It was as if Libya's toppled government had just popped out for lunch. Someone had left a briefcase behind on the veneered oval table. At its head a green sign in Arabic proclaimed: "Dr Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi, prime minister of Libya". Next to the now ghostly chair were places for the PM's cabinet colleagues: finance, education, the environment and fisheries. In a grand adjacent waiting room the air-conditioning softly hummed.
The prime ministerial office in Tripoli's pleasant diplomatic quarter had, unsurprisingly, been abandoned. Muammar Gaddafi's ministers had fled. The rebels secured the building on Tuesday; portraits of Libya's vanished dictator still hung on some walls. The cabinet's left-behind papers told their own story – petitions, a wedding invitation, and a Libya investment report by Ernst & Young ("Quality in Everything We Do"). It wasn't clear which minister had been perusing it.
Currently Libya is without any kind of government. The Benghazi-based opposition has not had time to form one yet. Al-Mahmoudi has run away to Tunisia; the whereabouts of other cabinet ministers is unknown. The feeling of ordinary Libyans towards the Gaddafi regime and its decorative representatives was best summed up by two pieces of graffiti written on the wall outside. One read: "To hell with Gaddafi". The other: "Down with frizzy head".
One theory swirling around Tripoli said that many top Gaddafi people were hiding at the Rixos hotel. The luxury hotel in Tripoli's Damascus district was home to 30 international correspondents – freed yesterday afternoon and taken out by Red Cross convoy. They were in effect hostages to Gaddafi's dying and desperate regime. The narrow streets surrounding the Rixos were spookily empty yesterday.
"The Rixos is surrounded. There are ministers inside from the Gaddafi regime. They have taken the TV people prisoner," Mohammad Abougabha, a 22-year-old pilot-turned-rebel, explained at a makeshift checkpoint, before the journalists escaped. He said heavy fighting was continuing in Abu Salem, just south of Gaddafi's shattered compound, where Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam was rumoured to have surrounded himself with hired African gunmen. "They have strong weapons. They are firing from there," he said.
The rebels may have dethroned Gaddafi. But the price has been high. At Tripoli's Italian-built central hospital, doctors had not had time to tally up the dead. They lay dumped next to the entrance in a stinking side-room. Several dozen fighters were killed in Tuesday's ferocious battle for Bab al-Aziziya, Gaddafi's grandiose complex. Others with serious head and abdominal wounds lay in the intensive care unit, bandaged and gravely ill. The room was silent other than a rhythmic plink-plunking.
Dr El-Mahdi, the hospital's orthopaedic consultant, said Libyans supported Nato's decision to bomb government targets, and hadn't been persuaded by anti-western state propaganda: "I think they [the allies] prevented Benghazi from eradication." He said that Libya's revolution was a continuation of earlier ones. "This started from eastern Europe and then spread to the Balkans. Now it comes to our world. It will carry on to Africa and some other countries with dictators," he predicted.
Abdul Karim, 32, shot in the leg by Gaddafi's police, was recovering on a ward. He said he came out of his local mosque last Wednesday and joined other demonstrators. "We were shouting Gaddafi is the enemy of God. They opened fire. One guy was killed." The police tossed him in the back of a pickup and threw him in jail. He was left there for six days without medical treatment. "My wound started to smell," he said. The rebels freed him and 70 other prisoners on Tuesday morning; his warders went to ground.
It was a similar story at Tripoli's secret police headquarters. Nobody had turned up for work. Nor had anyone clocked in at the foreign ministry – a charming building on Tripoli's seafront, built in the 1960s by King Idris, the man whom Gaddafi deposed. The doors to the European Union section were locked. A rebel tried to prize a gold-framed portrait of Libya's former leader from the wall. Frustrated, he smashed the glass instead.
A short walk from the foreign ministry is the residence of Britain's ambassador in Libya, trashed and looted in March while Gaddafi's soldiers looked on. The once attractive art deco building was now a spectacularly gutted ruin. Fire had completely razed the ground floor; debris covered the sweeping marble staircase. All that was left of Her Majesty's billiard table was a charred frame.
Pieces of Minton bone china and the bottom of a Whittard teapot lay next to a ravaged dishwasher.
Osama Mohamad, a marine scientist whose son witnessed the destruction, said Gaddafi's officials had encouraged local people to destroy and rob the property. He said he had been disappointed by Britain's close relationship with Gaddafi, and by the invitation to Libya's ambassador – subsequently withdrawn – to attend Prince William's wedding.
"Gaddafi's been a dictator for 42 years. I don't accept it. I accept it from Italy but not from Britain," he said.
In the sunny courtyard were the remains of four burnt-out cars. Round the back was the ambassador's swimming pool – an algae-infested pond.
Vandals had smashed up the changing rooms, hurling a loo seat on the floor. A sign still read: "Please shower before entering the pool." A second world war memorial to British troops who died fighting in the western desert lay smashed into small chunks. Britain's ambassador, Richard Northern, and his family had clearly left in a hurry. The upstairs rooms were filled with papers, as well as an unread copy of Martin Amis's The Information. The Tripoli Post lay on the floor, together with a Libya map and Mastering Arabic. A typed page left by a long-departed ambassador gave hints on local customs. It lamented: "The only real hardship is the total absence of a decent glass of wine in the entire British embassy, once the Christmas ration is finished."
There was also a menu from a dinner given in honour of Charles Clarke – a sign of Britain's warm relations with Tripoli under the last Labour government. Clarke enjoyed spiced pumpkin soup with "pan-fried Dentishi" and "North African lamb with couscous and mixed vegetables". The wine situation had clearly improved in recent years: with the then Labour minister served a bottle of chablis grand crû, as well as coffee and truffles.
For most of Tripoli's residents, such opulence is unthinkable. Poverty is one of the key factors behind Libya's "February 17" revolution, in a country with the largest oil reserves on the African continent. At one rebel checkpoint yesterday a group of militia volunteers were sitting on a superior black leather sofa. They had borrowed it from a nearby flat and parked it on the pavement. The rebels had also helped themselves to a coffee table.
"In our home we didn't have anything like this," Moaied al-Nadami, 30, explained, pointing to his new suite. "Gaddafi has many expensive things. He spent our money on parties and buying guns." Nadami said he worked as a dentist and lab technician; he showed off a 10mm revolver he had seized on Tuesday from Gaddafi's compound. "I was there. We found many, many guns," he said.
Home-made rebel checkpoints have sprung up across Tripoli, making driving in the city a serpentine experience. People had created traffic filters using boulders, concrete blocks and even rubbish bins – one with a portrait of Gaddafi inventively stuck to it. Gunfire could still be heard in the capital but on a much lower scale than before. A couple of shops had reopened; a pair of women crossed the street carrying armfuls of fresh baguettes.
But while most rebels were friendly, some were not. In a warren of alleys near Gaddafi's compound one excited group was demanding the IDs of foreign journalists who have now poured into Libya. The rebels said they were looking for informers and traitors spying for Gaddafi's regime. "How do we know you are not spies?" one asked. Old habits of suspicion will take time to unlearn.