Never Have I Ever... Been a War Correspondent

Sally, you're very welcome.

Thank you for being with us.

Hi.

Thank you so much for having me.

You're just back from, um, Lebanon, and you've lived there for the last couple of years.

How are things in Lebanon now?

Things are terrible.

I mean, it's almost impossible to kind of describe and quantify, like, one million people displaced in a, a very small country.

A kind of huge swathe of territory at this, in the south is being occupied still by the Israeli military.

Attacks are continuing.

Thousands of people have been killed.

The devastation is just massive.

And what is an ordinary day in Beirut right now? Like, does, does ordinary life continue?

I actually moved to Beirut, I should say, before there was war there.

So I moved there in January 2024, and there was lower level conflict at the border, but it hadn't expanded, and we didn't necessarily expect it to expand.

So I actually didn't even move there to be a journalist.

I moved there 'cause I was on a break while writing my book, and I had friends there, and, you know, one had a spare room and just said, "Why don't you come and hang out," basically.

And Beirut's a lovely city.

Like, it's really, like, a place where many people gather.

There's lots going on.

So I was living there already for nine months when the war escalated and, and came to Beirut as well, and that was the point when I got accredited and decided I should start reporting.

And since then, like, no day has been the same.

There is war generally ongoing, even including that period where there was a 15-month ceasefire.

There was still near-daily attacks, um, by Israeli forces, but not inside Beirut, um, for most of that, but in more in the south.

And I think that the main thing to understand about living through a war maybe is uncertainty.