Our first example of collective memory is a minor wave of new Lebanese films dealing with the war and, indeed, with the memory of the war. The phenomenon kicked off with Ziad Doueri’s successful West Beirut from 1998, which together with In the shadow of the city (originally titled Taif al-Madina) by Jean Chamoun (2000) will be analyzed here with regard to their contribution to the collective memory. Some of the other principal oeuvres count Beyrouth Phantômes by Ghassan Salhab (1999), Civilisé by Randa Sabbagh (1999) and Autour de la maison rose by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (1999).[41]

Jean Chamoun belongs to a generation of directors whose careers started with the outbreak of the war and whose works have been almost entirely committed to the war. Thus, films about the war have been a constant in Lebanese cinema almost since the war began. Whereas the films shot in the immediacy of the war years focused on simply registering the madness and showing how individual destinies were drawn in and corrupted by the logic of the war, the new movies all in one way or another try to deal with the memory.[42] The directors of these films are highly aware of the problematic of amnesia, and their attitude is very engaged, sometimes even political. In the words of Jean Chamoun: "Remembering isn’t enough. Sectarianism is stronger now than it ever was before the war, and nothing is being done to change the way the young are being educated, so they can challenge that. There is not time to waste.”[43]

Memory is the point of departure of In the Shadows of the City. Sitting in his car in 1986, the main character, Rami, is thinking back to 1974 and his Southern native village when the war first imposed itself on his life. A shell is falling and the family rushes inside, screaming. Then the credits roll over the screen on a background of real footage from the war. In this dramatic way the scene is set for the interplay between fiction and reality, which runs through In the shadows... as well as West Beirut. Clearly, what we are seeing in the opening scene is only history to the extent that the viewer charges it with his own memory. However, the TV footage helps the viewer to bridge the individual story of Rami with the collective memory evoked by the familiar images of ambulances and explosions. Of course the scene is a reconstruction, but many among the Lebanese audience will have similar memories of displacement.

Cinema is the perfect media for relating subjective history like this, being an evocative, visual way of re-imagining the past. What it does less well, however, is providing a rational discussion of either history or memory. It is I. C. Jarvie’s assertion that the "discursive weakness” of cinema, compared to the scope of literature, "means that it cannot participate in the debate about historical problems.”[44] All films can do is to portrait and convey human life. In such portraits the public memory is broken down to its original units, namely individual memory. As Thomas Weber writes, "dans le film, l’Histoire devient des histories, et la mémoire publique devient le souvenir personnel."[45] Of course, the content and sequence of that personal memory is primarily the choice of the director. Yet, even directors are individuals with a social background, and therefore films like all art forms are also reflections of the society in which they are produced. To quote Jarvie, not only the director, also "attitudes to the past, artistic schools, and social setting need to be handled critically.”[46] Staging history in the way In the shadows... and West Beirut do it is a way of producing collective memory and thus subject to the same theoretic considerations as the other forms of collective memory previously discussed.

In the shadows... falls in three parts, which are all introduced by real footage from the war. The first part of the film deals with the causes for the outbreak of the war. Having arrived in Beirut with his family, Rami gets a job in a coffee house, which becomes a symbol for the state of affairs in Lebanon as a whole. One client's insulting exercise of power prompts another to set up an armed militia, ostensibly to face up to the insults. Subsequently, the two contending commanders, al-Dab' and Abu Samir, respectively, come to represent the whole of militia warfare throughout the film. Other people in the café like Rami, the owner of the café Salwa, and her lute-playing friend Nabil, reject the logic of the war, with different consequences for their lives. When a Christian family, whose daughter Rami has fallen in love with, is forced by circumstances to move to East Beirut, Rami and his Muslim family sadly embrace them as they leave. Nabil is shot for his openmouthed protest songs, and Salwa is forced to leave the country. The message is not to be missed: the sectarian ruptures were orchestrated from above and the common Lebanese were forced to either flee, become involved in a militia or to try to keep their integrity, thereby risking their lives. People like Nabil and Rami, who fought the logic of the war, are the real heroes in Chamoun’s film.

