What is a Car Bomb?
►http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/7943/what-is-a-car-bomb
In times of violence, and in places shaped by seemingly unending violence, neighborhoods are always contracting. To put a distance between you and an explosion is to imagine a logic to violence, and a logic to safety. It happened in Lebanon. No, it happened in Beirut. No, it happened in Achrafieh. No, it happened in Sassine. No, it happened on one particular side of Sassine. Finally, it happened on one particular street and near these particular shops. “We are fine,” I hear from my sister. It was two blocks away so don’t worry.” These are statements we grew up with, when car bombs and regular bombs and snipers and checkpoints mapped our lives. Now we use these same words, passed on from one generation to the next.