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<div class=Section1>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=5 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:18.0pt;font-weight:bold'>Losses Renew a Lebanese Healer</span></font></b><br>
Son's Death Brings Prominent Journalist, 80, Back Into Fray</p>
<p><font size=2 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>By
Anthony Shadid<br>
Washington Post Foreign Service<br>
Saturday, March 4, 2006; A01</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>BEIRUT --
When Ghassan Tueni returned to parliament this year, taking a seat he first
held during the Korean War, he stood before the hushed deputies and renewed an
appeal rarely heard in Lebanon.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"Let
us bury our grudges and grief," he declared, his thick, gray hair combed
back but a little unruly.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The words
were brief, almost perfunctory. But they suggested something about him, about
his people and about the uncertain future of one of the Arab world's smallest,
freest and most Byzantine of countries.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Tueni is
80 years old. He is Lebanon's foremost journalist, a storied diplomat and a
respected intellectual. Some also call him a modern-day Job, the biblical
figure whose string of misfortunes never defied his faith. Tueni lost his wife
and daughter to cancer, a son to a car accident, and his last child, the
journalist and politician Gebran Tueni, to an assassin's car bomb in December.
Tueni speaks little of his pain, out of pride and dignity. But in a country
defined less by citizenship and more by its fractious sects, his suffering and
reputation have placed him tentatively above the fray. And in his twilight, he
insists, he has another role to play as Lebanon is perched between the promise
of long-delayed independence from foreign influence and a morass of competing
loyalties.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"I
think I can create a current, yes," Tueni said, as his driver navigated
through a gritty neighborhood, clad in the posters, banners and iconography of
religious Shiite Muslims. "It makes me feel very worried. I might bump my
head into a wall." He paused, looking out the windshield. "But it might
create a breakthrough. I don't know. I have to try. I have to try very
hard."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>In
Lebanon today, he sees a collection of tribes, defined by collective memories.
What he wants is a secular notion of citizenship, a state that becomes a nation
gathering its strength through its diversity.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Tueni's
return to political life is more than the story of one man's career. To some,
he has emerged as a symbol, a man whose history transcends the sectarian
squabbles that, at times, have paralyzed Lebanon, splintered as it is among 18
religious and ethnic communities, shadowed by an unresolved 15-year civil war
and vulnerable to the machinations of neighboring Syria.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>To
others, he represents a figure from the past that no longer resonates in a
system where authority is most often derived not by ideas, programs or even
ideology, but by the color of a religious banner. In that, he has become
obsolete, as Lebanon and much of the Arab world is coalescing around more
primordial affiliations -- Christian and Muslim, Sunni and Shiite, Kurd and Arab,
and so on.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"Lebanon
is still struggling with the same fundamental issues -- how to deal with the
question of citizenship, of identity, of the reform of the political
system," said Nawaf Salam, a lawyer and professor at the American
University of Beirut. "I think he can really play that role of a consensus
builder. I believe that. There could be wishful thinking in that, but that's
the role I see him playing."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Tueni
sees an urgency in that role, even if time is short. "The country is
living in a fanatic struggle," he said. "It's not only Lebanon, but
Lebanon is a microcosm. Lebanon is a microcosm, and it is the laboratory of
dialogue between Christians and Muslims. If you fail here, it's going to fail
everywhere else."</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>Journalist and Politician</span></font></b></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>By his count,
Tueni has published more than 5,000 editorials in a career that has spanned
nearly 60 years at an-Nahar, Lebanon's most prestigious newspaper. The
newspaper was founded in 1933 by his father, Gebran Tueni, an Arab nationalist
at a time when that nationalism was a progressive ideology, dedicated to
enlightenment values, opposing tyranny, the rights of women and minorities, and
the revival of a dormant Arab culture emerging from centuries under the
Turkish-led Ottoman Empire.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Tueni
inherited the newspaper and many of those ideas from his father, who died in
1947. He took to politics young, entering parliament in 1951, where he helped
lead a campaign to oust Lebanon's president. He was appointed ambassador to the
United Nations during some of the worst years of the 1975-90 civil war. And he
served as a counselor to Lebanon's president when the country signed an
ill-fated treaty in 1983 with Israel, which had invaded a year earlier. But he
has probably left his most lasting mark on journalism, helping establish
an-Nahar as one of the Arab world's most independent newspapers.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>As an
editor, he was jailed -- four or five times, he recalled, although he forgets
the precise number. He takes a wistful pride as he walks past the front pages
that adorn the newspaper's walls: "I feel like I wrote better then than I
write now." And during 16-hour days, he plies the newsroom like a
reporter, asking staff about the day's big story and what's at stake. His
editorial meetings are more intellectual salon than deadline frenzy: At one
meeting, the intersection of political Islam and democracy dominated the talk.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"You
can't run a newspaper like you run an army or a factory," he said.