After another interlude of TV footage the film returns to its starting point in 1986, and Rami is now working as a sanitarian. One day his father is kidnapped and Rami joins a militia in order to retrieve him. Following an assault on an enemy position, he gets involved with a woman, Siham, whose husband has also been kidnapped. She is now active in a group of women in similar situations, demanding the return of their kidnapped relatives. Together, Siham and Rami end up in the office of Abu Samir, and the scene that follows becomes an allegory of the situation in post-war Lebanon, where it has been a standing issue that the government, i.e. former militia leaders such as Abu Samir, has withheld the truth of kidnapped persons from during the war as part of the la ghalib la maghlub strategy.

Abu Samir: "Your demands are bound to trigger things off and open up old wounds”

Siham: "You know the kidnappers, ask them! Turning a blind eye is being accomplice to a crime!”

Abu Samir: "We want to end the war unlike you (...) Go home and let others go home, bring up their young, and forget the past...”

Siham: "Forget? How can we forget? Those who forget are the ones preparing for a new war (...) The truth! I just want the truth.”

This is clearly a powerful social comment in line with other critics of the collective amnesia that we have previously examined. Similarly, the last bit of the movie, which takes place in late 1991, criticises the role of the former warlords in Lebanon after the war. Passing a real estate project in each their Mercedes Benz, Abu Samir and al-Dab’ roll down their windows and greet knowingly: they have both profited from the civil war, so there is no need for hostility. These men have been the real winners of the war, but Rami, now working as an art school teacher, has kept his integrity and is symbolically teaching the children who are the future hope for Lebanon.

In fact, more than being a convincing piece of art, In the Shadows... is largely a comment on the need to keep the memory alive. Chamoun tries to convey this by telling the story of the war seen through the character of Rami and the people around him. Rami is not swept away by the sectarian discourse of "the other”, nor by the greed and brutality which other people around him display. The likes of Abu Samir and al-Dab’ benefit from the war as well as from its aftermath, but Rami, and Jean Chamoun with him, retain the moral high ground.

Chamoun belongs to a group of engaged, leftist artists, who try to give a voice to the subdued through their work. The public remembrance thus becomes remembrance on behalf of what is perceived as the private remembrance of "normal people”. The three stages of the war ­ the prelude, the fighting and the aftermath ­ are viewed from the perspective of a simple, powerless man and his milieu, which can best be described as lower middle class. Chamoun focuses on the comforting aspects of the tragedy - Christian and Muslim coexistence in spite of the war, heroic bravery in the midst of mayhem and the persistence of love and sensitivity ­ but also on the way in which the lower classes were exploited and used by militia leaders. In Chamoun’s imagining, the private remembrance is not sectarian but detached and national in an all-inclusive sense. In the shadows... is therefore a defense of "normal Lebanese” of all sects and a blistering reproach of those at the political and economic top of the country.

Ziad Doueri’s West Beirut has been the most successful of the new films about the civil war. When it came out in late 1998, contrary to the other films about the war West Beirut attracted large audiences and prompted a public discussion of its main themes, namely Christian-Muslim relations during the war and the normal citizen who finds him/herself trapped in a conflict he/she has no wish for. Doeiri’s alter ego in the film, the teenager Tareq, finds himself in exactly that position on April the 14th 1975, one day after the war has started. On the way from their home in West Beirut to Tareq’s school in East Beirut the family is stopped in their car and asked for ID. "We’re from Beirut”, Tareq’s father says in protest. The militiaman at the roadblock looks at him and bluntly replies: "Today there is no Beirut. Today it’s East and West.” The rupture has happened.

