War, from the South

Dawn bursts over the hills of South Lebanon bathing the landscape in a soft pink glow.¹ I was up before the first light with the women of the household to harvest this morning's picking of the tobacco harvest, in season for the duration of the humid summer. As the rays of the sun reach us bent over in the fields, we straighten up, sweeping black sap-coated fingers over our brows. Shouldering the burlap sacks of fresh green leaves, we head back home to break our fast. As the women settle down to a breakfast of hot, sweet tea, and steaming flatbread freshly baked by Im Sahel, their mother, Bou Sahel, their father, sits on a cracked plastic chair nearby acknowledging but not participating in the labor. Tobacco work is the lot of women here. As we eat, we talk about what everyone talks about around here: war. Although war...