Word: sirenic
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...alcohol and the isolation of their economy. "Lebanese Shi'ites are a joyful people," says Hussein, 40, a shopkeeper. "We don't mind Hizballah fighting Israel, but they're not fighting Israel from Baalbek. Whenever there is an Israeli attack anywhere in Lebanon, they turn on the air-raid siren. It's a good way to politicize people. But if they hear people are dancing in the park at Ras-el-Ain, they also turn on the air-raid siren...
Like the hungry infant's cry, the car alarm is designed to be unignorable -- that is, unendurable. One popular model from Code-Alarm, for example, puts out 125 decibels: "Louder than a police siren," says a publicist, "louder than a rock concert." A good car alarm is a sharp blade of sound: it pierces sleep, it goes into the skull like an oyster knife. In a neighborhood of apartment buildings, one such beast rouses sleepers by the hundreds, even thousands. They wake, roll over, moan, jam pillows on their ears and try to suppress the adrenaline...
...gimlet eye of a surveillance camera repairs this modern Circe: Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone. The air is perfumed with the sweet fragrance of a floating garland of fresh gardenias. She plies a visitor with strong drink and cunning smiles. Within earshot of the murmuring fax machine and the constant siren's whine of the telephone, Circe reclines in audience on a couch of golden threads, and speaks...
...Arab children are so impassive at the prospect of death. One Palestinian mother from Beit Sahur in the West Bank acknowledges that "when my children hear the siren, their whole bodies start shaking." Says Ziad Ahmed, who with his six children lives in a refugee camp near Bethlehem: "My children have picked up my fear, and there's no way now to calm them down." Because of strict U.N. curfews, Palestinian youngsters in the occupied territories are cooped up at home most of the day. Another source of outrage and anxiety: a shortage of gas masks. Israeli authorities initially refused...
...been only an hour and 35 minutes since we heard the first siren at the Hilton. We continue to talk to people, all of whom express outrage at having been targeted by the Iraqis. "Why are they trying to kill our children and not our soldiers?" is a common refrain. All of them are sure that the IDF and the IAF could make short work of the coward who attacks innocents in their homes. "That son of a bitch," one old woman calls him. Anger and indignation, not fear, is the dominant emotion here. In classic Mideastern fashion, people grab...