Lara Marlowe recalls the leader who in death succeeded in uniting Lebanon's divided people.
At Rafik Hariri's funeral on Wednesday, Lebanon overcame its sectarian and class differences for the first time, united in grief and fury at the murder of the man who symbolised the end of the war and reconstruction of the country. "They killed hope," said the headline of L'Orient-le-jour.
Hariri was Lebanon's prime minister for 10 of the past 12 years. Post-civil war Lebanon remained segregated along sectarian lines, and initially he was viewed as a Sunni leader. The knowledge that Hariri was about to take the Sunni Muslim community with him into the anti-Syrian opposition no doubt lay behind his assassination.
The explosion that killed him and 15 others was a flashback to the nightmare of the 1975-1990 civil war. Yet something else occurred: the sudden realisation that Rafik Hariri was a patriot whose dreams for Lebanon extended beyond his religion and class. Some 200,000 Christians, Muslims and Druze came together to mourn. Church bells rang in unison with the muezzin's call.
Hariri became known to the Lebanese at the time of the 1982 Israeli invasion, when he gave millions to help refugees and the poor of the south. Over the years, he provided scholarships for 30,000 Lebanese students and on Wednesday young men walked through the streets brandishing diplomas they earned on Hariri scholarships.
I met Hariri first in Taif, Saudi Arabia, in 1989. He persuaded Lebanon's fractious, ageing parliamentarians to convene there, then locked them in a conference palace until they made peace. Three years later, the Lebanese economy collapsed and two prime ministers were forced to resign by bread riots. Hariri's appointment inspired confidence. He showed a skill that has eluded the Americans in Iraq, restoring water, electricity and rubbish collection and bringing inflation under control.
Lebanese newspapers called Hariri "Mr Miracle". He founded a private company named Solidere - of which he bought 10 per cent - to rebuild downtown Beirut. Landowners whose property was expropriated in exchange for shares protested. And Hariri's $18 billion nationwide infrastructure programme bloated the national debt. Critics said he was "too big for Lebanon". His adoring supporters called him "Sheikh Rafik". Referring to his childhood in the southern coastal city of Sidon, he told me in 1992: "I never dreamed I would reach where I am now. I still think that I am in a dream."
The huge vacant lots of downtown Beirut and the crane over the mosque he financed remain symbols of his amputated dream to complete the city centre.
In a country that has always been ruled by families tracing their lineage back centuries, Hariri's rise from a modest farm to prime minister was astounding. He kept a photograph of his parents, with their weathered faces and peasant clothing, on his desk.
Hariri had emigrated to Saudi Arabia in 1967, to work as a maths teacher, accountant, then building contractor. While Lebanese politicians were taking sides in the civil war, Hariri built the Islamic Conference Centre in Taif in record time. He bought the French construction company Oger and amassed a $4 billion fortune in construction, banking and real estate in the Middle East, Europe and the US.
Perhaps the only Lebanese leader with no blood on his hands, Hariri banked on peace in a region doomed to instability. In private conversations after the 1993 Oslo accords, he showed naive confidence in the ultimate goodwill of the US, in a future super-highway linking Beirut and Tel Aviv. When I saw Hariri six weeks before his death, he showed similar optimism that Lebanon was about to free itself from Syria's 29-year presence. If he felt threatened, he didn't show it.
Hariri invested heavily in bodyguards, armoured limousines, decoy convoys and remote bomb detectors. Because he never publicly insulted Damascus, one worried less about him than the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt.
Hariri's murder further loosened Jumblatt's tongue. He called the Lebanese and Syrian governments "a regime of murderers" and predicted "the day will come when we will get brooms and sweep away this dirt."
Despite the UN Security Council's demand that the Lebanese government "bring to justice the perpetrators, organisers and sponsors of this heinous terrorist act", we will probably never know with certainty who killed Hariri. Two Lebanese presidents, an earlier PM, and the grand mufti of the republic were assassinated by similar bombs. Syria was suspected, but its guilt never proven.
In January, Hariri and I discussed the assassination attempt that seriously wounded former minister Marwan Hamadé last October. "At the very least, [the Syrians] let it happen," Hariri said. "At the most, they ordered it." The same could be said of his own murder.
Things started going wrong, Hariri told me, when the late Syrian leader, Hafez al-Assad, was succeeded in 2000 by his son, Bashar, a British-trained ophthalmologist. There were high hopes in the West for reform in Syria. How did we get Bashar al-Assad so wrong? "You silly westerners," Hariri said. "You think your society is the best in the world, and that anyone who spends three years in London becomes just like you!"
Hariri was also scathing about Suleiman Franjieh, the Lebanese interior minister who this week alleged that Hariri was killed by a suicide bomber and refused to accept an international inquiry. Had the Syrians not reappointed Émile Lahoud as Lebanon's President last September, Hariri said, they would have chosen Franjieh. "He's under 40 and he thinks Bashar al-Assad is a living god!" Hariri said with a laugh.
What happens now to this country of 3.6 million people will have deep repercussions for the stand-off between Washington, Damascus and Tehran. Syria and Iran have already announced a "united front" against the US.
In the wake of the assassination, Lebanon's opposition demanded a rapid Syrian withdrawal. But Syria knows that if it lets go of Lebanon, it may lose control of its own people.
The emergence of a united, non-sectarian Lebanese society that would shake off Syrian domination was Rafik Hariri's fondest dream.
At week's end, Lebanese were flocking in their thousands to the scene of his murder and grave, in what could be the beginning of a "people power" movement like that which reversed rigged elections in Ukraine. If this happens, and if the Syrians depart, Hariri's friends say, his death will not have been in vain.