138 Between Private and Public
By “us,” Shaftari appears to be referring at once to militiamen, the
Christian community and its leaders. His memories of close encoun-
ters with Bashir Jumayil, Elie Hubayqa, Samir Ja ́ja ́ and other top offi-
cials illustrate how devoid of any moral standards their war became. The
question of his own guilt only occurred to him in a religious context. He
remembers meeting a priest and confessing some of the atrocities he had
committed. When he left the church it was always with a clear conscience:
“I was guilty in my misdeeds and mistakes ... but at this stage my mind
was at ease, because the (Christian) society was living my situation and
had allowed for what I did.”
s was the logic that prevailed on all sides of the conflict and Thi
which made the Lebanese believe that they could resort to any means in
their fight. After the war, in an uncharged atmosphere, it is only natural
that Shaftari and others like him should begin to question the validity
of this logic and face their guilt. However, the stakes are high for those
who confess, both in terms of personal security and integrity. There has
to be a redeeming factor, and in the case of Assa’ad Shaftari that factor
is his dismantling and deconstructing of the sectarian discourse of the
Christian Right, and by extension any sectarian discourse that still main-
tains that the war was justified and that their leaders in it died as martyrs
for a national cause. This is by no means an exclusively Christian strat-
egy. Similar expressions of regret and disbelief of the ideologies which
drove the war can be found in testimonies from all sides. The former
Communist leader Karim Muruwa, in his memoirs from 2002, relates
how the war transformed him from a pacifist to a proper warrior. One
of his tasks as commander was to visit fellow Communist fighters on the
frontline and assure them that they would be redeemed in the end:
I tried to motivate them, promising them that the future would
compensate the price paid for this war. I don’t know from
where I got that certitude. Today I cannot believe the confi-
dence which I must have possessed in order to act like that.^49By implicating himself and his group, Muruwa blames all Lebanese who
got carried away. This historical lesson fits with the officially accepted nar-
rative of the war, which renders the memory constructive and therefore
suitable for a national public. The same is true of Shaftari’s narrative. The