It's late March, and I'm in downtown Beirut, escaping the sun to browse the books on politics in the Virgin Megastore. A stack of Michael Moore's Dude, Where's My Country is in front of me. Across the street is the tent city that protesters against the Syrian presence in Lebanon pitched soon after the Valentine's Day assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister. A few steps away, the enormous Muhammad al-Amin mosque soars up. Hariri is buried there, and since it's less than forty days since his death, Koranic reciters still sit outside underneath a canopy while men and women of every confession continue to pour in to pay their respects. Many take photographs; some men in sharp suits clutch beads in their hands as tears roll down their cheeks. Nothing has united the country more in recent years than his death.

LRB 5 May 2005 | PDF Download