Nights in war zones are restless.
At eight o'clock in the evening, before the sun had set, Song Ran heard the sound of artillery fire in the distance, and the sound of gunfire was even more constant. Several shots were fired very close to the hotel where I was staying, and the closest one seemed to be on the next street.
But everyone else in the building turned a deaf ear and seemed used to it.
As soon as Song Ran arrived at his residence, he got to know other foreign reporters on the same floor. After everyone learned that she was the photographer of the news photo "carry", they all looked up to her with admiration.
A French reporter sighed: "Whenever I can take a news photo as successful as the carry, I can return to my country with peace of mind!"
Song Ran felt that there was something wrong with what he said, but he didn't think about it for a moment and started talking about the next topic.
After a simple dinner, we met and went to the border to have a look.
Everyone got into an Italian reporter's car and left the residence. When they reached a street, there was a hail of bullets ahead. Song Ran was still a little nervous. Unexpectedly, the reporters in the car were used to it, so she parked the car on the side of the road and waited patiently.
The Italian reporter also started smoking.
Song Ran hesitated for a while and asked, "Doesn't it matter if we... stop here?"
"Don't worry, my dear lady," the Italian reporter turned back and raised his eyebrows at her, "Those are government forces and anti-government forces. It will not be beneficial to either of them to hurt us." He pointed at the Italian flag, American flag, Canadian flag in the corner of the windshield.
Song Ran asked: "What if there is a terrorist organization?"
The other party made an exaggerated frightened expression: "Then it's best to run away quickly. They are short of money recently, and they will not accept the hostages sent to their door."
"It's not that scary." A Japanese reporter comforted her and said, "They sometimes pick countries. Europe and the United States have some historical differences with this land, but we in East Asia don't."
Song Ran nodded.
While they were chatting, the gunfire in front stopped.
"OK!" The Italian reporter threw down his cigarette butt and drove past the street where the battle took place.
Song Ran tightened his helmet and lowered his body unconsciously, while the camera was pointed out the window. She saw several hidden soldiers behind the bumpy building walls.
The car with the national flag flying passed the street quietly, not long after walking out.
Bang bang bang, the fight started again.
Song Ran: "..."
Outside the car window, there were still pedestrians walking on the street. They ignored the gunshots in the distance and regarded them as background sounds.
Hapo is an important town in the western part of the Eastern Kingdom, with a large population and a developed economy. Although today we are deeply mired in war, there are still many people who are burdened by their livelihood and cannot leave or leave. Or they were burdened by their belief that the government would soon win and the war would be over soon. That's what they thought when the war first started.
Not long after walking, there was a hustle and bustle ahead, and the streets were crowded with vehicles and people leaving the country.
Can't walk anymore.
Several reporters got out of the car holding their own equipment. There were so many people around that collective action was impossible. We all arranged a gathering time and dispersed on the spot.
Song Ran chose the angle, recorded a simple reporting video, and then walked forward with the flow of traffic. The streets were crowded with people with their families and families. Song Ran observed along the way that there were few good cars and few well-dressed people.
It has been almost two months since the war started. 50% of the country's land area is in flames of war, and everyone who can leave has left. The only people fleeing now are ordinary people who have no retreat and no home.
But she soon discovered that most of the people here couldn't get out—most of them simply didn't have the documents to enter neighboring countries. They just feel that the country behind them is no longer safe, so they can only keep moving forward and forward, squeezing out a small shelter and seeking a glimmer of hope of escape.
Song Ran stopped when he saw someone suspected of bargaining for the third time.
A middle-aged man from Dongguo held a few things like visa application forms and was communicating with a young man wearing glasses. Behind the young man is a beautiful young woman with a baby in her arms and two more standing at her feet. The child's eyes are big and the eyelashes are very long.
The two men argued for a long time but could not reach an agreement. The middle-aged man raised his hand and turned away. The young man looked desperate and held his head helplessly.
Song Ran met his eyes and intuitively felt that he might speak English, so she asked him what happened.
The young husband shrugged his shoulders and said, "He can get us out, but it will cost fifty thousand dollars per person. Our family will need two hundred thousand dollars. I..." He smiled and shook his head, "I don't have twenty thousand dollars." Wan." He smiled and turned his head sideways after speaking, his nose and eyes were red.
His wife put her arms around her husband in comfort, and the husband kissed her on the forehead.
He told Song Ran that their parents had tried their best. The parents decided they were old and not worth the money, but let the couple and their children leave.
At this time, the Dongguo people next to them started talking to them.
Song Ran couldn't understand, but he roughly guessed from the gestures that the compatriots were persuading them to let the husband go out with a pair of children first, and then come back to pick up the wife and baby.
The young husband smiled and shook his head, hugged his wife and led the two little guys away.
Song Ran held the camera and continued to move forward. There were more and more similar scenes in the camera - fierce arguments, humble begging, desperate sighs, held back tears...
About half an hour later, Song Ran finally arrived at the border.
It's three o'clock in the morning in China now, and most people are sleeping peacefully. Song Ran couldn't live broadcast, but still recorded a video report on the machine.
