Ben Judah

A new report from our Correspondent written while he was travelling in the Middle East.

An open-back military truck pulls up. At first the Figaro and the Sunday Times think the people onboard are refugees. A short brown man in a t-shirt jumps off. "Who are you, what you want?" He's shouting.

There are four of us in the car. The road ahead is empty and the cameraman is trying to hide his equipment as we draw up at the first checkpoint. "You...tell them you're my brother, that we are a family going to see our aunt in Gori.

Mirian wears ‘90s Reebok trainers, black badly-cut jeans and a lumberjack shirt of the worst imaginable quality. He is holding a rubbish sack filled with a few books, a family-photo album, more ugly clothes and a lock of his girlfriend's hair wrapped in a green elastic band.

Our correspondent journeys out of Turkey and into Georgia, nearing the recent zone of conflict between Russian and Georgian forces.

Beirut - Around ‘Lunchtime.' I need an Internet Connection, a number I have to call is waiting in my inbox. The Armenian Taxi driver coughs violently. I'm indifferent, he's driven me way out of where I wanted to go, right into a dilapidated and run-down district that slides steeply down a hill...

"What do you want to eat? The people should be coming...In an hour. We should probably eat before the party." ...

I am sitting in downtown Beirut with some London-Lebanese. It's truly incredible to listen to the way people talk in this city. They'll begin a sentence in Arabic, throw in some French words and then finish up in English. "So Habibi, where have you been."

The bus out of Damascus is dirty. The windows are smeared and little children are sleeping along the floor. A Syrian petrol-pump mechanic is trying to practise his English. "Welcome. Now Leban-non. Leba-non. Good country." But I feel nothing but thick-sweat and back-ache as we draw up at the border.

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