Haugbolle 135A: Yes, some of these pictures, which I was responsible for,
and other pictures with me as the victim.
Q: Do you think about the victims of the war?
A: When I talked about experiences, these thoughts are part of
it. I was once at Saint George watching that beautiful Solidère,
and to each building on the road of destruction belongs a
story. And I thought to myself, how many people occupied it,
defended it and died there. Today it has become a big hotel
designed to create financial benefit. To the revenues from it
stick more blood than the rain has showered over Lebanon.
The building stayed, but where are those who paid with their
life to keep their position in it?
Q: If there would be a war again, would you participate?
A: No, I’m sure I wouldn’t.
Q: Can we consider that you regret?
A: I consider that I learned.
Q: No words of repentance?
A: That’s between me and myself.^46Hubayqa is right: had repentance been between him and society, he would
have been talking to a judge and not to a journalist. Here he is allowed to
keep the secret chamber of his memories closed off to the public. When
words are not followed by the threat of retribution, it is easy to be sorry
and say, like Muhammad Abdul Hamid Beydoun, a former Amal fighter
and postwar minister whose interview was published together with
Hubayqa’s, that “the idea of the other has ended. The other has become a
partner in the country. And I can assure you that no one is ready to repeat
the experience, neither individuals nor organizations.” This is as close
as these former leaders get to repenting, saying that they, and the whole
country, have learned from their follies and promise not to repeat them.
They realize what created the idea of the other and produced the violence,
but in their mind that idea has been replaced by a national idea of a part-
ner in the country. This change of perception and new nationalism grant