Happy Valentine's Day

In the week I’ve been here, decorations of support (pictures, strings of baby blue ribbons strung diagonally across the street, banners) for former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s Future Party slowly accumulated along Hamra Street. Monday marked the beginning of the cars packed full of young people driving the streets of my neighborhood and the road along the coast blaring music, honking horns and waving Lebanese and Future Youth flags.

Tuesday night the gym a block away played music for hours from its loud speakers. It’s home to Al-Riyadi (the Future-Party-sponsored basketball team). I saw the largest yet procession of vehicles – 22 cars and two scooters – Tuesday night. The next day, Valentine’s, marked the second anniversary of Hariri’s assassination.

Frighteningly, Tuesday was also the day two busses carrying civilians headed to work in the morning exploded, killing three. Since Hariri’s dealth several government officials and outspoken, anti-Syrian journalists have been killed, but the internal killing of random people (as opposed to casualties from this summer’s war) hasn’t happed since the end of the civil war.

I woke up around seven on the 14th, and people were already streaming toward the slain statesman’s grave downtown.

Hariri’s body, along with several of the 22 other people killed in the enormous explosion that left a giant crater and damaged several surrounding buildings, still lies in a shrine under some tents set up in downtown’s Martyrs’ Square. The shrine smells beautifully of the white flowers (carnations, I think) that completely cover each casket.

A portion of downtown became the tent city of the governing coalition’s opposition on Dec. 1. They’ll stay until the prime minister dissolves his cabinet and resigns. Elections soon after Hariri’s murder brought the coalition to power, led by his son, Saad.

The army, police and Internal Security Forces have the tent city blocked off from three directions with concrete blockades and concertina wire. While there were fears the sides would clash during the demonstration, it went peacefully.

People shimmied up light poles, climbed over Roman ruins, and hoisted themselves on top of phone booths and a Red Cross tent for a good view of the politicians speaking from behind bulletproof glass. Almost everyone had a flag and most were tied, stapled, or otherwise rigged to a stick or 15-foot fishing pole.

The fear of being skewered or stabbed in the eye by people who seemed not to notice they were constantly in very close proximity to someone else was the only real danger.

By around three in the afternoon government supporters had largely cleared the square. The tents, however, remain. My new landlord, while talking a few days ago as Jules and I paid him a deposit at a Starbucks, said he doesn’t think they’ll leave until they get what they want.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, called for the camp-out and said it wouldn’t stop until the government fell. My landlord said Nasrallah’s pronouncements have yet to fail so no one would let this be the first.