“When I talked to people in Lebanon,” you said, “I was always the writer. I did the interviews officially. I would go around with a handler from UNHCR, and she would introduce me as a writer of some significance. There was a barricade between the person I was talking to and me. I could hear the stories, and no matter how sickening they were, I felt protected. I was able to listen dispassionately, impersonally. They were stories, after all, simply stories. I deal with stories all the time. I haven’t been able to do that here. Metaphor seems useless now, storytelling impotent.”
