BEIRUT — Through their apartment windows or from just over the tops of their newspapers, the artists, writers, students, journalists and lawyers peered at the beefy armed men.
They had come before, grimacing young toughs wielding Kalashnikovs, their legs dangling over the sides of pickup trucks, swaggering along the sidewalks, festooning streetlights with their flags.
This time it was the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah and its allies, gangs of less disciplined gunmen who burned buildings and terrorized their enemies. But others had tried to impose their will here before, in the one part of this city that has refused to bow to narrow-mindedness and embraces the country's political and religious melting pot.
Unlike the rest of Lebanon, Beirut's Hamra Street doesn't belong to Sunni or Shiite or Christian or Druze. In a Middle East characterized by extremes of poverty and wealth, radical Islamic fundamentalism and compulsive Western-style consumerism, decrepit slums and gated Persian Gulf fortresses, Hamra Street stands out.
Neither a fading old marketplace nor a gleaming shopping mall, the two-lane commercial avenue is among the last few spaces of homegrown urban culture in Lebanon, under the sway of political leaders who thrive on promoting communal identity.
The road emerges from downtown Beirut and runs parallel to the Mediterranean coast, about three or four blocks to the west, where the leafy campus of the American University of Beirut spreads along the cliffs.
"This is the only street that is cosmopolitan in all of Lebanon," said Khalil Hakim, a bespectacled architect with a rectangular face. "All the religions are here. People from all over the world are here."
He looks older than his 50 years. He sits with a group of friends at the Cafe du Paris. They inhale cheap cigarettes and sip Turkish coffee spiced with cardamom. At first they are reluctant to talk, but eventually their anger pours out.
"We don't wave flags," Hakim said. "We don't belong to one religion or another. We don't want what they want."
"They" are the men who periodically try to overrun this place. Hezbollah arrived here, guns blazing, on May 8. The militia menaced its Sunni Arab political rivals in the pro-government Future Movement as well as the people of West Beirut, who huddled inside their homes. Militiamen burned cars and flashed "V" signs, a show of strength meant to cow political opponents into submission over a power-sharing agreement and Hezbollah's right to keep its arsenal of rockets and heavy weapons.
