I Didn't Choose the Middle East — The Middle East Chose Me (2006 Lebanon War)
- Vanessa Chamma
- May 30
- 4 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
It was July 2006. I was on the 13th floor of a building in Beirut when a warhead flew past my bedroom window. Not in a movie. Not in a TV series. In real life — my real life.
ORIENTE HISTORY | VANESSA CHAMMA
I had traveled to Lebanon to visit family. I am the granddaughter of Lebanese immigrants on my father's side, and that land had always been part of me long before I understood what that truly meant.
"What was supposed to be a family visit turned, within days, into one of the most intense experiences a person can live through: being caught in the middle of a war".
The Beirut airport had been bombed. I couldn't photograph anything — a camera flash was a real risk in a conflict zone. The only record I have of those days is a news article published in the Estado de São Paulo newspaper on July 19, 2006, reporting the evacuation of Brazilian citizens by the Brazilian Air Force. My name is there: "said Inês Chamma, who was waiting for her daughter Vanessa, 32, who had been vacationing in the south of the country for two months."
My mother was waiting for me at Guarulhos Airport in São Paulo. I was trying to survive in Beirut.
July 12, 2006. The Day Began Like Any Other in Beirut
We were in a car crossing the bridge connecting the capital to southern Lebanon. We crossed it. We drove on. Minutes later, the bridge exploded — destroyed by an Israeli airstrike. There was no time to process it: the war had begun, and I was mere meters from the first impact.
That night, I sat in front of a television and watched Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of Hezbollah, deliver a speech broadcast on Al-Manar. He announced the next steps of the conflict with calculated coldness. It wasn't rhetoric — it was a script. And the script was being followed in real time as he spoke.
In the days that followed, I traveled to the coastal city of Tyre — Sur, in southern Lebanon. It was there that I witnessed, with my own eyes, the Israeli Navy vessel INS Hanit being struck by a C-802 missile fired by Hezbollah. The ship caught fire at sea. It would become the first successful Hezbollah attack on an Israeli warship — a milestone that few analysts fully grasped at the time, but one that would later become central to my undergraduate thesis.
Back in Beirut, that's when the warhead flew past.
I was on the 13th floor. The building shook. Rafik Hariri International Airport had been hit — Israel destroyed the runway to isolate Lebanon and cut off Hezbollah's resupply lines. From that moment on, leaving the country stopped being an option and became a mission.
To reach the Brazilian Consulate in Beirut and confirm my place on the evacuation list, we drove through the collapsing city. At one point, an Israeli fighter jet trailed our car for part of the journey. We were not soldiers. We were not targets. We were civilians in a car, in a city being destroyed — and the warplane was up there above us, a reminder that in that moment, none of those distinctions mattered very much.
My name was confirmed on the list. I waited for the convoy. The Beirut airport had been bombed. I couldn't photograph anything…
What a War in the Middle East Taught Me?
Anyone who goes through an experience like that doesn't come out the same person. And I'm not talking about trauma, I'm talking about clarity.
After Lebanon, I developed something that doesn't have a name in psychology textbooks, but that anyone who has lived through extreme situations will recognize: a radar. I can detect dishonesty, bad faith, and superficiality from a distance. When you have been in a situation where reality truly matters — where there is no room for convenient narratives — you start to see the world through different eyes.
That radar followed me into academia as well. When I returned to Brazil and resumed my studies, I would sit in lectures about the Middle East and listen to professors speak with a confidence that their experience simply couldn't support. I would raise my hand — politely, always — and say: "I'm sorry, Professor, but that's not quite right."
Some understood. Others felt threatened. None of them had been there.
A Mission Born from a Warhead
For years I carried this experience as something deeply personal. But over time I began to realize the problem was bigger than any classroom: Brazil has very little serious, honest, in-depth content about the Middle East in Portuguese. What exists is superficial, ideologically driven, or simply wrong.
That is where Oriente History was born.
Not as just another project — as a mission. The mission of someone who has studied the region, has roots in it, and — unlike most armchair analysts — was actually there when the missiles were falling. Here you won't find oversimplifications or comfortable narratives. You'll find history, geopolitics, and international relations with the depth the subject demands, and with the perspective of someone who has lived the Middle East firsthand.
I didn't choose the Middle East. The Middle East chose me. And since that July of 2006, it has never let me go.
Vanessa Chamma is the founder of Oriente History. She has reported from Lebanon, speaks Arabic, and holds a degree in International Relations with a focus on the Arab world.
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