Misrata slowly gets back to normal

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The high-rise seen in the distance on Tripoli Street in Misrata was home to pro-Gadhafi snipers during the fighting earlier this year. Seen on Monday, all that's left is debris from the war.

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Correspondent

MISRATA, Libya ? It was a sign that perhaps life was getting back to some kind of normal in Libya.?

Last weekend, Turkish Airlines resumed direct commercial flights from Istanbul to Tripoli.? One week later, the Boeing jet was packed with families with very small children returning to the Libyan capital, despite the fact that the NATO no-fly zone remains in effect.

On the ground, it wasn?t quite normal yet.

The drive from Tripoli to Misrata, which is only 120 miles, takes between two and three hours these days because of the series of checkpoints that dot the main road, slowing traffic down every few miles.? The rebel militiamen are still on the look-out for pro-Gadhafi supporters.? Some are more diligent than others, stopping vehicles to ask for IDs; others wave them on with nary a glance.

In Misrata itself, life was definitely not quite normal.

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The main strip that runs through the town, Tripoli Street, was a key battleground and the site of fierce fighting that broke out in February and lasted three months.? Burnt-out buildings line both sides of the thoroughfare today; those that remain somewhat intact bear scars from gunfire and heavy artillery.

?It was scary,? said Mohammed Abdul Majid, a Misrata-born native whose parents came from Sudan.? ?We saw all the firing everywhere.?

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Burnt-out building line both sides of Tripoli Street in Misrata, Libya on Monday.

His home is just off Tripoli Street, on the second floor of a building pockmarked with bullet holes, but the fire damage was so bad that he moved to his sister?s place across town.

When we ran into him, he and a friend were trying to open the roll-down steel gate to the first floor storage room ? the fighting had bent it out of shape, and they couldn?t roll it back up.

Abdul Majid wanted to store some new appliances, including a refrigerator he said he?d bought before the war.? ?This is for me.? Before, I needed [to have a] party,? he laughed.? ?I will fix the current home.? And then have a party.?

Down Tripoli Street, Mahmood al Gazil was fixing up a photo studio also badly damaged by the fighting earlier this year.? The owner had hired him to repair the store, and he was working alone.

?A lot of the guys who own the shops are on the frontline, so they are busy,? he said.? In the meantime, he?s working without pay.? ?There is no money right now.?

And what if the people who are supposed to pay him die fighting on the frontline before he gets paid?? He smiled and shrugged, ?I
am not worried, because then they died for our country.?

In the meantime, al Gazil said he has enough savings to see him and his family through for the foreseeable future.?

Mahdi al Toumy, a university student, was sitting in the shade of a corner building on Tripoli Street; his family is one of the few still living there.

Adrienne Mong/ NBC News

Mahmood al Gazil (on the left) was doing repair work to a photo studio on Tripoli Street in Misrata, Libya on Monday.

?There is maybe one other family in the area still living here,? he told us.? ?All the neighbors have gone, staying with relatives in other neighborhoods.?

Traffic appears normal even if the buildings don?t. At one intersection there was even a policeman in a pristine, though slightly wrinkled, white uniform directing cars.

At a villa now housing the office of Doctors Without Borders, Mohammed Hasb el Rasoul said that despite the heavy fighting in nearby Sirte, they did not have any injured from the frontlines coming through the hospitals or clinics in Misrata.

?It was a kind of a big mess back in July,? said el Rasoul, a Sudanese man who has been living in Misrata since 1993 and now works as a radio operator for MSF.?

But perhaps the most bemusing sight is one that suggests just how much Libya teeters between normal and not normal.

Everywhere there are pick-up trucks driving around with mounted anti-aircraft guns or 50-calibre guns in the back, wrapped in some sort of covering, their tell-tale barrels pointing toward the sky.? It suggests that the fighting is done.

At least for now.

Source: http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/17/8364752-misrata-slowly-gets-back-to-normal

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