Two Perspectives on One War

Perspective I: The Distance of Fear

On October 7, 2023, I was in New York. Autumn was settling into the city with a kind of effortless ease, the weather cooling down after a boiling summer. Everything would change overnight when the onslaught in Gaza began—alongside rising tensions between Hezbollah and Israel at the Lebanese border. After the Hamas attacks in Israel, I knew the collective punishment of Palestinians would be horrific. As the images and videos of Palestinians being murdered filled our social media feeds and televisions, I knew this was just the beginning of what was to come.

I spiraled into a manic breakdown almost instantly. I had lived in Lebanon for half of my life. I’m half Lebanese, and my Lebanese family still lives there. I’ve written before about the complexities of identity—how it feels to belong to more than one place, and yet not feel entirely at home in either. As a Lebanese-Ethiopian writer and photographer who splits her time between Beirut and New York, I’m used to navigating the space between geographies. But this was different. This was not a balancing act. This was free fall.

The loneliness of it was unbearable. In New York, people reacted to the headlines, but their concern never extended far enough. Lebanon was an afterthought, a footnote in conversations about regional instability. I was too frightened to seek comfort, for fear that people would condemn my political views. When I tried to explain my panic, my grief, the fear curling itself around my body like a second skin, I was met with blank stares or worse—indifference.

I couldn’t sleep. My phone became an extension of my hand, constantly refreshing Twitter, checking WhatsApp messages from family and friends. Airstrikes. Cross-border clashes. Rumors of a full-scale invasion. The weight of helplessness crushed me. I walked the streets of Manhattan for weeks in a daze, passing by restaurants packed with people laughing over drinks, my mind stuck in another place, another reality. I was surrounded by people, yet completely alone. 

Image photographed by writer.

Perspective II: The Proximity of Terror

Now, I am back in Lebanon. And I am living through the war I feared from afar.

It’s different when the bombs are falling within earshot. When the windows rattle in their frames, and your body tenses involuntarily, bracing for something worse.

In New York, my mind fractured under the weight of fear. Here, my mind is forced into a different kind of survival mode. It’s not about distant anxiety or catastrophic imagination anymore. It’s about immediate choices: Will we have to leave our home? Where will we go if we have to leave? 

I never realized how much war changes your perception of time. Days are no longer measured by plans and schedules, but by lulls and escalations. The silences between airstrikes are their own kind of psychological torment. You count them, wondering if they signal an end or just another beginning. You sleep in increments, waiting for sirens, waiting for news, waiting for the sound of Israeli jets roaring above your head.

Fear here is not the distant, spiraling anxiety I had in New York. It is sharper, more immediate, and yet, in some ways, easier to carry. There is no helplessness when survival is an action. You learn to move with the chaos, to make decisions that aren’t theoretical but necessary.

But the mental toll is different. It’s the claustrophobia of being trapped, not just physically but emotionally. It’s the way the war seeps into your body, into the way you breathe, into the way you speak. In New York, I felt like I was losing my mind because the war felt both inevitable and unreal. Here, the war is real, and I am losing parts of myself in it.

Between Two Nightmares

I lay awake right before the ceasefire was declared at 4AM, praying that it would actually take hold. The days that followed were uneasy. I watched the way the city stitched itself back together with an exhausted kind of hope, Israeli drones still buzzing overhead. I spent much of my time reflecting. I had lived this war from two perspectives. I have learned what it means to be consumed by fear for your loved ones and country when you are far away, and what it means to live through that fear when it materializes around you.

Which is worse? The war in your head or the war outside your window?

In New York, I was gaslit by the apathy of those around me, forced to explain why I was unraveling. Here, there is no need to explain. The fear is shared, understood. But here, the danger is real, and understanding does not grant protection.

I am mentally drained. I do not know what peace looks like anymore—true peace, not the fragile pauses between conflicts. But I do know that distance does not dull the pain of war. It only changes the way it breaks you.