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

"You keep nurturing memory," she said. "Everything works in this country so that you cannot forget any single detail of Lebanese history. They don't want us to forget. They really don't, or at least they're not working to let us forget."

Zein is insistently secular, and in a country where being Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Sunni, Shiite or Druze almost immediately imposes a notion of perspective, outlook and politics, she feels alienated.

At the university, she was expected to defend her community's politics. With Christians, she sometimes has to explain why she might hew to a more socially liberal lifestyle.

What about being Lebanese? she asked.

"I could stay up all night, eating and drinking with them, spending a beautiful evening, and in the end, I'm still Zeina el-Zein, a Muslim Shiite who's from the south," she said. "I will always have this identity, whatever I do."

She sat in a cafe in Sassin Square, drinking coffee. The waiter greeted her in French. Draped over the wall of one building was the flag of Geagea's Lebanese Forces. There was a banner for Aoun across the street. Another sign hung nearby: "Ashrafiyeh is the heart of the Lebanese Forces." More pictures were on light poles: Bashir Gemayel, Pierre Gemayel.

"It has never changed, and I don't think it's ever going to change," she said.

She thought for a moment. "They use, they really use the vulnerability of the people here," she said. "I'm disgusted. Really, I am. I cannot even think about the option of civil war. It was one of the most horrible civil wars, the Lebanese one. It was disgusting, really. Really. I cannot believe after all we've seen, read and lived, we can even think about another civil war."

"Shame on us," she said.

She looked at the posters, the men's portraits peering at the traffic, claiming their territory.

She shook her head. "They're not giving us a choice."