The Great Game

Seven days a week, 22 hours a day, employees of the Bourj Hammoud flag factory cut and sew, working feverishly to meet the nearly insatiable demand for flags since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14.

The workers sleep in shifts, a few hours at a time. On a good day, the factory's seven employees turn out 5,000 Lebanese flags, but it is not enough.

"We're barely sleeping," said Mona Nashar, a flag maker. "But we don't mind, because it is our country's flag."

It was not always like this. In Lebanon's short, turbulent history, the Lebanese flag has often seemed a sad and misbegotten thing, outshone by the more popular banners of militia and sect. Like most of the countries of the Middle East, Lebanon was formed from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire at the close of World War I, with boundaries drawn by the whims of the conquering French and British armies and with little thought about ethnic and sectarian rivalries.

During Lebanon's civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990 and left more than 100,000 dead, the country fragmented into an array of armed groups, each with its own leader and its own flag. Until quite recently, popular gatherings usually included the unfurling of battle flags - Christian, Muslim, Druse - or the raising of a portrait.

That changed abruptly with the killing of Mr. Hariri, a multimillionaire who led the rebuilding of the country after the civil war. His death came just as public sentiment was hardening against the decades-old presence of Syrian troops, and the bombing that killed him was widely suspected here of being engineered by Syria.

In a single moment, it seemed, Lebanese nationalism flowered.

At the giant popular rallies that followed Mr. Hariri's death, protesters who began to wave communal flags were told by organizers to put them away. In their place rose tens of thousands of Lebanese flags. If the Lebanese could not always agree on the nature and direction of their own nation, they came together over a common enemy.

"What is going on today is the forming of a nation," said Rami G. Khouri, editor at large for The Daily Star.

Along with Mr. Hariri's photograph, the Lebanese flag has become the symbol of the revolt against Syrian domination and of a desire for more democratic politics. In the streets, protesters wave Lebanese flags by the tens of thousands. The flags hang in office windows, flutter from car antennas, cover front doors. They adorn all manner of clothing, from baseball caps to string bikinis.

That is good for business. Since Feb. 14, the flags have sold by the hundreds of thousands. The Bourj Hammoud factory, which had been making Valentine's Day T-shirts, switched to flags on the 15th and has not stopped since. Now, the shop buys huge rolls of uncut flags, which the workers quickly slice up into individual banners and hem.

On the other side of the city, Ghassan Haddad, a flag distributor, estimates that he has sold 100,000 Lebanese flags since Feb. 15, 50,000 in the past week alone. The night before last Monday's huge demonstration, which brought hundreds of thousands of Lebanese into the streets, a caller placed an order for 40,000 flags. Mr. Ghassan gave him 10,000 - all that he had left in his shop.

"Flags are a very good business now," Mr. Ghassan said.

# posted by Jacob @ 3/22/2005 12:51:00 a.m.