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At Barricades in Downtown Beirut, Lebanon's Fault Lines Grow Deeper
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"How else could you see it?" he asked.
He talked a little longer, then offered advice: Don't go past the Two Martyrs' Cemetery, the border with the Dahiya.
"Go to Tariq Jdideh, all over the place. But don't go over there. No, no," he said, shaking his head. "Trust me."
What About Being Lebanese?
A little before dusk, Zeina el-Zein, a slight, smartly dressed 26-year-old Shiite with long dark hair, walked through the Christian neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh. She lives a short drive away, her neighborhood and the next partitioned by their catalogue of colors, banners and portraits. There is the yellow of Hezbollah, its flags and pictures marking Shiite territory. Hariri's portraits stake his family's claim. In Ashrafiyeh, there are other markers: the green and brown of the Phalangist Party, the red of the Lebanese Forces, the orange of Aoun. Each of the leaders has a nickname. Samir Geagea, a Christian, is "the Doctor," Aoun "the General," Nasrallah "the Sayyid."
"We need to remind you this is our neighborhood, our territory," Zein said. She shook her head in disgust. "We do whatever we feel like. This is our territory. If you don't like it, then leave."
"Any wall they can find, anywhere in Beirut, you'll find a poster or a message," she said.
She walked along Monot Street, a fashionable nightspot district.
"Here is a cedar," she said, the symbol of the right-wing Phalangist Party that commanded the largest Christian militia in the civil war. "This is, you know, Bashir," she said, pointing to a picture of Bashir Gemayel, the militia's leader who was elected president after the 1982 Israeli invasion, then assassinated. "We're here to stay in Lebanon," it read.
She walked a little father, past a church, then the neighborhood's sole mosque, as the muezzin's call to prayer drifted across the narrow, winding streets. It reminded her of her days at St. Joseph University, when the mosque's call to prayer and the church's bells would pour through the window of her sociology class, each time forcing the lecturer to stop.
"We were laughing," she recalled. "This is Lebanon."
A little farther were pro-government portraits of anti-Syrian figures assassinated since last year.
"We will never forget," they read.
