But lately there's always smoke and gunfire in Mogadishu.
The air last night, thick with smoke and gunfire, suggested something damning of the President.
He described a devastating scene of choking smoke, screaming, gunfire and death.
A top US official claimed that the Afghan government had received its first approaches from militants in Marjah seeking amnesty which, if substantiated, would be a sizeable coup in the battle of perceptions accompanying the smoke and gunfire.
When all the imaginary smoke and gunfire died away he was left standing - a bald, touchingly slender man, worn down by his own putdowns, his invariably and defiantly open-shirted neck mottled with sunburn like a gipsy's hand.
In a bedlam of screams, smoke and gunfire, with his tires blown and his steering gone, Mr. Harir attempted to reach the gates of the settlement, a quarter of a mile away uphill.
Sitting now on lawns, amid well-tended flowerbeds and chattering picnickers, it is hard to imagine the British Army swarming onto this plain to attack the French, the smoke of gunfire forming a thick haze among the trees, the slashing of bayonets, and the screaming of the wounded.
CAIRO -- Columns of smoke rose, gunfire rattled and scores of protesters were killed early Wednesday when security forces clashed with loyalists of deposed president Mohamed Morsi in a bloody and chaotic military operation to crush two massive sit-ins.
(With cordite? Smoke? Blood?) Their gunfire is ear-splittingly, brain-frazzlingly real, and given how commonplace guns and gunfire are in the movies, it is remarkable how rare this is.
