"Tu vas faire quoi maintenant?"

That's the question everybody is asking everybody else right now, because really, nobody knows. I got to work this morning and found the TV switched on, with everybody crowding around it as they came in. The entire office spent about 2 hours there to find out what had happened in the car bombing that shook the city around 9 o'clock. Most of my colleagues had heard the massive explosion too, except for me - I don't know, I was blissfully unaware and walking to work as I usually do in the mornings, climbing up the stairs to Sassine square and then going down from there towards Hotel-Dieu, the big university hospital that is directly opposite our office and I didn't hear a thing.

When the news came in that Gebran Tueni had been killed in the bombing the atmosphere changed. Before, there had still been a slight chance that it might have been an industrial accident, as the explosion happened right outside a factory. Or that there was some non-political, simple explanation behind it all. But the fact that this anti-Syrian MP had been killed unfortunately took away the simple way out and made it obvious to all that this was indeed a politically motivated murder, one that might spark off who-knows-which consequences, and that the whole ugly beast was rearing its head again etc.... One colleague had known the victim and is quite close to the family and she was in tears and so distraught. Everybody, in fact, was in a state of shock although no-one was willing to admit so much. But the feeling of 'please, no, please don't let this happen to us again', this tiredness and anxiety and outrage were quite palpable.

Trying to go back to work after this was near-impossible, most of the phone lines were down and everybody had other things on their minds anyway. All morning ambulances and security personnel were arriving at the hospital opposite and sirens were screeching constantly, with virtually no other traffic (by Beirut standards anyway). Around two o'clock the word spread that there would be a non-violent protest march outside the An-Nahar building in downtown - An-Nahar is the newspaper of which Gebran Tueni had been editor. So a bunch of my colleagues decided to go down there and I went with them. Traffic was chaotic and as we were sitting in the car driving down to the protest, a colleague got a phone call from her boyfriend who was panicking. From his balcony, he had just observed a service taxi being stopped and its Syrian passengers being dragged out of the car and beaten up by an angry mob. And you bet there was nobody there to stop them from doing so, not even police or security services.

By the time we got to downtown, part of the protest was dissolving already and lots of people carrying orange flags - supporters of Michel Aoun, the General who recently returned from France - were marching up to Sassine square to stage a separate protest and possibly look for more people to beat up. The remaining crowd outside the An-Nahar building was quite small, perhaps a hundred people or so, and almost all of them belonging to some party - the Phalanges and other Christian groups. They were waving their respective flags and chanting 'Fuck Syria'. After five minutes (actually maybe before that even) I felt the desperate urge to leave: I don't want to blame anyone, I don't want to be a voyeur, I don't belong to any of these movements, so what the hell am I doing here? Luckily my colleagues had reached a similar conclusion around the same time, so we all left again and ate lunch together at the office.

Seriously, all of this is so weird. A general strike is being called for for tomorrow. We'll see what happens.... I guess the coming days and weeks will bring more upheaval and more crucial decisions and events. The UN is debating the second Mehlis report tomorrow. And I'm asking myself the question: which theory makes more sense? Are the Syrians doing this in order to sow fear and anxiety in Lebanon, hoping to destabilise the situation and then once again move in here to 'guarantee security'? That would be a fairly blunt calculation, but then they aren't exactly well-known for their tact and subtleness when it comes to political strategies.
Or is someone trying to pour oil on the fire and to ignite the already enormous potential of hatred towards Syrians here - underlining the fact that Lebanon has been a victim of their designs for so long and that it needs to 'regain its full sovereignty'? This is of course the political demand that all Christian factions - and some others, of course - have been making throughout this year, and it happens to be what the U.S. wants as well. How convenient then that this reminder of the situation comes right before the debate on sanctions against Syria etc. that is to be held at the UN tomorrow. If I were a fan of conspiracy theory, I would find supporting evidence for the second theory in the fact that it barely took an hour or so after the bombing for orange flags to appear on all lamp posts on the major road outside our office - and they look official, not just improvised.

But then, I'm not a fan of these theories and honestly I have no idea what just happened here today. There will be a whole range of explanations as there usually is with such things. What I know for sure is that everybody is afraid for their future, their jobs, their security, their perspectives because nobody knows what's next. I will keep you posted!!!