In the lens, the afterglow of the setting sun shrouds this border area, making it look vast and vast:
"The checkpoint behind me is the junction of the Eastern Kingdom and the Egyptian Kingdom. Some of the people going to the Egyptian Kingdom stayed there, while others continued to move to the next country, away from this war land.
Looking behind me, I could see a dark mass full of people. It's so noisy right now that I can barely hear myself because there are so many drivers honking their horns angrily. And more people who couldn't get out screamed and roared.
Egypt, a critical country with a small land area, has already received nearly one million refugees on humanitarian grounds, and it is really unsustainable. Now that the entry quota has been narrowed, some of them have gradually become capital for bureaucratic transactions. "
When Song Ran said this, he suddenly knew that he had said it wrong and would have to cut it off later. In front of the camera, she remained calm and collected,
"The number of people here who can successfully go to Egypt is probably less than one in a thousand. More people are just carrying their families, children and luggage, waiting aimlessly, waiting for the Egyptian government to be kind enough to open the border and let them pass."
When Song Ran put away the tripod, he thought to himself that it was lucky it wasn't a live broadcast, otherwise it would be over. That sentence can be written in a book in the future, and the official TV station will be held accountable if it is broadcast.
She was too careless. Or maybe her mood was affected.
She looked at the faces waiting desperately, and her heart felt like the slowly darkening skylight above her head at this moment.
It's getting dark.
She put on her backpack and walked back, and unexpectedly met Saxin on the way. Sasin was surprised. He didn't expect that she would come to Hapo City.
It turned out that he had just returned from the war zone and stopped by to investigate the immigration issue of refugees. But he doesn't stay in a hotel, he lives in a B&B. Sahin said that he was going to shoot in the war zone in the morning and asked her if she would go.
Song Ran agreed immediately and wrote his address to him.
The two said goodbye in the crowd.
At half past nine in the evening, the sun finally set.
Song Ran walked through the crowd against the current, and the faces of the Dongguo people in front of him also dimmed in the disappearing glow.
When we got back to the car, it was starting to get dark.
Many local people are still lining up. They wrap themselves in robes and fall to sleep; mothers hold ignorant children in their arms.
Everyone got in the car and drove back.
As soon as the sun sets, it gets dark in an instant.
There were no street lights on the street, it was dim and dim, and the windows looked like ghostly eyes.
Several people returned to their residence smoothly. The administrator, a Dongguo woman, told them that starting from tomorrow, there will be a curfew in Hapo City, and civilians will not be able to go out after eight o'clock in the evening.
Song Ran asked: "Is there going to be another war?"
The woman spread her hands: "Yes."
Song Ran didn't sleep well that night. There was artillery fire and gunshots outside every now and then. I didn't know who was fighting with whom.
She thought of Li Zan and wondered where he was in the city, whether he was sleeping, and whether he was safe.
Although she didn't sleep well, she woke up early the next morning. She edited the video she recorded last night and sent it back to China.
When Xiaoqiu received it, she told her to pay attention to safety, and said that she had seen the special operations team program on the national news channel and the military channel.
Xiaoqiu said: "Shen Bei's boyfriend is really outstanding."
"..." Song Ran had nothing to say.
Xiaoqiu added: "But they may not be getting along recently."
Song Ran: "Why?"
Xiaoqiu: "She is such a show-off person. Everyone praised that program as a good one, but she didn't say anything."
"..." Song Ran didn't talk much. She had something else to do, so she said she would go and get busy first.
At seven o'clock in the morning, Song Ran went downstairs, and Saxin had just arrived.
The two simply ate a piece of bread for breakfast and set off. Song Ran put on a body armor and helmet with press printed on it to avoid being accidentally injured during the battle.
The streets were empty and quiet, and the war zone was filled with gunfire.
The ground was scattered with cement and sand that had fallen from the walls. The walls along the street had long been beaten into black honeycombs. But the sun was shining brightly, and the sky was blue and high.
Song Ran and Sa Xin were chatting about fifty thousand US dollars. Suddenly, there was a burst of gunfire in front of them. The building here shook twice, and a pile of cement blocks fell down, hitting Song Ran and Sa Xin on their helmets.
Song Ran patted the ashes on his shoulders and asked, "What did you just say? I didn't hear you clearly."
"I say corrupt officials selling export permits at this time should be shot."
The two walked into an abandoned building while chatting. The sound of gunfire outside was so deafening that people couldn't even hear what they were saying. The two of them set up their equipment, found cover, and lay down between the broken walls to take pictures of the battlefield outside the building.
Hand grenades, tear gas, grenades, machine guns... all kinds of arms were used in turn, and there were constant casualties on both sides.
Halfway through the fight, the two sides exchanged mortars and rocket shells. The shells traced arcs under the blue sky, and they took turns bombing. The whole earth was shaking.
Song Ran held her head and covered her ears as the mud from upstairs kept hitting her helmet and body armor.
She lay on the ground, tightened her helmet mask, plugged in her earplugs, and squinted her eyes to adjust the focus and direction with difficulty.
The two sides fought for a long time before they subsided for a while. Her ears were filled with buzzing sounds, buzzing like tens of thousands of bees.
