As Arab thoroughfares go, Hamra Street in the center of Beirut is probably the most chic of them all. Not at all the sort of place you would expect to find a spinning red swastika on prominent display. Well, call me old-fashioned if you will, but I have always taken the view that swastika symbols exist for one purpose only—to be defaced. Telling my two companions to hold on for a second, I flourish my trusty felt-tip and begin to write some offensive words on the offending poster.
With his other hand, he is speed-dialing for backup on his cell phone. As always with episodes of violence, things seem to slow down and quicken up at the same time: the eruption of mayhem in broad daylight happening with the speed of lightning yet somehow held in freeze-frame. It becomes evident, as the backup arrives, that this gang wants to take me away. I am as determined as I can be that I am not going to be stuffed into the trunk of some car and borne off to a private dungeon as has happened to friends of mine in Beirut in the past.
With my two staunch comrades I approach a policeman whose indifference seems well-nigh perfect. We hail a cab and start to get in, but one of our assailants gets in also, and the driver seems to know intimidation only too well when he sees it. As the taxi accelerates, a face looms at the open window and a fist crashes through and connects with my cheekbone.
I can see it still. A hero to millions of Lebanese for his astonishing rebuilding of the country admittedly by his own construction consortium after 15 years of civil war, he became a hero twice over when he resisted Syrian manipulation of Lebanese politics.
Although it was a commemorative event, there were no signs of the phenomena that the media have taught us to expect when death is the subject in the Middle East.
