At Barricades in Downtown Beirut, Lebanon's Fault Lines Grow Deeper

"You have a fault line again," he said. "When you cross it, you get an electric shock."

In a day, Beirut's downtown was transformed from a hub of half-million-dollar apartments and designer stores into a far more humble and modest place. Vendors sold bread with melted cheese for 65 cents from rickety wooden stands propped up on rusting bicycles. "Tastiest cheese," one promised. From a battered orange van, popcorn went for half that. "That's the price for Sayyid Hasan," the vendor shouted, using an honorific for the Hezbollah leader. Men hung out in circles, sitting in plastic chairs, tugging listlessly on water pipes.

Portable toilets went up in the streets, next to the fashionable Buddha Bar. Alongside them were white canvas tents where wool blankets were still spread for the protesters, their sandals and shoes left outside. In a carnival-like atmosphere, men from the Shiite-dominated southern suburbs shouted fealty to Hezbollah's leader. "God, Nasrallah and all the suburbs!" Others ridiculed Siniora, calling him "tanoura," Arabic for skirt. Some held signs that read, "Until victory." A few chatted with stern-faced soldiers. "You should leave and let us go in," one suggested, pointing to the government headquarters a shout away.

At a construction site along the street, an advertisement read, "Beirut Gate: The New Heart of the City."

As he walked, Saliba recalled the vision for the downtown of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005. His detractors were plenty, seeing corruption and questioning whom the downtown was serving. But Hariri viewed it as a crossroads for Beirut's east and west, entertainment and commerce bringing them together. Instead, Saliba said, downtown has become contested space, another border: in March 2005, when Hezbollah's supporters and foes organized mass demonstrations over the Syrian presence here and, in this crisis, as both have mobilized their loyalists in a show of strength.

"It has become a place where power is proven," he said. "It has become the place where things are stated."

He watched crowds barrel down the streets, waving Lebanese flags and Hezbollah banners. Before him was probably the Shiite community's greatest assertion of political power in Lebanese history: seizing the downtown of a capital, in a country where Shiites have historically been disenfranchised. The chants cascaded, uttered with the authority that comes with confidence in numbers and the strength delivered by Hezbollah's organization, its discipline and, unsettling to many other Lebanese, its weapons.

The community's moment? Saliba shrugged.

"This will decide," he said. "It's definitely something that says, 'We are here and for good.' "

"We have this fake notion of coexistence. Now it's being tested the hard way. It's popping up," he said. "Now, in a very decisive way, because they're asking for power. If you want to coexist, then give us power."

He walked past the St. George Cathedral, a Maronite Catholic church, past the sprawling blue-domed mosque built by Hariri, a Sunni Muslim. The face of Nasrallah, a Shiite cleric by training, peered from posters on the walls and in the streets.

"I always say to my students, you have this segregation everywhere. It's part of any geography," he said, as troops lined the boundary between the protest and the rest of downtown. "It becomes a problem through politics and power struggles."