"It was a nightmare."
I heard that over and over again in the day I spent along the Syrian-Lebanese border. Hundreds of thousands of people have been streaming across the main crossing since this crisis began. Most are poor Syrian workers living in Lebanon. Many of them had no money for a car; they walked, carrying whatever they could, from Lebanon into Syria.
I met Lebanese families who described the bombs dropping close to their homes. One man helped four injured people to the hospital and then grabbed his family and took off for Syria.
The officials here -- a country not so easy to enter to begin with -- have relaxed the rules. Diplomats, tourists and everyone in between spent hours crossing into Syria.
They come with a sense of suffocating uncertainty. When will they go home? Will Syria become part of this escalating crisis, the very place they have fled to in order to escape the violence?
Hotels are overflowing with guests, some spending the nights on the lobby floor. It all happened so quickly, and many are only now coming to grips with what they saw.
The road into Lebanon at the crossing we were at was understandably empty. But a few cars did go in. One Lebanese man I met was living in Saudi Arabia. After he saw the news, he rushed back to Lebanon.
I asked why, and he said, "My family. My country. My everything is in Lebanon. Now I must be in Lebanon. If I die anywhere, it should be in Lebanon."