The downstairs finally turned into a gun battle, and Song Ran lay down for a while to conserve his energy.
Turning to look at Sahin, he was holding the camera with one hand and rubbing his forehead vigorously with the other.
"are you OK?"
"It's okay." Sasin raised his head and said, "I thought this war would be over in two weeks. But... it has been almost three months, and the government forces have tried their best. But the anti-government forces are backed by forces from other countries. Now terrorist organizations are involved, I'm really worried, Song..."
"worry about what?"
"Worried that my country is going to end. You know, this land has three thousand years of history."
"I know." Song Ran said, comforting in vain, "It will be fine. Saxin."
That being said, she didn't know if it would be good or not.
There were bullets and gunfire outside the building, and footsteps could be heard downstairs.
Sasin looked down through the cracked floor and saw several foreign reporters.
Sahin laughed and suddenly said: "Our suffering has given many people a way to make a living, and also allowed many people to gain honor. This land is like a huge tree covered with tragedy. Everyone who comes from afar Anyone can grab a handful from the tree, harvest some fruit, and then leave the tree without looking back.”
Song Ran's face was stabbed, burning.
She suddenly remembered the scene a few weeks ago. They rushed to the scene of the battle, but Sashin turned to protect his compatriots. As for her, several domestic and even international news media have sent her special invitations because of the photo she carried.
Song Ran whispered: "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry, Song. I'm not criticizing everyone, let alone you. God knows how much I like you. I just said that because I felt that the world was a little ridiculous."
"I know."
Just as he was talking, an explosion suddenly came from a certain direction behind him. The two of them turned back at the same time. It was a residential area two blocks behind them - a non-war zone. It's nine o'clock in the morning, which is the peak time for residents to go out.
Song Ran and Saxin looked at each other, quickly put on their bags, put away their cameras and equipment, and hurried downstairs.
The two of them ran all the way to the street where the incident occurred, but did not see any casualties.
The huge street was empty. An exploded car was burning on the street. The glass of the outer shell was shattered on the ground, but there was no one in the car. A ring of explosion-proof barriers made of sandbags surrounded the burning car.
Several peacekeeping troops were walking around the streets, checking residents' vehicles one by one.
Benjamin was also there, gesturing to people in the windows of a residential building and yelling: "Back off! Stay away from the windows!"
People in the buildings on both sides closed their doors and windows and hid.
In the center of the wide, deserted street, there is a half-meter-high sandbag explosion-proof barrier. Inside, a man was hunched over his homework. It was too far away to see clearly. Song Ran immediately used the camera to adjust the focus to enlarge the picture. Just one glance at his shoulders and the back of his head made her heart soften.
She knew it was him.
Inside the blast-proof wall, a child was sitting in a child seat with a bomb strapped to his body. The child looked up and howled, his eyes and nose tangled together. His parents stood by and secretly wiped away tears.
No one approached the sandbag barrier within a ten-meter radius. Several peacekeepers with rifles in hand were vigilantly sizing up the surrounding environment; there were four or five anti-aircraft machine gun and heavy machine gun positions on both sides of the road to prevent air strikes and assaults; and there were also several lurking snipers on the high buildings on both sides. To prevent enemy snipers.
Everyone is on standby, guarding against possible enemies that may appear around them.
At this moment, a whistle suddenly came from the sandbag wall, playing the tune of "Castle in the Sky", melodiously, and the child's cry soon disappeared. The little guy stared with big black grape eyes, curiously looking at the young soldier who was dismantling his bomb.
Song Ran showed his press card and knew Benjamin, so he entered the blockade smoothly.
Benjamin was quite happy to see an acquaintance and asked, "Did you come yesterday?"
Song Ran was surprised: "How do you know?"
Benjamin pretended to smile mysteriously: "Because I feel your breath."
Song Ran: "..."
She saw that his eyes were red and asked, "Did you not sleep all night?"
"Too many bombs." Benjamin said and cursed, "Those sons of bitches."
Song Ran turned to look at the middle of the road, which was blocked by sandbags. From time to time, he could see two or three undulating heads, which were the couple and Li Zan.
She pointed and asked, "Can I go over and have a look?"
Benjamin said: "You can go through it if you are not afraid of death. But it is best not to." He looked at his watch and said: "There is no time."
Song Ran frowned: "What if it's time?"
"We can only give up. We are not God and cannot save everyone." Benjamin said, and suddenly shouted to the other end, "Lee, are you ok?" (Are you okay?)
Li Zan ignored him, but the child started crying again.
Benjamin stared at Song Ran and spread his hands: "Does my voice sound like a devil? Why is that child crying again?"
Song Ran: "..."
Benjamin shouted again: "You needgive up?" (Do you need to give up?)
This time, a hand stretched out from the pile of sandbags, with the palm facing downwards, swinging the palm horizontally twice, indicating the capital no.
Benjamin: "i bet you gonna die!" (I bet you're going to die.)
So, that hand showed the middle finger.
Song Ran: "..."
Suddenly she couldn't hold it back, touched her nose and smiled.
Benjamin turned back to look at Song Ran with a smile, shook his head and said helplessly: "Hey, this annoying guy."