The demonstration on March 14, 2005, calling for the implementation of United Nations Resolution 1559 and demanding the end of the Syrian tutelage over Lebanon. More than a million Lebanese gathered at Martyrs' Square. (Credit: Michel Sayegh/ Archives/ L'Orient-Le Jour)
"March 14 should be the national holiday, not Nov. 22." Just looking around the living room in Omar Boustani's Beirut apartment means going back in time, immersed in the memories of a day, a year, unlike any other in Lebanon.In the library, books by Samir Kassir, writer and journalist at Nahar and a fervent opponent of the Syrian occupation in Lebanon; next to the piano, a large photo of the mass protests against this occupation at Martyrs' Square on March 14, 2005; on a piece of furniture, a red and white scarf, a symbol of this movement in which he is so proud to have participated. Omar calls his ten-year-old son: he wasn't there to witness his father's years of activism, and so, the older's memories become the younger's history lesson.Beginning on Feb. 14, 2005, the day then-Prime Minister Rafic...
"March 14 should be the national holiday, not Nov. 22." Just looking around the living room in Omar Boustani's Beirut apartment means going back in time, immersed in the memories of a day, a year, unlike any other in Lebanon.In the library, books by Samir Kassir, writer and journalist at Nahar and a fervent opponent of the Syrian occupation in Lebanon; next to the piano, a large photo of the mass protests against this occupation at Martyrs' Square on March 14, 2005; on a piece of furniture, a red and white scarf, a symbol of this movement in which he is so proud to have participated. Omar calls his ten-year-old son: he wasn't there to witness his father's years of activism, and so, the older's memories become the younger's history lesson.Beginning on Feb. 14, 2005, the day then-Prime Minister Rafic...