The streets are jammed and the food vendors are almost crushed by the crowds surging at them. Then the sun drops, the sawm (fast) is over, and the evening iftar feast begins. Just thirty minutes after the streets were choked with people, emptiness descends and yowling cats emerge the tear at trash bags, disturbed only by the occasional hurrying passersby carrying a steaming pan of food.

A few miles south, rockets fly and a ground invasion seems imminent. War’s juxtaposition with the everyday life of peacetime. Incomprehensible.