[LCM Articles] Losses Renew a Lebanese Healer, Washington Post

[Loai Naamani]

Losses Renew a Lebanese Healer
Son's Death Brings Prominent Journalist, 80, Back Into Fray

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 4, 2006; A01

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.

"Let us bury our grudges and grief," he declared, his thick, gray hair
combed back but a little unruly.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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."

Journalist and Politician

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

"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."

Loss and Renewal

Tueni's return to Lebanon's political life this year was born of tragedy.

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.

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.

At Gebran's funeral, in a speech his friends said was unrehearsed, Tueni
spoke to the mourners.

"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."

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.

"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."

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.

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."

"I don't cope with all this loss," he said, sitting in the newspaper office.

"I've built myself a world where I think the dead people are still alive
with us, particularly Nadia."

"I think . . . . " His breath quickened, then he fell silent. He nodded his
head.

"I've decided I'm going to be two men: the man I'm speaking about and the
man who's speaking," he said.

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."

Then he left.

'Impossible Victories'

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.

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.

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.

Tueni smiled, then moved on.

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.

"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."

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."

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.

"This is a war of impossible victories," he said, smoking a thin cigarette.

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?

At the same time, he worries about a social and political brand of Islam
dominant today that he believes has to reform itself.

"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."

Optimistic? Not necessarily, he said. "But at least I'm not desperate."

Past and Promise

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.

"I will probably be listened to," he said beforehand.

The debate continues on Tueni's role -- throwback or way forward?

Khodr is doubtful. Tueni's ideals may remain, he said, but his time has
passed.

"He is quite old now," he said. "I don't think that he can really make any
change."

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.

Throwback or way forward?

Salam thought about the question. "Those are not mutually exclusive," he
said.

Special correspondent Lynn Maalouf contributed to this report.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/lebanon-articles/attachments/20060304/a40d1168/attachment.htm