Tripoli, Lebanon:
Late January. I leave the freezing, empty flat which sheltered me during the December holiday season and return to the modern apartment of the Sufi sheikh in Mina. It is not comfortable for me to be back. I feel strange and out of place. The sheikh has shaved his head for his pilgrimage to Mecca and wears a fitted gray wool cap that is not flattering. He looks like Ming of Mongo, the villain in the old “Flash Gordon” comic strip.
The police have sealed off the old city of Tripoli where the old mosque and the apartment where I have been staying were, and martial law and a curfew were declared. Six hundred soldiers and policemen set about routing the “bandits” sheltering in the maze-like galleries of the Old City.
Everyone expects a number more people will be killed and photos of the dead appear in every edition of the Arabic newspapers.
It looks like I was brought out in the nick of time.
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