Said Jakhar has every reason to be bitter. The 33-year-old Lebanese driver works 18 hours a day to make ends meet. He lost part of his Maronite Christian family in a civil war that was fought by the Maronite, the largest Christian denomination in Lebanon, and the Druze, a small offshoot of Islam. Just last June, the brand new windows of the small apartment he purchased six months ago for $40,000 in a Beirut suburb were blown out during an Israeli raid of the neighboring power plant. But Jakhar grew up during the war.

"There is no point looking behind or complaining," he said. Carefully banking the next turn in his old white Mercedes sedan, he admitted that he still feels resentful towards his old neighbors. "They killed my grandmother and it is hard to forget," he said. Said Jakhar is part of an ever-shrinking Christian minority in Lebanon that is trying to carve out a place for itself in a land it once ruled.

Recognized by Rome as Catholics, the Maronites, enjoyed political and economic dominance for decades after Lebanon's independence from French colonial rule in 1943, but the 20-year civil war and a growing Muslim population changed the political and demographic landscape. While the Christians, according to the last and obsolete official 1932 census, used to account for just over half of the population and more than half of the power in the government, it is generally acknowledged --despite the lack of statistics-- that they now comprise only about 30 percent of the population, versus 65 per cent for the Muslims. According to the Lebanese constitution the power is still shared between a Christian president, a Sunni prime minister, and a Shiite speaker of the Assembly; but at the end of the war in 1990, the powers of the president were substantially reduced while the power of the National Assembly were increased. Clinging to a hopeless dream of restoring their influence of the past, the Lebanese Christians are trying hard to convince the others than Lebanon without them would not be Lebanon. Their argument is simple. According to Selim Abou, dean of the Jesuit Saint-Joseph University in Beirut, "Without the Christians Lebanon would be Syria or any Arabic country". Because of its rugged landscape made of isolated peaks and valley, Lebanon has historically given refuge to all kind of dissidents groups, allowing Christian sects to coexist with Muslim sects and giving Lebanon its uniqueness in the Arab world. When the Maronites were driven out of Syria during the 10th century by repeated Muslim persecutions, they took refuge in the isolated valleys of Mount Lebanon. They later became the elite, developing close links with the French from whom they sought protection and patronage.

According to Abou, the specificity of Lebanon still lies in the presence of so many Christians, even though their numbers are shrinking. Even some Muslims seem to agree. "What preserves the reality of Lebanon, its uniqueness, is the existence of the Christians in Lebanon and their role in the politics, economics, and cultural life of Lebanon," said Saoud El Maula, a Shiite Muslim who co-founded the National Committee for Dialogue between Christians and Muslims in 1993. For these reasons, added El Maula "It is important for the Muslims to recognize that the Christians feel depressed and try to make them feel better." Many argue, on the other hand, that the Christians still have too much power in relation to their demographic presence.

But for people like Jakhar, who didn't have the resources to flee his ravaged country during the war, Lebanon will always be home, whether the Christians remain in power or not. Jakhar speaks only Arabic and knows a few words of French. Not enough to make him part of the French-speaking, European or U.S.-educated Christian elite. He grew up a farmer's son in Wadi Al Site, a small village in the Southern mountains and had to quit school when he was only nine years old. At that time, it became too dangerous for him to hike to school, two miles away from his village. "In the early seventies, when communal conflicts between the Druze and Maronites started all over again, we had to stay home if we did not want to get killed by the Druze," Jakhar said. His father died in 1981 from cancer and his mother died when he was very young. As a result, he had to support four brothers and two sisters. In 1983, they had to flee from the Chouf region, which lies southeast of Beirut when it was clear that the Druze had won the war of the Mountains. Too old to flee, Jakhar's grandmother and aunt were murdered by their Druze neighbors when they took over his village. The massacres of Maronites in 1860 had already resulted in their exodus from the region but the process was almost completed during the 1975-1990 civil war. "We had no choice. If we had stayed we would have all been massacred, said Jakhar."

Despite his anger and although many of his friends did, Jakhar always refused to join a Christian militia to fight the Druze. "I am not a fighter," he said. During the war he was hired as a security guard for the U.S. embassy. "I got hired because of my clean past," he said proudly. But after 15 years of a merciless civil war, nothing surprises him anymore. He has seen Christians and Druze kill each other, Christians killing Christians, Muslims killing their own brothers in Lebanon. "You can never take anything for granted, even peace," he said. "I work so hard that I don't even have time to look for a wife," said the handsome green-eyed, dark-haired driver.

Jakhar pays his taxi company no less than $330 per week for the right to drive, even though he had to buy himself the used Mercedes where he spends most of his day. Instead of complaining he feels lucky enough to have a job now in a country where unemployment reaches nine per cent according to official data, but 25 according to many economists. In his free time he goes back to his hometown of Wadi El Site where he is restoring the farm his father owned with the help of his brothers. After peace was signed between the Druze and Christians in 1992, Jakhar, like many Christians, was able to return to his native village. There he found a place with no people. Some had fled abroad, some like Jakhar, went to Beirut. "Our village used to have 1500 inhabitants. Now there are only 25 old people. The younger generation comes only to visit but there is no future there," he said. Nonetheless, Jakhar said he loves his village enough to want to settle there when he retires.