My last day in Lebanon was spent eating a French breakfast on the rooftop of my squalid Hamra-district rental. Backdropped was a picturesque and snow-capped Mount Lebanon: a symbol of the country’s historical heritage; thousands of years of wars carved into embossed patchworks of cedar forest. Bloody campaigns left symmetrical lines and dug-out plateaus. Strategically placed villages, seen from a great distance, occasionally signalled each other with mirrors, each code encrypted as has been done through the ages. This mountain was cursed by the crusaders, archers and the notorious ‘assassins’, whose deeds echoed from the notorious Beqaa Valley below.

Perhaps it was this backdrop of momentary insanity which led me to decide I was going to get my mother the present of a lifetime for Mother’s Day: a bar of soap. Drop into my mother’s arms and happiness be forever, was my first thought. Why don’t you, just once in a while, think twice before doing something? was my second.