In February this year I went to Libya to write about the calm (as it was then), beautiful city of Tripoli. A week after I returned the uprising began, and the hotel I was staying in, the al-Nasr Rixos, became the home – and later the focus – of the world’s media. When the journalists trapped inside had been safely freed, I wrote a story for al-Jazeera on hotels which have become synonymous with the wars, which has just been published.