Imad Nuwayhid was a leftist intellectual and martyr. During the 1960s-1970s, he was active in Marxist circles in Lebanon. He died in late 1975, the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), as a fighter for the Lebanese Communist Party. In the aftermath of Imad’s death, his party, comrades, friends, and family collectively produced his “martyr narrative.” Like others of the era, the narrative was disseminated through various leftist media—textual, oral, visual, aural—stressed party ideology over individuality, and sought to mobilize other youth to fight for the causes of deconfessionalization and Palestinian liberation. While some family members spoke at rallies and wrote in defense of the party’s position, not all were satisfied. Some chose, and continue to choose, to remember Imad as their brother, not a communist. These actions reclaim Imad as a Nuwayhid, but not always as he lived. With Imad’s writings, newspaper reports, and interviews with family, friends, and comrades conducted between 2016-2021, this paper explores the contentious politics surrounding the memorialization of one, “ordinary,” Arab leftist martyr. It focuses on Imad’s family, examining their public comments and actions in 1975-6, and their memories today. Particularly, the paper discusses what I term “cleaning the slate,” an act of corrective storytelling and resistance to official, party-produced martyr narratives. Today, several of Imad’s siblings criticize the Lebanese Communist Party, wondering why they sent a budding intellectual to the frontlines. Furthermore, some downplay his radical politics, question his affiliation with the Lebanese Communist Party, and believe Imad would have shed his leftist beliefs if he were alive today. I argue that this narrative (re)construction, which divorces Imad from his intellectual becoming, is not disingenuous, but serves as a challenge to the hegemonic power of parties and militias during and after the Lebanese Civil War. Cleaning the slate recasts Imad in their image, detaching Imad away from the party, the leftist movement, and their roles in the war. This paper seeks to bring the rank-and-file into the history of the Arab Left, as well as argue for the necessity of the family—as a concept and perspectives—in this scholarship. It also hopes to complicate the “bad” party, “good” family dichotomy common in literature on martyrdom and the war. Indeed, the institution of the family, like the party, is diverse, must be disaggregated, and is active in the myth making, and unmaking, of leftist martyrs to the Lebanese Civil War.