Now there are signs for a new soft drink, Coke II, signs slapped on cement-block walls, and she has the crazy idea that these advertising placards herald the presence of the Maoist group. Because the lettering is so intensely red. The placards get bigger as the car moves into deeply cramped spaces, into many offending smells, open sewers, rubber burning, a dog all ribs and tongue and lying still and gleaming with green flies, and the signs are clustered now, covering almost all the wall space, with added graffiti that are hard to make out, overlapping swirls, a rage in crayon and paint, and Brita gets another crazy idea, that these are like the big character posters of the Cultural Revolution in China-warnings and threats, calls for self-correction. Because there is a certain physical resemblance. The placards are stacked ten high in some places, up past the second storey, and they crowd each other, they edge over and proclaim, thousands of Arabic words weaving between the letters and Roman numerals of the Coke II logo.

A man is standing in a devastated square. The car comes to a stop and Brita slings her equipment bag over a shoulder and gets out. The driver hands her the press credentials. It is clear she is supposed to follow the other man. He is older than the driver and she notes that he is missing half his right ear. He wears slippers and carries a plastic water bottle. There are people living in the ruins among powdery hills of gypsum. Where there are cars at all, parked snug to walls, they either have no plates or are cleanly stripped, going brown in the sun like fruit rinds. She sees a family living in a vehicle that is a cross between a wagon and a pickup but without wheels, sunk to the axle in dust. Her guide carries the water bottle tucked up near his armpit and leads her without a word directly into a collapsed building. She lowers her head and follows in the dimness over fallen masonry. Wires dangle everywhere and the dust smells sour. They exit through the remains of a butcher shop and cross an alley to the next building, which may have been a small factory once. It seems intact except for shell scars and broken windows and they enter through a large steel door complete with cross-bracing.

There are two hooded boys standing watch on the stairs with photographs of a gray-haired man pinned to their shirts. On the second floor the guide stands at a door and waits for Brita to enter. Inside, two men are eating spaghetti with pita bread and diet cola. The guide slips away and one of the eating men gets up and says he is the interpreter. Brita looks at the other man, who is easily in his sixties and wears clean khakis with shirtsleeves rolled neatly to the elbows. He has gray hair and a slightly darker mustache and his flesh is a ruddy desert bronze. He is bony-handed, maybe slightly infirm, and has gold-rimmed glasses and a couple of gold fillings.

Brita starts setting up. She doesn't think it is necessary to ease into this with small talk. The interpreter moves some furniture, then sits down to finish eating. The men sit there and eat in silence.

She looks out the window into a schoolyard. The school building at the far end is a near ruin. In the yard there are thirty or forty boys seated on the ground, arms crossed over their raised knees, and a man in a khaki outfit is speaking to them.

Rashid says something to the interpreter.

"He is saying you are completely welcome to join us."

"This is very nice but I don't want to cause inconvenience or delay. I'm sure he is busy."

She aims the camera out the window, sighting on the boys in the yard.

Rashid says something.

"Not allowed," the interpreter says, half rising. "No pictures except in this room."

She shrugs and says, "I didn't know you were placing restrictions." She sits down, goes through her bag for something. "I was under the impression the reporter does his story and I do my pictures. Nobody said anything to me about avoiding certain subjects."

Rashid doesn't lift his head from the plate. He says to her, "Don't bring your problems to Beirut."

"He is saying we have all the problems we can handle so if you have communications difficulty in Munich or Frankfurt we don't want to hear about it."

Brita lights up a cigarette.

Rashid says something, this time in Arabic, which goes untranslated.

Brita smokes and waits.

The interpreter swabs the gravy with his flat bread.

Brita says, "Look, I know that everybody who comes to Lebanon wants to get in on the fun but they all end up confused and disgraced and maimed, so I would just like to take a few pictures and leave, thank you very much."

Rashid says, "You must be a student of history."

His head is still down near the plate.

"He is saying this is a statement that covers a thousand years of bloodshed."

Brita raises the camera, seated about fifteen feet from the men.

"I want to ask him a question. Then I'll shut up and do my work."

She has Rashid in the viewfinder.

"I saw the boys outside with your picture on their shirts. Why is this? What does this accomplish?"

Rashid drinks and wipes his mouth. But it is the interpreter who speaks.

"What does this accomplish? It gives them a vision they will accept and obey. These children need an identity outside the narrow function of who they are and where they come from. Something completely outside the helpless forgotten lives of their parents and grandparents."

She takes Rashid's picture.

"The boys in the schoolyard," she says. "What are they learning?"

"We teach them identity, sense of purpose. They are all children of Abu Rashid. All men one man. Every militia in Beirut is filled with hopeless boys taking drugs and drinking and stealing. Car thieves. The shelling ends and they run out to steal car parts. We teach that our children belong to something strong and self-reliant. They are not an invention of Europe. They are not making a race to go to God. We don't train them for paradise. No martyrs here. The image of Rashid is their identity."

She puts out the cigarette and moves her chair forward, shooting more quickly now.

Rashid is eating a peach.

He looks into the camera and says, "Tell me, do you think I'm a madman living in this hellish slum and I talk to these people about world revolution?"

"You wouldn't be the first who started this way."

"Just so. This is exactly just so."

He seems genuinely gratified, confirmed in his mission.

A boy comes in with mail and newspapers. Brita is surprised to see mail. She thought all mail ended at the city limits. The boy wears a long hood, a pale cloth with holes cut for the eyes and with the upper corners flopping over. He remains near the door watching Brita work. She thought the concept of mail was a memory here.

"Okay, one more question," she says. "What is the point of the hood?"

She turns the chair around so she can straddle it, facing the men with her arms resting on the chair back, shooting pictures.

The interpreter says, "The boys who work near Abu Rashid have no face or speech. Their features are identical. They are his features. They don't need their own features or voices. They are surrendering these things to something powerful and great."

"As far as I'm concerned, listen, you do what you want. But these boys have weapons training. They're an active militia as I understand it. I've heard killings of foreign diplomats have been traced to this group."

Rashid says, "Women carry babies, men carry arms. Weapons are man's beauty."

"Take away their faces and voices, give them guns and bombs. Tell me, does it work?" she says.

Rashid waves a hand. "Don't bring your problems to Beirut."

She reloads quickly.

"He is saying the atrocity has already befallen us. The force of nature runs through Beirut unhindered. The atrocity is visible in every street. It is out in the open, he is saying, and it must be allowed to complete itself. It cannot be opposed, so it must be accelerated."