It has been five weeks spent thousands of miles from home in a sporting culture that sharply contrasts with the traditional British attitude to football.

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The local pizza places is more interested in a click at 6 p.m. from a smartphone nearby than a click from someone at home five miles away.

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Just after midnight on April 25th, a Syrian medical technician who calls himself Majid Daraya was sitting at home, in the city of Daraya, five miles from the outskirts of Damascus, when he heard an explosion.

NEWYORKER: The Thin Red Line

And then one day while driving to work from my home in Silver Lake, a neighborhood five miles northwest of downtown, I cut through the Second Street tunnel and there he is, putting on a one-man concert in a location even noisier than the last one.

NPR: The Redemptive Power of Music, and Friendship