After this Tareq is left to spend his days with his friend Omar and the new neighbouring girl, May, as Beirut slides into the abnormality of warfare. In the beginning the sense of adventure is overshadowing the violence and destruction, which exists all around the three youngsters, as they cycle around West Beirut, observing the changes that the city is undergoing. Only later in the film does the humiliating hardship begin to take its toll, as the families of Omar and Tareq are struggling to live a bearable life. In one of the final scenes Tareq, Omar and May are sitting on a rooftop, overlooking Beirut and contemplating the war. "Remember when the war started”, says Tareq, "how we had fun... Now I’m afraid I’ll lose my parents.”

Most of Doueri’s script revolves around the precarious coexistence. While some people succumb to sectarian animosity, Beirut has its pockets of libertines, like Oum Walid’s brothel, where Tareq unwittingly ends up one night. "What’s this East West Beirut shit?”, the old madam mutters to Tareq. "Here, there’s no East or West. Here, it’s Oum Walid’s Beirut!” The main characters; the three kids and Tareq’s parents, incorporate the same kind of defiance. In the rooftop-scene Omar, who in the beginning of the film disregarded the cross that May is wearing around her neck, takes the cross and wears it with his own Koran. Shortly after, the otherwise rather spirited film ends on a sombre note, as documentary footage from the Israeli invasion follows scenes of Omar, Tareq and the latter’s parents close to despair, suggesting the many years of devastation, which were to follow before the war ended in 1990. "When this war is over, will we still be together?”, Tareq’s mother asks her husband through tears. The audience is not too sure.

In spite of their differences both films in a way focus on the more comforting aspects of the memory ­ Christian and Muslim coexistence in spite of the war, heroic bravery in the midst of mayhem and the persistence of love and sensitivity. The main characters in these films are hardly ever perpetrators, they are victims of a war that they are not responsible for. The feeling of being trapped in the midst of a sinister game outside of their control is surely a familiar memory for many Lebanese from the wide spectrum of the middle class. However, it also a self-redeeming image of the past, to which people who played a more active role in the war can resort. The absence of any ideological or political symbols in both films - removed because of the Lebanese censors who are wary of "incitement to sectarian behavior”[47] - makes it all the more easy for the audience to avoid making the the warfare. Memories are selective; they often reinforce the decencies connection from the past to the present.

The guilty, in Chamoun’s own words, "are the individuals who used people during the war, who destroyed so much, who put up barriers and forced people to pay before letting them through. They played the role of the state but in a terrible way, because where the state has services and institutions to offer they had only debris.”[48] In other words, all those who got caught up in the logic of the war are innocent, passive victims. In this sense the films reinforce the myth of "une guerre des autres”, that the root causes of the war have nothing to do with the "real Lebanon”, and that the logic of war and sectarianism suddenly descended from above on the April the 14th 1975. Moreover, the way they imagine the passive remembrance can best be described as national and detached. The directors are concerned with the Lebanon that they associate themselves with, and their memory therefore only accounts for the group of Lebanese who did not in any way direct the warfare. Memories are selective; they often reinforce the decencies that survive the indecencies of war. At least this must be said to be the case for West Beirut and In the Shadow of the city.

More than any other community in Lebanon, the Christians in general and the Maronite Christians in particular have been undergoing a process of self-criticism and reorientation in the 1990s.[49] Divergent interpretations of the last phase of the war have pitted followers or quasi-apologetics of either General Aoun, Lebanese Forces (LF) or Kata’ib (the Falangists) against those who see the downfall of the Christian right as a natural and well-deserved outcome of the Christian nationalist strain which emerged before and during the war. How people position themselves in the debate about the Syrian presence in Lebanon is equally important. The Christian right and the many who are loosely affiliated with it see a direct link from the struggle during the war to the situation today, and therefore any attempt to come to terms with the radicalism of the past is preceded by the necessity of continuing the struggle for independence. This widespread sense of loss in the Christian community, termed al-Ihbat al-Masihi (the Chritian disenchantment)[50], has produced a nostalgia for the time before the civil war and for the war itself, which only makes the Christian right more unreceptive to self-critique.

