We could all be in deep, deep trouble

Beirut was silent yesterday morning. Smoke still hung in the blue sky like a vague threat, but after a night of violence - physical and verbal - the port city waited. A few shops in the centre warily raised their steel shutters, but the Shia Muslim areas in the south of the city were empty. Occasional cars worked their way around the rubble left by the air strikes of the evening before, some packed with families leaving, others filled with families going to funerals. Then came the blasts in the middle of the day, loud enough to rattle windows across the entire city. Plumes of flame and smoke spouted once more above the tattered buildings. And everyone knew that there would soon be more cars full of refugees, and more cars heading to funerals.