Taking It To the Streets

The services for the slain Lebanese Minister of Industry are underway in downtown Beirut as we speak. Among those in attendance from Canada are the Ambassador to Lebanon, the Parliamentary Secretary for the Prime Minister (Jason Kenney) and MP Irwin Cotler.

[Incidentally, somehow I can't seem to get away from Mr. Cotler. First, I was working at Justice when he became our Minister and I met him shortly thereafter when he toured the regional offices. Then, a few months later, we were called to the Ontario Bar in Toronto on the same day... of course, his was an Honourary call to the Bar and mine was my first one. He crossed the floor immediately before I did, as we were arranged in alphabetical order. So I literally followed in his footsteps! (Ha! I can only hope to be as great a lawyer someday!)]

Anyway, speaking as an outside observer of the goings-on surrounding Pierre Gemayel's death and now funeral, this has been a rather interesting day. And it is only half over!

The military presence on the streets of downtown Beirut (through which we had to pass on the way to the office this morning) was utterly unavoidable. Certain streets were shut down in anticipation of the funeral cortege and protest. It was only 8 AM (with the funeral mass not scheduled to begin until 1 PM), and yet people of all ages were already arriving on foot and in their cars, decked out in white ballcaps and T-shirts and waving flags bearing the Lebanese cedar, sometimes with the Maronite cross.

The Lebanese are not the least bit subtle in their tribute. Story-high signs bearing the likeness of the young Mr. Gemayel loom large over the streets today, on giant billboards and on the sides of buildings, often accompanied by white ribbons or long flags of the Lebanese red and white. On many of these billboards, the image of the half-smiling Mr. Gemayel is superimposed (in fact, juxtaposed) beside the image of the bullet-ridden silver Kia in which he and his bodyguard were gunned down only 2 days ago. This is not the first time I have seen signs like this, so I was only mildly shocked -- throughout Beirut it is rather commonplace to see similar giant photographic images reminding the people of the assassination of their former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, and the car bomb explosion that killed him almost 2 years ago. These signs commemorate different men of entirely different religions, but with the same message: celebrate their lives, but do not forget the anger you felt when they were violently murdered on these very streets!

And to the streets the Lebanese people have taken their tribute. The anti-Syrian Sunnite political leader, Saad Hariri (son of the former Prime Minister), called for a mass peaceful protest just outside of the church where Mr. Gemayel's service is being held -- in a part of downtown ironically but aptly known as Martyr's Square. They estimate that more than a million people have headed downtown to take part.

However, instead of a sombre and slow funeral march, the proceedings give the feeling of being nearly festive. On Lebanese television, the news channels broadcast live as Gemayel's white coffin, draped in a white flag bearing the cedar, was carried atop the outstretched hands of his supporters out of his ancestral home in a mountain suburb of Beirut, following a cortege of limousines carrying his immediate family. But instead of placing it into the Hearse immediately, the mourners continued for several minutes to carry his coffin high above their heads in the street -- hoisting him in the air as if they were celebrating their conquering hero instead of their fallen one. Some even threw flower petals or rice at the coffin as it passed.

Along the highway just outside of Beirut (where the Embassy is located), between Gemayel's hometown and Beirut proper, scooters, cars, trucks and buses full of people waving flags, whistling and cheering, hanging outside of their windows, and standing on their roofs headed for dowtown. Some had decorated their vehicles like miniature floats, complete with blaring sound system and giant pictures of Gemayel or Rafik Hariri or both. Vehicle after vehicle streamed down the street on the highway in front of the Embassy, parting and halting only for the passing-by of the heavily guarded funeral cortege, which was also on its way downtown.

Once again, upon arriving in the Square, Gemayel's coffin was carried by hand through the street and on the way to the church, this time accompanied by the coffin containing his slain bodyguard. The large sea of people who had congregated in front of the church applauded as the coffins passed by. The applause continued into the church itself.

As a stranger to this country, I failed to understand why it was as if the mourners were celebrating Gemayel's win in an election rather than saying goodbye to him. Why exhibit excitement rather than fear or sadness? My limited Canadian mind could only liken it to the Lebanese celebrating a Stanley Cup victory -- as the only thing Canadians would get THIS excited about!

But I should not confuse giddy excitement with energy -- an energy coming, first, from grief. I was told that, because Gemayel died as a young man (age 34), he is being treated in death more as a bridegroom than as an old soul who has passed on. Thus being carried on the shoulders of his friends; thus the throwing of rice; and thus the pure white coffin. Evidently, too, this energy comes from deep-seeded frustration and anger, which has been bubbling over since the high-profile assassination of their former Prime Minister. This has become clear to me as I see some of the faces of those around me as well as of those protesters on TV, some carrying signs reminding the Unnamed that they would soon be facing justice for these murders. "Halas," one woman said, "We have just had Enough."

I don't know what lasting effect, if any, the death of the young Mr. Gemayel will have on the populace and on the situation here. The assassination of the extremely popular and influential former Prime Minister, the senior Hariri, was arguably the catalyst for the mini-revolution, known simply as "the 14th of March", where a couple of million Lebanese took to the streets and affected immediate change in their country. However, the hold that the revolution of nearly 2 years ago has in this country today is tenuous at best. Will this newest casualty throw fuel on the revolutionary fire or will it dampen hopes for the future of this country? I imagine we will know soon enough.

Protesters