At the same time the political fragmentation of the Christian community has in the last few years given birth to a certain discussion of the Christian past. However, this discussion has mostly been led on a basis of self-righteous allegations and a general hardening of positions. Soul-searching and apologies of former involvement in war crimes, not to speak of any real dialogue between former and present enemies in the Christian camp, have been wanting. Thus the sociologist Nasri Salhab in his 2000 book al-Masa’la al-Maruniya (the Maronite Question) subtitled al-asbab al-tarikhiya lil-ihbat al-maruniya (the historical roots of the Maronite disenchantment) called for the Maronites to face up to the past. If the Maronites took a critical look at themselves, Salhab wrote, they would see that their "war of liberation” ended in suppression, and that they have lost the moral guidance of Christianity and closed themselves off in a defensive and degenerate sectarianism.[51]

One of the most significant examples of the Christian strife over the past was the release of Robert Hatem’s book From Israel to Damascus in 1999.[52] The memoirs of this former bodyguard of Elie Hobeiqa were intended to intimidate Hobeiqa, who is widely regarded as a traitor in the anti-Syrian camp of LF. Apparently the book did succeed in alienating Hobeiqa from the political elite, and some have even speculated that the disclosures in the book started a spiralling downfall, which culminated with the assassination of Hobeiqa in January 2002.[53] Robert Hatem’s book is a good example of memory work with a clear political or sectarian objective. Although this is indeed a way of opening the lit of the memories from the war, such a reproaching discourse as Hatem’s only seems to prove the government right in forbidding any "incitements to sectarian behaviour”.

Seen in the light of the inter-Christian squabble, the apology, which the former LF official Assa’ad Shaftari delivered in the Lebanese newspaper an-Nahar on the 10/2 2000 was a radical breach with the self-imposed silence regarding own misdeeds, not only of former Christian leaders, but of all former high-ranking militiamen in Lebanon. In his letter, Shaftari apologized to all his victims, "living or dead”, for "the ugliness of war and for what I did during the civil war in the name of Lebanon or the ‘cause’ or ‘the Christians’.”

The letter is formed by a series of apologies all introduced by a j’accuse-like antadhiru (I apologize); apologies for having "misrepresented Lebanon”, for having "caused disgust”, and for having "led the destiny of Lebanon astray”. Commenting on the la ghalib la maghlub dogma, Shaftari writes that "a distorted picture has emerged, that during the 15 years of war everybody who participated on whichever side was a war criminal”. The truth is that "a shameless minority” has built up this image. Hopefully, he writes, these people will see that his public apology "is the only way out of the Lebanese distress and that it will clean the souls of hatred and ill will and the pain of the past.” To end with, he calls for "true reconciliation with the self before reconciliation with the others”.

Shaftari’s piece did not cause a sudden wave of true reconciliation with "the others” to take place in Lebanon. Perhaps due to the abstract formulations and the absence of any concrete details to match those revealed by Robert Hatem, the letter went largely unnoticed. However, Shaftari planned a more elaborate public account in the style of Hatem, but without the irreconcilable tone. Apparently due to shifting alliances in the Christian milieu after the murder of Shaftari’s old chief Elie Hobeiqa in January 2002[54], the accounts were finally printed in al-Hayat February 14th, 15th and 16th. The narrative presented in these articles constitutes an interesting and so far rather unique example of public remembrance.

The three articles in al-Hayat concentrate on three issues, namely considerations of the difficulties of remembering the war, memories from Shaftari’s childhood and youth and, most substantially, memories from the war. Given the precarious nature of these memories, he is clearly aware of the possibly upsetting consequences of his revealing statements. Yet, he writes, "the purpose (...) is to relate this trial to those who did not live it without embellishing or shortening. And the truth needs to be said in order for us to deserve the forgiveness of our children.” He knows "that the war was both ugly and complicated and the difficulties surrounding it many”, but, he states, "I hope that others will realize what I have realized; especially that the tragedy was mutual and that everyone was implicated.”

