BEIRUT: The last time Arife Alamy can remember her country truly united was the day Lebanon achieved independence from France, on Nov. 22, 1943.

“It was beautiful. It was the best independence day,” recalls the 75-year-old, who was a young girl at the time. “Fouad Chehab was the best president. There was peace, prosperity and stability.” The celebrations every year since have never been able to top that day, she says.

Living in a country that endured 15 years of civil war and to this day is something of a proxy for competing powers to wage their own disputes, many Lebanese are conflicted over the meaning of Independence Day, or if it is indeed something to celebrate.

	“We all lived together and loved each other... Now we’re all controlled by different countries.”

In 1920, five years after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations, gave France the mandate to govern Lebanon, as had been agreed between Britain and France during World War I.

Twenty-one years later, in 1941, France announced that Lebanon would become independent, but under the authority of the Free French government. The Lebanese held free elections two years later, and on Nov. 8, 1943, the new government abolished the mandate. After initial resistance, the French finally accepted Lebanon’s independence.

Some of those who were old enough to remember Lebanon’s original Independence Day appear to be nostalgic for a time when they believed that – after centuries of Ottoman and then decades of French rule – the country would at last stand on its own. Instead, this optimism would be short-lived.

“We demonstrated for days, and when we got our independence we celebrated for days,” says Bader Takkoush, 83, who was 15 when Lebanon won its independence. He protested against the French imprisonment of Lebanese government officials following the unilateral declaration of independence, but holds no resentment toward the French, instead blaming his own compatriots for the divisions that followed.

He remembers with nostalgia the time when his compatriots came together to fight for a common cause.

“We all lived together and loved each other,” Takkoush, who know works at a flower shop in Hamra, says. “Now we’re all controlled by different countries.”

Takkoush says when he was young, politicians were good statesmen. Today, “under the sectarian system, especially after the outbreak of the civil war, everything is wasta,” he says. “There’s no system to represent the Lebanese, just the different communities.”

Jafar Shahour, 85, similarly laments a lack of pride in independence in present-day Lebanon.

In the first few years, “There were parades, bigger than now. And all the shops were closed. It’s not like today, everyone’s just thinking about work,” the shoe-shiner said, looking around at the stores open for business on the national holiday in the Hamra area of Beirut. “Today, everything is expensive, and people have to think about work all the time.”

Still, Takkoush said he’s still glad that Lebanon is independent, even if it’s not in the way he would have hoped.

“At least we have our own country. That’s good,” he said. “There’s some unity, but not much.”