BEIRUT - Across Lebanon the huge portraits that glorified political leaders have disappeared, to be replaced by Lebanese flags of all sizes and a shift in the national consciousness.
The Syrian soldiers have gone but for some Lebanese the habits of the past remain -- hesitancy in expressing an opinion, refusal to be named --, though others are bolder.
Change is coming slowly.
The sight of Lebanese army troops and police deployed in key positions which used to held by Syrian soldiers are providing a sense of trust to Lebanese like Omar.
As an 18-year-old in the late 1970s, Omar was dragged out of his car by a Syrian soldier, brutally beaten, handcuffed and pushed into a truck, on his way to prison in Syria because he had failed to stop at a Syrian military checkpoint.
Lebanese troops replacing them are now greeted with the words, "Hello, Watan (nation)".
Former prime minister Rafiq Hariri's assassination in a Valentine's Day massacre that also cost 19 other lives, four months after a failed bid to kill respected Druze MP Marwan Hamade, galvanised Lebanon's collective consciousness.
"We have realised that it's in our interest to be united," said Samia Shaib, asked about the changes since a series of events led to a Syrian troop pullout ahead of much-watched polls due later this month.
"It is too soon to speak of change. The elections will take care of that but there is an undeniable fact: the events of the past months mean that more than ever we need a dialogue.
"Even the most fanatic among us believes that," she said.
A school employee, she was among hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians who overcame their fear of the Syrian stranglehold on their country and took to the streets after Hariri's killing to press for an end to 29 years of political and military domination from Damascus.
Accusing Damascus and its ruling allies in Beirut of responsibility for Hariri's death -- a charge denied by both -- they set up a "Freedom Camp" in central Beirut's Martyrs' Square, drowned in a sea of Lebanese red and white flags stamped with the cedar tree.
One slogan became omnipresent: "Freedom, sovereignty and independence".
The enthusiasm of Lebanese youths was combined with international pressure to force the withdrawal of Syria's troops and its dreaded intelligence agents that was completed on April 26.
They were joined in their peaceful protests by women in designer shoes, some with their Sri Lankan maids on their heels, working girls, bankers, doctors, bakers, men in three-piece suits and others in T-shirts and jogging pants.
"There was a real awakening, a rediscovery of our identity," said Shaib.
People who were never that motivated by politics now speak their minds, exchange views and express pent-up anger at the Syrian troops, but also against the Israeli army which occupied parts of Lebanon for 22 years.
Encouraged by opposition forces and reform campaigners, the Lebanese are demanding their share of democracy, and an end to decades of sectarian rule.
Youngsters more focused on football and video games have begun to wear pendants representing a cross linked to a crescent moon to symbolise an end to the hostilities that tore apart Christians and Muslims during the civil war.
During school recess, teenagers discuss politics and argue over whether the time has come to disarm the Shiite guerrilla group Hezbollah, credited with achieving the May 2000 pullout of Israel's powerful army from Lebanon.
The Lebanese have also begun to rediscover their politicians and learn some of the secrets of the wrangling in the corridors of powers of Beirut and Damascus.
"Before we did not know of what was being hatched by the Syrians and their allies," said one computer analyst.
"The assassination of Hariri revealed facts we knew only as rumours and, it has eased dramatically the sectarian divide," he added. But in a hangover of the caution shown under the Syrians, he asked to remain anonymous.
Newspapers have carried revelations of how Syrian domination of Lebanon drained the country of crucial revenues, by siphoning off 750 million dollars annually in kickbacks with the help of their allies in Beirut.
Economist Joe Faddoul blamed Syria for a large share of the Lebanese public debt of 35 billion dollars, by levying taxes from Beirut Port, the Casino du Liban, petrol sales and other forms of racketeering.
"The official line is that the debt is the result of waste and corruption," he wrote in a recent study, although in fact it was a result of "a coherent and organized system of direct and indirect payments".
The return on May 7 of Christian hardliner General Michel Aoun from 15 years of exile in France, was another milestone for Lebanon, even as many feared the former army commander could destabilise the nation.
He was forced out by Syrian troops, against whom he waged a devastating "war of liberation". He now advocates an end to the sectarian setup in Lebanon that calls for a Christian president, Sunni premier and Shiite parliament speaker.

05/11/2005 11:59 GMT