Prolonged bursts of gunfire clattered across Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on one recent night, setting nerves ajangle. But this was the racket neither of civil war nor foreign attack, sounds all too familiar to the city. It was revellers cheering, in traditional Lebanese fashion, their favourite team in the football World Cup. A few days later the crackle erupted again. It turned out this time to be neighbours fighting over a parking space, with the bullets mostly sent skyward rather than at each other.
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