The journey of a thousand miles can start in many ways. My journey to Southern Lebanon started with thinking….well not much really. Last night when I heard that Israel had announced to ‘take it easy’ on Lebanon for 48 hours, I knew this was our window of opportunity.

Don’t get me wrong…a journalist never looks for safe passages. It’s just that no driver was willing to take us to Southern Lebanon and as I said earlier, everybody advised us against it. But now I knew I could talk our Driver into it. And I did!

Even before I left Beirut, news of Israel violating the 48 hour cushion period was being aired. We drove through Beirut and on the outskirts I saw the road that had been bombed. The crater was the proof. At this point the driver stopped the car and we bought white tape to emblem the word ‘TV’ on our vehicle. It won’t make our vehicle bullet proof but may win us passage through some areas with Hizbollah’s help.

As we exited the city limits, I saw long queues of cars coming in and going out of Beirut. Apparently I wasn’t the only one trying to make use of the time.

‘We couldn’t drive out of Jieh because we were scared’, Omer Tai’ab told me when I stopped his car to ask him why he was headed towards Beirut. ‘My family and I just want to get to a safe place’.

Omer isn’t the only one trying to find refuge in Beirut. An estimate reveals that out of every four Lebanese, one is now an internally displaced person.

I had seen the smoke rising from the power plant before as well and I have actually been to the coast and seen for myself dead crabs and polluted water of the Mediterranean Sea. It got me thinking about the dimensions of war. It doesn’t just effect human lives, it trenches deep into a country’s roots and this time it has affected the marine life just as badly. We get figures for humans at least…the loss to marine life is intangible.

We traveled around the bombed bridges and roads trying to cover as much area as possible before we were stopped by a Lebanese police officer. On the condition of remaining anonymous, he told us that this area was bombed two weeks ago but then the damage wasn’t severe. Next day as reporters published pictures and aired visuals, the Israeli jets returned…vengeful. The result was complete destruction of the roads.

He also told us to be careful. The area surrounding Jeih Power plant is being monitored by satellite and every vehicular movement in the area is potentially dangerous. Only yesterday, Israeli battleships in the area were firing on any vehicles they could point the guns at.

We remained mobile, passing through villages. Those that had received heavy bombing were ghost towns; a few who had been miraculously spared still had some semblance of life to them. I entered Saida, another prosperous city where Rafiq Hariri’s pictures on tall buildings were a sign of people’s veneration for him. While talking to Reema Maktabi, an Al- Arabiya correspondent, I learnt that Lebanese youth regard him as the man who created the ‘modern Lebanon’.

We moved on to the city of ‘Ghezei’ where the signs of war and destruction became more apparent. There we were told that making any video footage without Hizbollah’s permission was completely out of question. As it turned out later on, all we had to do was ask and we even found a willing guide in the youthful members of Hizbollah.

It’s still not easy describing what it feels like to see signs of life that once existed, annihilated. I saw the buildings targeted by Israel reduced to rubble. One building still had some of the kitchen intact. Utensils and edibles were strewn across the room. Nearby was a hospital. I found ultrasounds and X-rays on the ground. I am scared to think about what happened to its patients.

I am headed to Qana tomorrow inshaAllah, mentally bracing myself for the destruction I am yet to see. But I don’t think I will ever really be prepared. And I can’t stop wondering…how long the mankind will take to end wars before wars put an end to mankind.