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BBC MUNDO RADIO
Silver knives glinted in the afternoon sunshine as a tribal nomad in a blue headdress swatted carelessly with a fly whisk but the Friday market at Tripoli's old city walls offered no respite from Libya's troubles.
A radio broadcast of Col Muammar Gaddafi promising "zenga, zenga" (ally by ally) to root out his enemies in the east blared out across the gathering crowd. In its midst an unshaven minder wearing a dirty trench coat moved slowly listening to the conversations on the pavements.
A vendor of mobile phone top-up cards shrugged awkwardly when asked if the situation was calm as Col Gaddafi's regime entered a new phase in its battle for survival. "There is no problem in Libya. It does not exist except for foreigners making trouble," he said. "The policemen here know this – that's why they are only here when foreigners are around."
There were few who were not on the defensive in the Libyan capital on Friday as the city woke to news that a UN resolution sanctioning air strikes and a no-fly zone had been passed. After weeks of unrest, supporters and opponents were hunkering down for a prolonged siege as the regime wages a battle of wits with the outside world.
The imminent threat of military action galvanised Col Gaddafi's loyalists.
Policemen patrolled the roundabout exits on the roads leading to Col Gaddafi's Bab al-Azizia compound. Militia men in green serge trousers stood, with AK 47 assault rifles slung underarm, every hundred yards or so along the half-empty roads.
At the green painted blast walls of the compound – gun turrets have been slit in every third section – gangs of youths chanted pro-Gaddafi slogans. As they roamed the city on the back of pickups, the henchmen stopped cars to stage thuggish loyalty tests on drivers and their passengers.
But the belligerence had a manufactured feel. An orchestrated rally of defiance in front of the Tripoli's UN delegation allowed loyalists to vent their fury with slogans in support of the Brother Leader before it lamely petered out.
As the diplomats sat around the Security Council table in New York on Thursday night, Col Gaddafi set the tone in an interview with Portuguese television. "If the world is crazy, we will be crazy too," he said. "We will make their lives hell, if they are making our lives hell too." Seemingly bored with the question, he then rolled his eyes.
Away from the streets, the Libyans who had rose up against Col Gaddafi were keeping their reactions private, available only to friends or family.
The Green Book of the Libyan Jamhariyah – or state of the masses – sets down a perfect popular democracy in which everyone has the right to an equal voice on state affairs.
In reality it is a country caught between extremes. Col Gaddafi's lurches between international pariah and gatekeeper to vast oil wealth dictates the fate of all Libyans.
A student who had joined the protests that were put down by Col Gaddafi's loyalists, said he had returned to a normal routine.
He had not given up his hostility to Col Gaddafi and Libya's eccentric version of one-man's rule.
The Brother Leader's antics and repression has long exhausted the goodwill of the aspiring middle class. "Hopefully this will be resolved but it has to be resolved in the right way," he said. "We still have our feelings about Gaddafi sticking around all this time.
We've done some things we can't go back on. So, obviously, we want change." The resolution passed in New York prescribed a set of open-ended measures to stop Col Gaddafi's military advance on the opposition enclaves. But it said nothing about removing the 68-year old who overthrew a weak and ineffective monarchy at the end of the 1960s.
Friday's ceasefire vindicates those who campaigned to stop Col Gaddafi's forces slaughtering his opponents in the east and Misurata.
But short of arming the uprising and turning a blind eye to a bloody advance from Benghazi on Gaddafi strongholds, there is no road map to getting rid of the Libyan leader.
Even so, those in Tripoli who are sick of the regime see the beginnings of his downfall. Stalemate should at least mean restraint in western Libya.
While it has become futile to demonstrate in the streets of the capital or his other strongholds, they can now harbour the strong desire that regime will crack under outside pressure.
A middle-aged man rushing to get home to his wife said he feared the retribution that Col Gaddafi would inflict if he was left with a free hand. "It's time. We are willing to give our blood for this but we cannot do it alone," he said. "We know what he will do if he is allowed a free hand."
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