Lebanon's Shiites Grapple With New Feeling of Power

Ismail and Ali talked about past and present, the two often intersecting seamlessly in a narrative replete with suffering and martyrdom that stretches to the 7th century. Their conversation was punctuated, as it often is in southern Lebanon, with the rhetoric of class and disenfranchisement and the symbolism of martial sacrifice: the language of Nasrallah. For every ill, they blamed a government they said was rife with corruption and bent on preserving its power, neglecting the people in the south.

Without Hezbollah, Ali said, sipping a glass of lemon-flavored tea, "we'd only have God."

Questioning Hezbollah

The words of Fayad's article, published before this summer's war ended, were blunt, even polemical. In language that was straightforward and at times simplistic, the psychologist questioned the very tenets of Hezbollah's ideology: notions of sacrifice, resistance and honor.

"What does it mean to be a Shiite?" she asked.

"To be a Shiite means that you do not question the meaning of victory," she wrote. "To be a Shiite means that you do not question the meaning of resistance and pride." She went on: "To be a Shiite is to accept that your country be destroyed before your very eyes -- unsurprised eyes, that is -- and that it comes tumbling down on your head, and that your family be displaced and dispersed and become refugees and that you accept standing up to the enemy without a word of complaint."

"You see," she wrote, "we are a nation of heroes that knows nothing but sacrifice."

By her estimate, the article prompted 30 more in response. She received hundreds of calls and 300 e-mails. She said many were supportive; others were indignant that someone would write in such a way while the country was under Israeli attack; "pathetic," one person scolded her.

Dressed in a sports jacket and wearing wire-rimmed glasses, Fayad, 55, sat at her home on an overcast day. She was bleak: She already sees the shadows of a civil war, as Hezbollah mobilizes its Shiite constituency and the government stages almost daily shows of solidarity among Sunni Muslims and others. She feels her life is in danger. And she wants to leave Lebanon.

"It is unacceptable I pass my life from war to war, for the sake of others," she said. "What kind of craziness is this?"

No one knows with certainty what percentage of the Shiite community Hezbollah represents. Critics such as Fayad and others suggest it is about a third. But she and other intellectuals who bristle at its dominance over Shiite politics illustrate, in a way, the group's power: Hezbollah and, to a far lesser extent, Amal represent the only organized Shiite voices in a system defined by communal politics. As a result, their ambitions become the community's ambitions, their tactics become its tactics.

"They can't speak in the name of the Shia," said Mohammad Mattar, a lawyer with a fondness for Cuban cigars. "It's very simple. They cannot." Mattar talks in the precise, logical language of a legal brief. At times, he opens the window to air his sleek downtown office of smoke.

"Lebanon will cease to exist if one party monopolizes power or becomes all too strong," he said, his voice matter-of-fact. "A lot of people like me are very worried that the delicate Lebanese policy might disintegrate if this goes on."