Syria subdued in black mourning for Assad

He is everywhere. While he lived, President Hafez al-Assad's face seemed to survey every corner of Syria. But in death, his Big Brother presence has burgeoned, proliferated.

As you drive across the Beka'a Valley towards Damascus, Lebanon transmogrifies into Syria. In Beirut there are a few black flags, flags at half mast, the odd car with a poster of President Assad. Then the black banners start, with slogans like, "Assad sleeps next to God", and "Bashar, it's up to you now." The news comes over the car radio that 34-year-old Bashar al-Assad - known as "Dr Bashar" for his British degree in opthamology - had just been appointed commander-in-chief of the Syrian armed forces. It was the rank his father held, and one more inexorable step in his rise to the presidency.

At Chtaura, a usually bustling trading town, the aluminium shutters are pulled down, plastic chairs at the roadside cafes perch on table tops, legs up.

Could someone, perhaps one of the legion of plain-clothes Syrian Mokhabarat, possibly have made the rounds, telling these mercantile Lebanese that respect would be appreciated?

A few years ago the people of Chtaura "spontaneously" erected a bronze equestrian statue of Bassel al-Assad, the elder son who died in a car crash. Yesterday a black sash fluttered from Bassel's waist, and dozens of sadfaced men sat under a mourning canopy beside him. At Anjar - Syrian military intelligence headquarters in Lebanon - every ragged tent on the Bedouin encampment flew a black flag.

The border post at al-Jdeideh, with its dust-caked computers, cigarette butt-carpeted floor and entry forms in duplicate, is a sad testimony to the Syria that President Assad leaves behind him. Everything - the decrepit taxis outside, the fuzzy-screen black-and-white television set on which the cashier watched footage of the Great Man - seemed caught in a time warp, as if time stopped in 1970 when Assad took power.

One immigration officer wore a black headband. Another had a white, gold and red tinfoil sticker showing Assad, Bassel and Bashar. The lacy sides and red heart in the middle made it look like a Valentine greeting.

As we entered Damascus, the show of mourning grew more extravagant. In just 24 hours Syrian authorities had planted thousands of two-sided, steel-framed poster-portraits encased in glass, each more than a metre high, at 100-metre intervals down the main boulevards. The same portraits, neatly framed in steel and glass, adorn bus-stops.

Then there is the black cloth. Tons of it, miles of it, thousands of bolts of it, draped over high-rise apartment buildings, flowing down the front of government buildings, hanging from university dormitory windows.

The mood is subdued, sad, slightly anxious. Convoys of teenagers waving black flags and Bashar's photo stand in pick-up trucks, chanting his name. Some hold posters from Assad's last presidential campaign, emblazoned with the word naam - yes - in red letters. A black sash across the corner has transformed it from an election poster to a symbol of mourning.

There is something hauntingly similar between this display of emotion and the election victory celebrations I witnessed in the past. Yet a hotel receptionist greets me with tears in her eyes, and they are real tears. "What can I say? We are so . . ." she stops in mid-sentence. Organised grief mingled with genuine emotion.

I'm not sure the Syrians really know what they feel yet.