The Bastards Did It Again

Now that I have decided to move to Beirut, I take a look at each day’s news with a growing sense of dread. This keeps happening.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A car bomb exploded in a mainly Christian residential neighborhood of Beirut late on Friday, killing one person and wounding at least 23, Red Cross and security sources said.
The bomb exploded near a branch of Lebanon’s Byblos Bank in the area of Achrafieh and was heard throughout the capital. A senior security source said it consisted of 10 kg (22 lb) of TNT.
“What we lived this night was like hell,” Eva Nashleklian told Reuters as she wiped blood off her arm.
The blast shattered windows and set two cars ablaze. Ambulances ferried the wounded to nearby hospitals. One was in a serious condition, a Red Cross source said.
Lebanese security forces sealed off streets leading to the blast site and investigators began collecting evidence.
“We were asleep and woke up horrified by the blast,” said 40-year old Hanna Botrous.
“We saw smoke billowing and were scared in the beginning, but we were expecting something like this to happen,” he said.

Far more people have been murdered by terrorists lately in the supposedly safe Western cities of New York, London, and Madrid. But this constant drip-drip-drip of low-level violent attacks is somehow more frightening even as it is less deadly. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will almost certainly hear, if not actually see or (God forbid) feel, explosions while I’m living there in that city.