News reports back at the hotel pointed out that the “March 8” opposition—made up mostly of Hezbollah, Amal and other Shi‘a Lebanese—were planning a massive march in the city to camp out in front of the Seraglio, the parliament building, to demand that the current government make concessions, step down and allow the opposition’s Shi‘a majority more say in a government that has successfully marginalized them for more than a decade. Five ministers resigned Nov. 11. The defection of three more ministers would in effect make the present government null and void.

Then, Yacoub Sarraf, the Christian Minister of Environ-ment also resigned, bringing the number closer to the eight needed to invalidate the government. It also made it harder to claim that the government crisis was a purely sectarian affair. Yet Prime Minister Fouad Siniora refused to recognize the resignations.
As if to mirror the chaos in parliament, there were two days of protests at the University of Beirut, where the student union was breaking apart along political and factional lines—a microcosm of the government. For two days, troops held sway around the idyllic campus in West Beirut to ensure that things didn’t get out of hand. We watched and waited.

We didn’t have long to wait.

Views of a kill

After being in Beirut for several days, I felt that I had my bearings. Tourists and journalists came and went from the Talal Hotel. Nights saw us gathered round the television in the lobby and wondering whether complete anarchy would break out, whether Hezbollah and allies would march and bring the capital to a standstill, whether the country would fracture along party lines.

Then, there was stunned silence when the news flash came through that the Christian Minister of Industry, Pierre Gemayel, was assassinated Nov. 21 by gunmen who ambushed his car in East Beirut and riddled the car and its occupants with bullets.
Time stopped. News reports were insistent that the March 8 coalition would not march as promised. Many feared they would. My seven- to 10-day trip to report on the reconstruction of Lebanon required a re-think. Frantic e-mails to and from magazines in Jordan confirmed what I already knew: I would be here more than 10 days.
It’s the moment every journalist waits for, the crack of jackboots kicking in your door in some Third World country on the brink of revolution. I had gotten up early and was photographing from the window as hundreds of protesters made their way from the Christian enclaves of Ashrifeyeh, across the bridge toward the Phalangist offices and St. George’s Cathedral, where Gemayel’s funeral was to be held. Then?

The door swung open, and someone I was fairly sure didn’t work at the hotel—most hotel employees didn’t walk around with their heads wrapped in Phalange do-rags—came in. His agitation seemed to lessen when he saw that the thing I was pointing out the window was a camera and not a rifle. Yet, it didn’t stop him and his henchman from rounding up the people in the hotel, checking the rooms and lobbies, and bringing us outside to check our papers. He muttered that I might want to change clothes in this neighborhood, and I realized I was wearing a Hezbollah t-shirt in the event the proposed march on Martyr’s Square would go on as planned. The demonstration could lead to a full-scale clash between opponents of a sorely divided government.

He had a point.

Then Hezbollah made an announcement that let the city breathe a little easier. Out of respect for the latest tragedy in the Gemayel family, the march would be postponed.

These days, if I hung out with anyone at the hotel, it was either with a wannabe journalist Andreas from Sweden or Doyon, the South Korean tourist. If I were a tourist, I’d want to be like Doyon. He went most places with us, had a decent digital Canon camera and was seldom shaken by the growing chaos in the country. We headed, along with tens of thousands of Lebanese, toward St. George’s on the west side of Martyr’s Square—called the green line in the days of the civil war. What started as a massive surge ended up a dizzying, jam-packed excess of lamentation, protest, security and paparazzi.

A stampede was a distinct possibility. If someone, anyone, blew something up in this crush, another civil war could flare up within an hour. Bells tolled, litanies were intoned over loudspeaker, and the crowds swayed, pushed and chanted. In the bizarre twisted logic of the Middle East, foreigners were being allowed in the church as the ceremony—packed with the who’s who of Lebanese politics—ended and the brokers of power and their security began to leave the church. Lebanese couldn’t buy their way in but a foreign passport got you waved into the funeral. Unfortunately, I presented my passport just as the crowds tried to rush forward, chanting anti-March 8 slogans while a Shi‘a Amal representative left the church. The police moved in, batons raised, riot shields at the ready, and pushed the crowds back. By the time the police officer gave me my passport back, I wondered whether it wasn’t better to stay outside. Doyon had already gotten in and things outside could spiral out of control.