July 2006, in a school cafeteria. I was a film student in Los Angeles, writing a time travel script about a dystopian Beirut in 2050, a city fractured into contaminated zones, divided by invisible borders. I thought I was inventing a future, holding on to the only two things I trusted---my body and my camera.
A friend approached me, and in a measured tone, asked if I had seen the news. I hadn't. Back then, news didn't live in our pockets. I opened my laptop and watched the screen load. The headline appeared: Lebanon under siege. I read it once. Then again.
My body traveled faster than time, returning me to the wars that raised me. Four wars folded into one body: the civil war, the shelter; the occupied South,