On Sunday August 20, four hours before I was due to depart for Sidon, in Lebanon, as part of a humanitarian mission, my family dropped me off at Heathrow airport. Or rather, they dropped me off in the car park, and I got my first glimpse of the events that almost pushed the Lebanon crisis right out of the newspapers a week ago. No one was allowed into the warmth and convenience of the airport building until three hours before their flight, presumably because of "security" concerns.

With sparse seating and the two marquees already full, hundreds of people were just milling around in the puddles outside terminal four. I was sure many were angry, but my anger was twofold. Having temporarily lost sight of where it was that I was going, I could only think of this country of mine, and what state it was in. The contrast of going from a calm place to a devastated one was no longer as stark as I had expected it to be.

I looked around at all the faces of those who had come for short tourist trips around the UK and thought of the bewilderment they must have been feeling at the chaos and humiliation being meted out against all travellers through such stringent restrictions.

I thought of getting up off the lonely folding plastic chair I had found outside the tents and asking some travellers about their thoughts. But lugging my suitcase, hang luggage and laptop all at the same time did not seem plausible. Perhaps in the airport I would have a better chance, though no doubt my eczema ointment would be called into question.

Humanitarian concerns and thoughts of others around the world can so easily be overshadowed by extreme fears at home. I can see how easily they can disconnect us from considering global issues that are not entirely beyond our realm of influence.

Last Sunday, I had heard that sonic booms were continuing in Lebanon, and that in the last few hours before the ceasefire, many villages in the south were being carpet- cluster-bombed; Kofi Annan was deeply concerned about a violation of the ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and Israel. And yet my anger at my immediate situation, about having to sit outside in a tent outside the airport in the cold, with dark grey storm clouds overhead waiting to burst, persuaded me to forget about the people too many had already forgotten.