inching through traffic, the southern tenements appeared on the horizon. I had crossed an invisible frontier. Litter and rubble replaced Armani and Max Mara. Around us, pictures of Nasrallah and Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran adorned walls and hung from lamp posts. Veiled women hurried by, ubiquitous but anonymous in thick black hijabs. As we pulled up, a group of Palestinian youths lethargically kicking a football around glanced over at our car. “Hurry up," Garo said.

I found Mohammad among piles of fake Levi jeans and Rolex watches behind a makeshift market stall. He told me that the Israelis had killed Hariri and the international tribunal was a Zionist plot to discredit Hezbollah. "We protect Lebanon and resist Israel's war on the Arabs. Now they want to smear us. Butit will not succeed. We resisted the Israelis before and we will resist them again." Hezbollah did not want a civil war, he said: in May 2008 it had responded to deliberate provocations by the government and had taken to arms only as a last resort. Hezbollah, he said, would seek to enter a new government and move the country forward; it did not take its orders from Tehran. It was committed to Lebanon's future.

Day of rage

About a week after my meeting with Mohammad, news emerged that March 8 had nominated the Sunni MP Najib Mikati to succeed Saad Hariri as prime minister, and that he would begin consultations for the formation of a new coalition government immediately.

Despite his well-known closeness to Syria, Mikati is a consensus figure,