Before the actual narrative the interviewer in an introductory note explains that al-Hayat does not seek to tell the whole story of the war. Shaftari’s is only one among many personal stories. However, the war was and the memory of the war is essentially made up of such personal stories, and reconciliation can hardly be arrived at without a certain consciousness of the role of the individual, rather than of groupings, in the war. The intention is not "to call for all files from the war to be published”, but to encourage others to display the sort of courage, which Shaftari has had to mount before revealing what he calls "the truth of the war”.

Of course, no one is in possession of the absolute truth of the war. Although Shaftari’s account can be seen as an honest attempt to lead his country on the path of reconciliation, he also redeems himself by doing so. Therefore, when he recounts his childhood and seeks to trace what produced the hatred he felt towards his Muslim compatriots, it certainly facilitates reconciliation, but it also lionizes his own role in this process. To begin with, he tells how he grew up in East Beirut in "a typical Lebanese neighbourhood”, and although his account carries streaks of the common nostalgie d’avant guerre, the general tone is reproachful. He describes the milieu around his school in Jumeize as "intensely Christian”. In this "Lion’s den of the Christians” the Muslims were disregarded "for not believing in Lebanon as a final entity”. Young Christians like Shaftari were socialized into feeling Western before Arab, learning French before Arabic and looking down on Lebanese who did not abide by the same cultural standards. "My people brought down on me a communitarian, introvert alertness, which made me disregard them (the Muslims) (...) At that time I did not know where these feelings of congestion and factionalism came”. Now he sees that they were a product of the general discourse, which was prevalent in the Christian community as well as from the institutions imputing in the children what was later to become a deep-rooted sense of commitment to "the cause”; defence of the Christians of Lebanon and their right to be something other than Arab in the midst of an Arab milieu.

In 1974 Shaftari joined Kata’ib and soon after the war broke out. At this point he clearly believed that "Lebanon was a country made to be for the Christians and modelled for them”, and that their fight against the Palestinians was therefore justified. However, his memories from the early war years also reveal great divisions in the Christian milieu. He mentions how in Kata’ib professionals from the good families only mixed with the lower classes reluctantly, and also how the leadership was anything but righteous or democratic. Random violence was the name of the game, both internally and externally. Kidnapped civilians were treated with absolute carelessness, and Shaftari himself signed several orders for captives to be executed. In one of the most chilling accounts, he recalls how at one point the LF phoned a movie theatre with a hoax bomb threat, forcing it to evacuate the audience and then bombarding them once outdoors. By ways of explaining, he writes: "There was no reason for this clearly pointless violence, but elements of it were founded in my feelings. The political problem transgressed every possible restriction and allowed us to act the way we felt.” By pointing to internal factors such as the logic of sectarianism, which had been imputed in him from an early age, Shaftari is looking the beast in the eye in a very direct fashion. His considerations are easily translated into a blistering critique of the Christian right in the present. Therefore it was no surprise that Shaftari was met with accusations from this camp of betraying his community after the articles were released.[55]

Shaftari is preoccupied at length with describing life in the Christian camp from 1975 to 1985, his close encounters with Bashir Jumayil, Hobeiqa, Ja’ja’ and other top officials, and how void of any moral standards their war became. As for himself, the question of guilt only occurred to him in a religious context. He remembers meeting a priest and confessing some of the atrocities he had committed. When he left the church it was always with a clear conscience: "I was guilty in my misdeeds and mistakes... but at this stage my mind was at ease, because the (Christian) society was living my situation and had allowed for what I did”.

This was the logic which prevailed, on all sides of the conflict, and which made the Lebanese believe that they could resort to any means in their fight. After the war, in an uncharged atmosphere, it is only natural that Shaftari and others like him should begin to question the validity of this logic and face their guilt. Thus, the public remembrance in Assa’ad Shaftaris articles serves the purpose of dismantling and deconstructing the sectarian discourse of the Christian right, and in extension any sectarian discourse, which still maintains that the war was justified and that their leaders in it died as martyrs for a national cause. The Bashir Jumayil or Samir Ja’ja’ who appear in Shaftari’s account are far from righteous, national leaders. Just as much as any other participant they committed awful atrocities. In one sense Shaftari speaks from a position within the very sectarian realm, which he criticises, yet by doing this he also distances himself from it and implicitly annuls the past. His apologies become confessions in the Christian sense of the word and grant him absolution for his sins; absolution for what he did during the war as well as for belonging to the sectarian part of the divide in Lebanon of today.

