The home town of the father of Salman Rushdie’s would-be assassin is a forbidding place, where Shia Islamic iconography sits among palatial mansions, bullet-pockmarked homes and wary locals, who for now want nothing to do with visitors.
Yaroun, on Lebanon’s border with Israel, has long been a centre of Iran’s four-decade-old conflict with Israel. Its ridges and valleys have been key to several wars, and photos of its martyrs line most streets, along with the ever-present yellow banners of its most powerful player, Hezbollah.
