jounce over the dirt trenches and wrecked roads. Refugees trickle toward us, roll past, and push on, Beirut beckoning them north. You never know what people will bring at a time like this. A cow skids and stumbles in a flatbed truck. Sofas are lashed with clothesline to station wagons. Children turn their faces to us, wary and pinched. I keep my notebook in my lap and write everything down. The notes are a filter; I am watching but not really here. I am on the other side of writing. The car windows are open and there is the sweet breath of honeysuckle, the hum of bees.

There is nothing left for me to do except go south. Nobody is telling Israel to stop the bombs. The Americans say this is the war on terror, part of the New Middle East. There is no end to the war in sight, and nothing to do but go south.

You lie to yourself when you decide to accept more danger. We will drive to the Litani River, see how it looks, and interview some fleeing refugees. Then, if it feels okay, maybe we’ll keep going. Israel says there are no civilians left south of the Litani, and so the river is the line where the war loses all mercy. Maybe we’ll keep going: That’s a lie. Of course you will keep going, you will go all the way to the south, to a little bed and breakfast in Tyre. You are traveling with other reporters. You are bringing supplies for people who are already there. You sort of know. But it’s easier to get out of Beirut if you tell yourself that maybe you’ll be back that evening, ordering an omelet and a big cold bottle of water from room service. Just in case, you bring your flak jacket and helmet and satellite phones. Just in case.

We twist up into the mountains. The driver is nervous. He pulls the car over in a village and disappears into a warren of dark, shabby shops where you might find anything at all but nothing of use, like sponges and caged parakeets and old dusty crackers. There are great crowds on the street, everybody pushing around, looking for black-market gasoline, talking about the war, fleeing the war, tasting the