I can always recognize feu de joie; they shoot because they’re happy

From Trying to Please by John Julius Norwich.  Page 212.

The presence of several thousand US troops in the city gave us all a certain amount of confidence; but it did not noticeably change the situation, which continued much as before. Indeed there were days when it seemed to be worse than ever. Anne and I were conscious, too, of occupying a fairly exposed position. Our house was not in Ras Beirut, the western end of the city where most of the foreign residents lived. The barricades that divided us from the most militant quarter of all, the almost exclusively Muslim area known as the Basta, were only a hundred yards or so from our house; more alarming still, the Presidential Palace was even nearer, almost immediately below us. Not a day passed when it did not come sporadically under fire; we seldom dared to go out on our lovely terrace, or at least to linger there too long. One suffocatingly hot evening in early August, Freya Stark arrived to stay the night—only Freya would, or could, have turned up at such a time—and, flinging open the terrace windows, strolled nonchalantly out to admire the view. Almost immediately a furious fusillade rang out. “Come back, Freya!” I yelled, “you’ll get yourself killed!” She turned and smiled. “Oh I don’t think so,” she said, “I can always recognize feu de joie; they shoot because they’re happy—you can hear that they are only celebrating."