MIDDLE EAST: Resentment against the pervasive Syrian presence has boiled over, reports Lara Marlowe in Beirut
From the din on Martyrs' Square, renamed Liberty Square by demonstrators this week, you would think the Lebanese were trying to drive the Syrians out by breaking their eardrums.
It starts in the morning and reaches paroxysm just after nightfall: singers wailing Arab and Latin American revolutionary ballads and soapbox politicians haranguing the crowd with constant cries of "Liberty" and "Independence".
A few tens of metres away, at the tombs of Rafik Hariri and seven of his bodyguards, assassinated on February 14th, Koranic verses wail over loudspeakers, joined by expressions of grief from the constant stream of visitors. "Come back, come back," a weeping woman screamed from behind the cordon around Hariri's grave.
Add to this the ringing of bells at nearby St George's Cathedral, cars criss-crossing the periphery of the huge esplanade with horns blaring and marchers waving Lebanese flags chanting "Syrians Out! Syrians Out!" Damascus can have no doubts how the Lebanese feel about them.
The gamut of emotions in Lebanon today is almost as indecipherable as the noise on Martyrs' Square: euphoria at their own demonstration of "people power"; despair at the loss of Hariri; guilt at not having appreciated him more while he was alive; fear of the unknown; anger against the Syrians; and in some cases distrust of their fellow Lebanese.
Sunni Muslims tend to congregate around the shrines to Hariri and his bodyguards, decked with Lebanese flags, red and white flowers and thousands of candles that have congealed into a wax flow. The Sunnis were never much for public protest; old Sunni friends told me they were afraid to take part in the downtown demonstrations.
When 100,000 Lebanese came here for Hariri's funeral, and again during the general strike on Monday, most of the Shias in Beirut's southern suburbs went on with life as normal.
A new banner showing a Muslim crescent and Christian cross, with the words "Together - Free Lebanon" appeared on Martyrs' Square yesterday. But the soul of the protest movement seems to be Christians and Druze, once mortal enemies.
The war-damaged statue of liberty guiding a martyr of the uprising against the Ottoman Turks is perhaps the most emblematic monument for the Lebanese. Around its base, some 300 people sleep in 30 tents every night.
I asked Abdo Abdallah (47), a perfume merchant and member of former president Amin Gemayel's Phalange Reform Movement, why the majority seem to be Christian. "Because Christians have been the most oppressed by the Syrians," he said. Though Abdallah admired Rafik Hariri, he thought he should have turned against Damascus much earlier.
Hisham Sarieddine (23), a Druze student at the American University of Beirut, was the angriest young man I met. He has slept on Martyrs' Square every night since Hariri's murder. "We will not leave until the Syrian troops and the Mokhabarat [ Syrian intelligence services] dogs leave Lebanon," he swore. "If they want war, they will get it." Sarieddine has a personal grudge against the Syrians. Seven years ago, he was stopped at a checkpoint at Hamana and a Syrian plainclothes agent asked him, "Where are you going, you animal?" Sarieddine punched the Syrian, and was dragged off to jail for 15 days. "For the first five days, they beat me constantly, demanding that I say 'I'm sorry', he recalls. "But I never said it."
Standing under a poster that says "Syrial Killers" - an allusion to the many political assassinations attributed to Damascus - Paul Chamoun (40), an engineer, told me he never forgave the Syrians for the death of his cousin Eddie, kidnapped at the Museum Crossing on the demarcation line in 1976.
"We never found his body, but the Syrians told President [ Camille] Chamoun they cut him up into pieces." He claims he feels no fear whatsoever: "The Syrians will leave before the elections [ in May] and we will have a new president and we will have jobs because the Syrians are taking all the work," he says.
Beirutis claim more than 40,000 Syrian guest workers have vanished since Hariri's assassination. A society lady in a seafront district complained that her Syrian painters left her apartment unfinished. Even the Mokhabarat are keeping a low profile, especially since Druze leader Walid Jumblatt began divulging their names and locations of their headquarters in his speeches.
Four teenage Christian girls stood teary-eyed in front of Hariri's tomb, their second visit. "He was a great man," murmured Andreana Kaponis (15). "We are praying for the freedom of our country," added Michelle Nakhoul (16). It would take a long time before the Syrians departed, she predicted, "because when you have a great house, you don't leave."
What had the Syrians done to these young women, personally? "They don't affect our life at school," Nakhoul admitted. "But I know from my parents. Those who support the Syrians get better jobs. Some of them don't want to support them, but they need to earn a living so they pretend to."
A mile away, at the scene of the crime, the bend in the road outside the St George Hotel, the anger and energy of Martyrs' Square subside into sadness and fear. The Lebanese army have cordoned off the giant pit where 18 people were blow to pieces.
Photographs of Hariri are omnipresent. In the old days, Hafez al-Assad's image was everywhere. I didn't see a single image of his son and successor, Bashar, in Beirut. A statue of the elder Assad was knocked down in southern Lebanon last weekend.
This sinister stretch of seafront highway is also a place of pilgrimage. A Druze woman pharmacist evaded questions, and her cousin just shook his head when I asked why he had come there. "People are still afraid to talk," she said. "They're afraid of disappearing."
Michel Abu Rjailey (26), a student in urban planning, said the charred and churned up concrete of the bomb site "brings back memories we wanted to forget".
A Greek Orthodox Christian, Abu Rjailey was sceptical about the unity on Martyrs' Square, and feared civil war might break out again. Who against whom? "In Lebanon, it can be sparked off by something, and friends become enemies," he said.
"Before [ the Druze leader] Kamal Jumblatt was assassinated, the Druze were calm, but after he was killed [ by the Syrians in 1978], they massacred Christians."
A man in blue slacks and polka-dot tie stopped to gaze at the killing place. Hussein Saleh (44) is a commercial lawyer and a Shia Muslim.
Was it true that the Shia want the Syrians to stay, I asked him.
"I want peace and prosperity," he replied. "The Shia don't like the Syrians any more than anyone else does, but they have it in their minds that if we return to the situation before [ the civil war in] 1975, the Christians and the Sunnis will again divide power up between them."