"Ten columns can't be like 10 pairs of shoes."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Tueni is
Lebanese, but that's often code here, to conceal identities rooted in family,
clan, town and sect that can sometimes be revealed in the pronunciation of a
single letter of the Arabic alphabet. He is Greek Orthodox, a Christian
community with roots in Syria, Jordan and Palestine that historically served as
a bridge between Lebanon's more numerous Maronite Catholics and its Muslim
sects. He considers himself an Arab; there is a part of Islam, he once said, in
every Christian in the Middle East. He is a defiant Lebanese nationalist, but
sees a shared history, culture and identity between Syria and Lebanon.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>His
lifelong friend, George Khodr, the Greek Orthodox bishop of Mount Lebanon, said
he would describe Tueni as he identifies himself, in a complicated formula:
"a Syro-Byzantine of Arab heritage and Lebanese loyalty."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Tueni's
pursuits are no less eclectic. On his shelves are volumes of the writings of
Imam Ali, the prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, that serve as a model
for Arabic, much as the speeches of Cicero did for Latin. Other books compete
for space: "The Muslim Jesus," Khalil Gibran's "The
Prophet" and the works of Adonis, one of the greatest living Arab poets.
He quotes Immanuel Kant in speeches, which can glide effortlessly among French,
English and Arabic.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>By virtue
of age or interest, his conversations often meander into tangents: the impact
of ancient Phoenician, for instance, on the dialect of modern Lebanese in the
northern city of Tripoli. But he retains the edge of his occasionally acerbic
editorials, which appear every Monday in an-Nahar. To friends, it is one of his
qualities: a cosmopolitan fighter, even if as recently as a year ago his
profile had faded as his 48-year-old son, Gebran, steered an-Nahar in his own
direction.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"He
is an open person, but not a soft person," said Ahmad Beydoun, a
sociologist at the Lebanese University. "Above all, in a country where
politics is far from being refined, Ghassan is a refined man, and this is very
important when you find yourself in the middle of rather primitive language in
Lebanese politics -- primitive identities, primitive behavior and primitive
language."</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>Loss and Renewal</span></font></b></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Tueni's
return to Lebanon's political life this year was born of tragedy.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>On Dec.
12, Gebran, named for Ghassan's father, was killed. Eighty-eight pounds of TNT
packed in a car blew his armored sport-utility vehicle over the side of a hill
in an attack that many blamed on Syria.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Gebran
was Tueni's last surviving child. He lost his 7-year-old daughter Nayla to
cancer, the disease that later killed his wife, the poet Nadia Tueni. His son
Makram, named for an Egyptian Christian leader, was killed in a car accident in
France in 1987.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>At
Gebran's funeral, in a speech his friends said was unrehearsed, Tueni spoke to
the mourners.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"I
call today not for revenge, hatred or blood," he said. "I call that
we bury with Gebran all the hatred, all the controversies. I call on all the
Lebanese, Muslims and Christians to be united in the service of great Lebanon,
in the service of its Arab cause."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The words
reverberated across Lebanon. Here was a call distinct from the usual vows of
revenge. Within days, Tueni had reemerged as someone who many Lebanese hoped
could chart a path that was independent of communal politics. He took over at
an-Nahar for his son and ran unopposed for his seat in parliament. He
participated this week in a national dialogue, the most high-profile talks
among political factions since the civil war. Among his admirers was Ayatollah
Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon's senior Shiite cleric.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"This
is a man overwhelmed by grief who found a moment to say, 'Enough,' and this is
really what endeared him to so many," said Samir Khalaf, a sociologist at
the American University of Beirut. "People like this are rare in our
political culture."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>A frame
sits on Tueni's desk. On one side is his wife in her younger days, writing at a
desk. On the other is a portrait before she died in 1983. Each day, he turns
the frame, depending on his mood.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Her study
at his home is as it was when she died, he said, the light still on every
night. Nothing was touched in Gebran's office at an-Nahar. He recalled the
death of his other son, whose picture sits behind his desk. After the accident,
Makram was in a coma for 20 days. "I would talk, and I didn't know if he
was hearing," Tueni said. "He was looking at me, but I didn't know if
he was seeing."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"I
don't cope with all this loss," he said, sitting in the newspaper office.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"I've
built myself a world where I think the dead people are still alive with us,
particularly Nadia."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"I
think . . . . " His breath quickened, then he fell silent. He nodded his
head.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"I've
decided I'm going to be two men: the man I'm speaking about and the man who's
speaking," he said.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The night
Gebran was killed, Tueni addressed weeping journalists in the newsroom. "It
is not the time for tears, but for action," he said. "Everyone to
work. An-Nahar has to hit the newsstands tomorrow." He then saw the
proposed headline for the next day's issue -- a mundane account of the car bomb
that he recalled thinking was stupid. He dictated a new one: "Gebran
didn't die, and an-Nahar will continue."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Then he
left.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>'Impossible Victories'</span></font></b></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Beirut is
a city of perspectives. Its downtown rises from the sea, a brash vision of
modernity that exemplifies the cosmopolitan culture of a coast. Much of the
rest of the city slides down from the mountains, inheriting age-old disputes.
