"I used to ride my bicycle round it when I was a kid, " Lella, who is 39, told me as she served me tea.

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Nevertheless, with the exuberance of youth, I tired to make my way to school by bicycle and was prevented from entering several roads because of craters and unexploded bombs.

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It was incomprehensible, impossible to take in, it was doomsday, it was the end of so many lives, that I turned away, got on my bicycle and sped away, crying and shaking and panicking as if I were being hunted by snipers.

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