Our reporter's night in a Lebanese jail

The Hizbullah men made no move to contact the officials in Beirut. They served us strong, sweet tea in tiny glasses, "to help you stay awake," one of them joked. Then another asked politely if we minded being handed over to the Lebanese Army. We said that was fine, but my heart sank. It meant entering a whole nightmare of slow-paced bureaucracy.

We were bundled up in two separate vehicles. Each sped through Nabi Sheet's narrow streets and out into the open countryside. Military intelligence was awaiting our arrival beside a house. They drove us across the Bekaa to the Ablah military barracks.

For the next eight hours we were grilled repeatedly. Who were we? Where had we been? A stocky, shaven-headed officer meticulously wrote down our answers.

Another agent asked that I scroll through the pictures I had taken that morning in Yahfoufa on my digital camera.

And there, on the screen, was the shot of me firing an automatic pistol. I froze. I had forgotten to delete the photo we took two weeks earlier shooting the watermelon.

"This is you?" the agent asked. I nodded meekly. Ali closed his eyes in resignation.

We knew it was going to be a long night.

It turned out that although firing automatic weapons is common in Lebanon, it is, in fact, illegal. And Ali and I faced being prosecuted in a military court for shooting a watermelon.

The bald agent refused to let us telephone anyone, answering every request to alert our wives to our whereabouts with a brusque "in five minutes."

Ali suspected that they were deliberately stalling, knowing that our first call would set in motion the process of getting us released. In Lebanon, if you want to get something done, it helps to have wasta, or connections with powerful people who can pull strings on your behalf. Both Ali and I had sufficient wasta for our predicament, if only we could contact them.

At midnight, we were placed in the custody of the Military Police, handcuffed, and driven to base's jail.

It was a long night. The lights were switched out, plunging the prison block into darkness. I laid on a smelly wool blanket spread out on the concrete floor of the cell, using my boots as a pillow and breathed in the fetid stink from the cell's latrines.

"Man, we really did it this time," said Ali.

After daybreak, we learned that we had been tracked down and the phone lines were burning to secure our release. The breakthrough came at 9 a.m., when we were told we could leave.

By 4.30 p.m., we were out. Soon we were back in Beirut.

On Tuesday morning, we returned to Ablah. Ali had to turn in an AK-47 he owned. When we met our jailers this time, they greeted us like brothers, kissing me on the cheek and patting our backs. One day we had been criminals, the next welcomed guests.

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