An earthquake with a 5.0 magnitude rattled Lebanon today. The epicenter was just outside the ancient port city of Tyre in the south, where three people were injured when a balcony fell on them, according to local news reports. The tremors were felt all the way in Beirut, as workers clutched their shimmying desks in confusion and worried that it was the aftershocks of yet another bombing.

Fortunately, it was only Mother Nature this time. Or maybe God trying to shake some sense into stubborn Lebanese politicians.

Miret and I were in a cab en route to the EgyptAir office in downtown Beirut when the earthquake occurred just after noon today. We didn't feel a thing, but the airline workers were still talking about it when we entered the office and asked to change our tickets so we could fly back to Cairo tonight. Oblivious, we didn't understand why they were complaining that their computers suddenly didn't work.

The sweet, veiled woman behind the counter looked at our tickets.

"But you just got here yesterday! Why are you leaving so soon?" she asked.

We explained that we were journalists in town for one day only.

"Oh, for the commotion yesterday," the woman said. "OK, I thought you were leaving because you were scared. Did you feel the earthquake?"

"It hit the south really hard," added another female employee.

"Maybe Hassan Nasrallah is up to something!" said a man who also worked there, and everyone in the office laughed off the tension.

We left and hopped into a cab driven by an elderly man with a snow-white mustache, thick glasses and a raspy smoker's voice. He turned up the radio to ear-splitting levels when news of the quake came on. We asked him to turn it down, but he would have none of it. He wanted to find out what happened, he said, pantomiming a violent tremble to drive home his point.

"We have a war and then another kind of disaster," he said sadly. "This is our destiny."