Politics there, shaped by the centuries-old bargaining between religious
communities, has brought long periods of stability and intermittent bursts of
bloodshed.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>On a
recent day, Tueni navigated the two worlds. His workday began at noon, at a
meeting with local officials from the neighborhood he represents.
"Folkloric," he called it. It was followed by condolences for a
member of parliament who had died. It was there that the mood of the country
intersected with its almost desperate desire for an alternative to
politics-as-usual.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Sabah
Haj, a 69-year-old retired academic, ran up to Tueni as he entered the church
along a busy street. "You can play a role now that no one else can
play," Haj blurted out.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Tueni
smiled, then moved on.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>A recent
headline in an-Nahar sums up the mood today: "Lebanese are drowning in
their sectarianism." Some are reluctant to buy real estate too close to
the Green Line that separated Christian East Beirut from the predominantly
Muslim west during the civil war. Anger at the pro-Syrian stance of Shiite
leaders is more pitched than ever.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"I'm
afraid that we won't be able to build a state with all these confessions,
especially since everyone is so hypocritical," said Khodr, the bishop.
"They all speak of the nation, when all they seek are their sectarian
interests."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Tueni
fits uneasily in any of those categories, which is part of his appeal. He calls
the sway of the militarized political party Hezbollah over the Shiite community
it claims to represent "intellectual terrorism." Although he is a
devout Christian, he dismisses Michel Aoun, a former general who has emerged as
the country's most powerful Christian figure, as "a psychological
case."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Tueni's
thoughts run deeper: how Christians, a minority in Lebanon, can continue to
play a role that Christian communities in places such as Syria and Egypt long
ago ceded. He remains certain of one thing: The role cannot come through force.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"This
is a war of impossible victories," he said, smoking a thin cigarette.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
broader challenge is how to forge a country greater than its parts. In that, he
asks the questions that began his political career and that dominated the life
of his father: Is there an identity -- be it Arab, Lebanese or something new --
that can transcend religious affiliations that tend toward the tribal? Is there
a notion of citizenship that can ensure rights that only individual communities
guarantee now?</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>At the
same time, he worries about a social and political brand of Islam dominant
today that he believes has to reform itself.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"I
think the challenge precisely is integrating this country along national,
patriotic lines and redefining religion. I think the real reform has to be
within the religions. We have to teach secularism," he said. "Not
secularism in that it's anti-religious. It's anti-transforming the religions
into tribes. Because this is what we have now -- a tribal war."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Optimistic?
Not necessarily, he said. "But at least I'm not desperate."</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-weight:bold'>Past and Promise</span></font></b></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>In his
maiden speech on his return to parliament, after he called for forgiving
grudges, Tueni made a suggestion unusual for a Christian lawmaker: He asked
Lebanon's government to take the initiative in starting a dialogue with Hamas,
the radical Islamic group that won a majority of seats in the Palestinian
parliament. In it, he says, he sees a potential for pragmatism, and pragmatism
is good for Lebanon.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"I
will probably be listened to," he said beforehand.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
debate continues on Tueni's role -- throwback or way forward?</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Khodr is
doubtful. Tueni's ideals may remain, he said, but his time has passed.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>"He
is quite old now," he said. "I don't think that he can really make
any change."</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But
Salam, the lawyer, wonders. Unlike many of today's leaders, who preside over
the peace that ended their war, Tueni has no blood on his hands. His community
never had a militia. Through his career, he has been more outsider than
operative. He sits in parliament as a defiantly secular voice, and his newspaper
-- his once again -- reflects his vision.</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Throwback
or way forward?</span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Salam
thought about the question. "Those are not mutually exclusive," he
said.</span></font></p>
<p><i><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-style:italic'>Special correspondent Lynn Maalouf contributed to this
report.</span></font></i></p>
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