32 Years After Civil War, Mundane Moments Trigger Awful Memories

When you’re a child, how do you get through a war?

A lot of Monopoly, Scrabble, card games, candles and windowless bathrooms turned into family bomb shelters, almost like a big sleepover — if you can ignore the hard tiles and loud shelling of some group trying to kill you for reasons you don’t quite understand.

Yes, war is pulverized buildings, the screech of ambulances, blood, funerals. But war can be boring for long stretches, and you pass the time by falling back on the trite and familiar.

But some of those same crutches used to make it through a childhood scarred by conflict — like endless board games — are now a source of trauma for me and my friends. We grew up during Lebanon’s civil war and are now adults trying to live normal lives, raising our own families as the country crashes and burns yet again.

For my generation, emotional minefields can surround the most mundane activities even 32 years since the war ended.

“I don’t do well in romantic settings,” said my friend Nadine Rasheed, a 40-year-old product developer who now lives in New York. “Candles give me anxiety. We spent so much time studying by candlelight after school.”