The cost of gagging Beirut (Part III)

Salim al-Lawzi: His dying thoughts

Why Salim al-Lawzi?

Who was he?

The man was born in Tripoli, Lebanon, in 1922.

He studied at Egypt’s Cairo University.

He served as assistant director of the now-defunct Near East Broadcasting Station.

He became Managing editor of the Egyptian weekly magazine Rose el-Youssef.

In 1952, he moved on to Dar el-Hilal, a leading Egyptian publishing house.

In 1955, he took over the Lebanese weekly al-Hawadeth.

In 1958, when the first Lebanese civil war broke out, he sought refuge in Syria, where an accident claimed the life of his only son. He came back to build al-Hawadeth into the biggest, most outspoken and widely read publication in the Arab world.

In 1977, after the second Lebanese civil war and two bomb attacks on al-Hawadeth, he sought refuge in England.

His visits to Lebanon from then on were rare, and when he did come, he turned up as stealthily as possible and made sure he had maximum protection.

His last visit – an urgent one prompted by the death of his mother – was made openly, with little or no precautions.

It was on February 24, 1980, while he was on his way to Beirut International Airport to catch a flight back to London, that Lebanon’s infamous Unidentified Gunmen caught up with him.

On March 4, 1980, his mutilated body was found decomposing in the woods of Aramoun, south of Beirut.

I only met Salim al-Lawzi on two occasions; both times at his London home in late 1979.

But I knew he was a watcher all along of my English-language weekly magazine, Monday Morning. For one year after its launch in June 1972, Monday Morning had more than doubled in size. Its circulation had more than quadrupled. Its advertising space had grown fivefold. And its staff had tripled.

So it was sometime in early 1974 that Gaby Deeb, one of Lawzi’s business aides, whose daughter Hala and son Shukri were friends of mine, came to see me at my office in Wardieh, off Hamra. He asked if I were interested in selling part of my exclusive ownership of Monday Morning to al-Hawadeth.

I said, “Yes, why not.”

He said, “At what price?”

“I have no idea,” I replied, “as I never considered part-ownership. But I am open to offers.”

Gaby Deeb left with the mutual understanding he would come back with a tangible offer – and he did.

“We offer to pay you half your overall disbursements to date in exchange for half the ownership,” Gaby said.

“And who says half the money I spent can build you a magazine half as successful as mine? Where’s the ‘value added’ in the offer?” I asked.

The probing ended there.

Forward six years to November-December 1979, when my maternal cousin Farid el-Khatib, then working for Lawzi at al-Hawadeth in London, rings me in Beirut. He tells me, “Mr. Lawzi would like to meet with you on your next trip to London. Anytime soon, you think?”

“I should be in London in about 10 days,” I answered. “I will buzz you when I am there and you can arrange a meeting.”

On my next trip to London, I phoned Farid to say I was in town.

Within maybe 10 minutes, Lawzi rings me at home, saying: “I understand your residence is on Moore Street. Come by -- my home is within walking distance, on Sloane Avenue.”

I said, “Sorry, but I honestly don’t know my way around in London.”

He said, “No problem, I will have my driver pick you up in five minutes.”

The driver picked me up and dropped me off at Lawzi’s home within the hour.

It was the first time I met Lawzi face-to-face.

“What are you still doing in Beirut?” he asked me.

I said, “I can’t afford to relocate the publication and its staff to Europe.”

“What would you like to drink?” Lawzi asked.

I said, “Scotch with much ice and a drop of Perrier water, please.”

Lawzi summoned the driver, whose name turned out to be James, and told him, “Scotch with much ice and a drop of Perrier for the gentleman. Do we have Perrier?”

James said no. So Lawzi asked him to go buy a bottle from the Europa chain store across the street. I realized at that point there was only the three of us at the house.

After I was served my drink and had a few sips, Lawzi opened up, saying: “Let me tell you why I wanted us to meet. I’ll start with a Perrier story. When the Perrier brand became the champagne of bottled mineral water worldwide, the owners were somehow talked into diversifying. They started producing flavored varieties – Perrier with a touch of lemon or lime and all the rest. None of the flavored varieties sold like the original, fizzy and pure Perrier.

“Ditto with me. After the overwhelming success I had with al-Hawadeth, friends put into my head that I needed to diversify. I took their advice and put out in 1977 an English-language weekly, Events (English for Hawadeth). I regret doing that. English is not my forte.

“So here is what I want to offer you: 50 percent ownership in Events, which I will keep funding in full, in exchange for your undertaking to run it from A to Z… How about that?”

