As I write it is now 50 days into the Israel Hamas war.

Confronting the scale of human suffering, particularly amongst the innocent, has been emotionally disturbing. Such is the impact I can no longer watch news feeds about the conflict, whether from main stream or social media.

Earlier today I consulted the Boston University PTSD checklist. The results were as I expected.

My own PTSD experience dates from the Bali Bombings of 2002.

I’ll let my accounts of that time, published in my book Seen and unseen: a century of stories from Asia and the Pacific, speak for themselves.

An Unusual Kind of Thunder

In the Charnel House