"People in pain are often bereft of the resources of speech. It is not surprising that the language for pain should in such instances often be evoked by those who are not themselves in pain but by those who speak on behalf of those who are. (...) By mobilizing aesthetic sensibilities and other artistic energies and popular cultural expressions in everyday life, they ("urban designers, architects, intellectuals, humanists of all shades and persuasions”) can do much to arouse the public to redeem its maligned heritage. More important, they can prod the Lebanese to turn outward and transcend their parochial identities to connect with each other.”[56] ­ Samir Khalaf, 1993.

It would seem today that the wishes Samir Khalaf expressed immediately after the war are coming true. Collective memory of the war is being shaped by what we have called detached elites. These are indeed "humanists of all shades and persuasions”, who posses the means, the eloquence and the access to communicate in the public sphere. In their memories, these people make a point of exhibiting their detachment to any sectarian narratives, which can be traced back to the war, thus in a sense educating the Lebanese in civil behaviour. Chamoun and Doueri in their films furthermore take the "common Lebanese” in defence and place the blame for the war with a small group of usurpers.

Maybe it is not so surprising to find that the shapers of collective memory belong to the same social group. Surely, detached secularists have less to lose from a process of public remembrance, since to them addressing issues of the war is less painful than to those who have memories of guilt to couple the memories of loss. Many detached elites only experienced the war from outside of Lebanon, and in any case from outside of the logic of sectarianism. The beast they are looking in the eye is in effect the part of Lebanon that they already dislike, whereas Berri, Junbalatt and anyone else who thrives or has thrived on the sectarian nature of Lebanese society and politics in effect would be looking right at themselves.

So, although a discourse of responsibility and transcending nationalism is prevalent in the public sphere this does not mean all groups share in such an ethos. On the contrary, the literature suggests that there are strident narratives of congestion and dissension lurking beneath the surface, protected from appearance by self-inflicted codes of "cultural intimacy”. Nor should the dominant discourse of detachment lead us to believe that any public remembrance coming from those who took part in the war is impossible, as the articles of apology by Assa’ad Shaftari go to show. In the process of apologizing, however, Shaftari manages to reinvent himself, and thereby also makes himself worthy of the label "a detached elite”.

When private becomes public people tend to censure their memories according to the social context, in which they find themselves. As we have seen, the Lebanese context is one where sectarian affiliation is a pervasive yet at the same time publicly disregarded fact. Speaking "the truth” about something as ugly and contested as the Lebanese civil war, as Shaftari so grandly claims to be doing, naturally involves an element of embarrassment, which is just as much national as it is personal. But speaking the truth should also involve caution, since a breakdown of the official ethos of coexistence and multi-confessionalism would most probably lead to renewed civil unrest. All Lebanese are aware of the precarious foundation on which their shared nationhood rests. At the same time the various sectarian and political identities provide solace for the guilt and embarrassment, which people carry with them from the war. This paradox of orientations seems to be a central predicament of post-Ta’if Lebanon.

Indeed, it is important to view the collective memory in the wider context of the redefinition of Lebanese nationalism, which has been taking place after the war. Private and public, sectarian and national, past and present ­ these are the opposing points of reference, which interact to define what it means to be Lebanese today. To carve out how such definitions are being accommodated is no easy task, but what the present work has suggested is, that understanding the role of remembrance of the war can be elucidating. In order to proceed with this pivotal question it would be necessary to look at how the content of private remembrance is informed by public denouncements of sectarianism. For that reason a multi-disciplinary study must be called for, which would examine the interplay between private and public remembrance of the Lebanese civil war.