I said, “It certainly is a generous offer, but I need to think, which is what I always do when making a major decision. Let me mull over your proposal and come back to you on my next trip to London within three weeks at most.”

“Okay, but don’t be long because I need to decide,” he said, adding: “We can now have a bite.”

We moved to the dining table and sat facing each other. James brought a bowl of salad and two steaks on a plate.

I smiled and said, “Sorry, Mr. Lawzi, but I don’t eat meat.”

S.L.: “Then what do you eat?”

F.N.: “Cheese, fried or scrambled eggs will do.”

S.L.: “James! Do we have cheese or eggs?

James: “No sir, we don’t.”

S.L.: “Quickly James, get some from Europa.”

I took leave after lunch, returned to Beirut a few days later and flew back to London within three weeks and telephoned Lawzi.

“You surely can find your way to my home this time,” he said.

“Indeed,” I said, and headed promptly to Sloane Avenue.

When I got near Lawzi’s house, I found him pacing the pavement outside.

“Any problem?” I asked.

“No, I am just thinking of a headline for an interview we’ve just had with (South Lebanon Army commander) Saad Haddad. We may have to leave out some of his controversial remarks...”

Minutes after we entered the house and settled down in the sitting room, James walked in and said, “Scotch, lots of ice and Perrier water, sir? We have Perrier this time.”

I said, “Yes, please,” telling Lawzi a few minutes later: “I thought very hard about your offer, which I deem both generous and flattering. The problem is that I have my own Perrier to run. Short of a merger between Events and Monday Morning, I can’t see how I can concurrently run two essentially rival publications that are based some 3,000 miles apart.”

S.L.: “I expected such a response. I knew you would say that. In fact, I have already initiated steps to fold Events.”

When we sat at the dining table as the time before, I quickly caught sight of a bowl of boiled eggs, a huge platter of assorted cheeses and a basket of French bread.

I said: “Wow, I’m being spoiled.”

But before either one of us had a bite, Lawzi looked me straight in the eye, pointed his index at me and blurted: “Listen! I reign supreme at the helm of the regional Arabic press. You reign supreme at the helm of the regional English press. Make sure to write something decorous about me in English after they kill me.”

I was shocked and lost for words. I just said: “Have faith!”

“Yes, of course,” he said, “but let me repeat: I reign supreme at the helm of the regional Arabic press. You reign supreme at the helm of the regional English press. Make sure to write something decorous about me in English after they kill me.”

We paused speechless for maybe 30 seconds, then nibbled and engaged in a mundane conversation that never touched from far or near on politics or dangers to his life.

I didn’t ask Lawzi who he meant by “they” catching up with him, and he didn’t even try to elaborate. I think he assumed I knew who “they” were.

In all, I met Lawzi for hardly three hours in his lifetime. But I never mentioned, privately or publicly, what was said in those hours until this day.

Monday Morning’s March 10, 1980, black cover, titled “In Mourning,” was a futile gesture, if you will. And the “something decorous” we wrote about him on Page 3, also titled “In Mourning,” did not resurrect him.

But my staff and I mourned him because he was a towering figure in the Arab and Lebanese press and a champion of Lebanese freedom.

“The cost of gagging Beirut (Part IV)” will be about the fourth victim, Riad Taha

The cost of gagging Beirut (2)

Najib Azzam: A rendezvous with death

Najib at the AUB Speakers' Corner

I have not recovered from Najib Azzam’s violent death in 1976 and never will.

I first met him in 1969, when I was appointed to a part-time position as Lecturer in English Journalism at the American University of Beirut. He signed up to audit my course alongside such regular students as Leila Shahid and Hayat Mroue (eldest daughter of the late Kamel Mroue and the current Lady Palumbo) among others.

I also acted as advisor to the 1970-1971 AUB Yearbook of which Najib was chief editor.

From our meetings in class and our long hours at the Yearbook office, I realized that he not only had the nose for news, but also the eye to spot or capture “a picture worth a thousand words.”  He also struck me as a tireless workhorse who is well versed in numbers and music.

Najib was in the first group of people I enlisted for Monday Morning, the English-language weekly magazine I founded in Beirut and launched on June 19, 1972.

His title by year’s end was “Advertising Manager.” Soon I had him listed on the magazine’s title page as “Office Manager.” That was because I could find no title to describe what he meant to the publication. He was Monday Morning in all its aspects: reporting, editorial, finance, organization, archives, and personnel… In effect, he was my second in command.

