"I want you to walk very slowly. Do not stop. Do not speak to anyone. Do not look up, but know this: Tanks and machine guns are being pointed directly at you. They are following your every move. It is not safe but I have been given permission to show you. Do not speak to anyone!" Being a "missionary" during the 1982 Israeli invasion, I was chosen for this clandestine walkabout with our sponsor and an unidentified Arab man.

I saw the Israeli soldiers; their artillery pointed directly down on us from their perch above. Machine guns cocked; the arm of the tank slowly moving in harmony with every step. Fear embraced both me and undoubtedly the Palestinians. My heart pounded in my ears. I was being escorted through a Palestinian refugee camp in Sidon. I didn't know a camp was a bombed-out neighborhood where people were forced to live in squalor and filth.

Walking in silence, dark, saddened, hostile, fearful eyes stared into my blue eyes. I longed to hug the children closely following me but I couldn't. I defiantly whispered hello and smiled at them. I couldn't pretend they didn't exist. No building left standing; this once beautiful hood, with palm trees, resting by the sea in the city of Sidon, now only death and decay. I asked about what was clearly a multi-floored structure now pancaked into the ground. It had been a school. I felt acid form in my stomach.

Leaving the camp, the Arab stranger disappeared and I became silent.

After Sidon, we settled in southern Lebanon. Arnoun, a Shi'ite village close to the "freedom fence," had been a stronghold of the PLO to bomb northern Israel with Russian-made katyusha rockets, taking advantage of the Beaufort Castle perched high on a hill. The outcome - Arnoun was decimated; everyone lost someone. It wasn't much of a surprise when a group of young guys joined us for tea, proudly announcing they were Hezbollah and would now take over where the PLO left off.

Days after my "walkabout," newspapers reported that the Sidon refugee camp had been savagely attacked. My thoughts moved in slow motion as I remembered the faces of the men, women, and little kids sitting around the rubble and filth. It was like watching caged animals at a zoo; conditions already barbaric and inhumane, and now this

In my current world, the reality of people in the West waking up, showering, having breakfast, and driving to work or playing in the park seemed surreal. All of life as I previously knew it was going on in

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