On New Year’s Eve 1974-1975, property developer Sakr Fakhri, entrepreneur Hassan Zantout and I decided to jointly buy the lease of Tramps, a basement discothèque nightclub at the Continental Hotel building in Raouché. Najib became my nighttime point man there within weeks.

In mid-January 1975, Monday Morning was planning a cover story on the efforts of Maronite Patriarch Antonios Boutros Khreish then to find a Christian-Christian common denominator on the eve of a Lebanese presidential visit to Syria. Najib looked in-house for color separation films of a photograph of Patriarch Khreish we had used before. He didn’t find them. He said we probably left them behind where we had them done -- at the art graphics, color separation photography and film- and plate-making workshop of Joseph D. Raidy in Gemmayze, East Beirut.

Midday Friday, January 16, 1976, I phoned Joseph, who worked on the graphic art design of Monday Morning in its prelaunch stage before setting up his private enterprise. He confirmed the films were indeed at his workplace and that he could send them to the Museum Crossing where I can have someone pick them up. We set the rendezvous hour at 12:30 p.m.

I went out of my office and told Najib and his colleague Adel T. Merhi, who were standing together, “I need someone to pick up the Raidy films at the Museum Crossing.”
 

Adel stepped forward first. My spontaneous reaction was to tell him, “No, you’re a high risk Maronite in West Beirut. At least Najib is Greek Orthodox, and for that matter a safer choice.”

The fateful words have been resonating in my mind, in fact haunting me, for the past 34 years.

Najib left the Monday Morning offices in Wardieh between 12:10 and 12:15p.m.

He took his car—a navy blue Austin Mini GT1275, license plate 257867 – and drove towards the Museum Crossing.

What happened to him and where it happened to him remains a mystery.

Around 1 p.m. – over 45 minutes after he had left to keep his appointment – I received a phone call from the man who was waiting to hand him the color separation. He asked what was keeping our man. Since the distance between Monday Morning offices and the Museum Crossing could, in the sparse traffic that prevailed that Friday, be covered in no more than 10-15 minutes, I naturally suspected all was not well with Najib. By 2 p.m. I started contacting all the political parties, militias and organizations involved in the armed conflict, expecting to find that he was held by one of the kidnappers that were loose on the streets of Beirut. Everyone disclaimed all knowledge of Najib’s whereabouts and promised to search for him. Contacts with all the major hospitals in Beirut also drew a blank.

By midnight, there was still no sign of him. A handful of staff joined me and refused to turn in.

Early Saturday morning brought no news. Around 10 a.m. that day, however, I received a call from a friend who said he had read in the Arabic daily as-Safir a two-line news item to the effect the body of Najib Azzam had been found in Tayyouni. The journalist who reported the discovery was sought and found. He confirmed the report and stated the body had been taken to the morgue of a field hospital in the vicinity. I went there and made the final confirmation.

I searched and found the man who had discovered him. He was an “armed element.” He stated that he had found the body about 1:00 p.m. on Friday, January 16, thrown in the street in Tayyouni, just off the Ain Remmaneh-Shiah front – a no man’s-land. There was no sign of his car, but his wallet was still on him, and no money or papers had been taken. The fighter contacted his superior, who arranged for the ambulance.

Who stopped and summarily “executed” Najib and in what circumstances was never known.

The magazine’s cover on Monday the 18th had a photograph of Mr. Najib Azzam and the title “Part of Monday Morning is Dead.”

Riad Taha, head of the Lebanese Press Federation (LPF), was one of those who wrote notes describing the Najib they knew:

“I came to know the late Najib Beshara Azzam only a few days before he was killed, when he came to interview me at my home. I was impressed by his intelligence, his vitality and his courage, and I asked him to be careful as he moved about the city. But he did not seem to care much about his personal safety – not as much as he did about doing his job. I was stricken with grief at the loss of this friend and colleague, whom I consider one of the martyrs of the press and of freedom in this country.

“I shared the sorrow of the owner of Monday Morning, of the Monday Morning family, of the Azzam family over this tragedy. I was, like them, one of the bereaved.

“This catastrophe that has swept over Lebanon had mowed down thousands of innocent, unarmed peaceable citizens. The armed men who have died are much fewer than the innocent victims…”

Like Najib, Riad Taha was gunned down in daylight in a West Beirut street four years later, in July 1980. He too “did not seem to care much about his personal safety – not as much as he did about doing his job.”

“The Cost of Gagging Beirut (3)” will be about the third victim, Salim Lawzi