Lebanon’s coup d'état

Clockwise from L.: David Malouf, Beshara & Salim Takla, George Zaydan, Rose al-Yousef and Amin Maalouf

From L. around Danny Thomas: Anthony Abraham, Richard Shadyac, Georges Corm, Dr. George Younan, Anis Freiha and Milton Hatoum

I introduced Samir Atallah in two posts last year saying his career as a journalist, writer and author spans almost half a century. A native of Lebanon, he has published several novels, historical books and travelogues. He now contributes a weekly think piece for Beirut’s an-Nahar and has been writing a daily column of about 300-400 words for Saudi Asharq Alawsat since 1987. The Arabic for "coup d'état" is the headline he chose for his think piece this week for an-Nahar. My paraphrasing:

The Financial Times celebrated 125 years in print last week.

Since its launch in 1888, the FT has become the gold standard in business and financial journalism.

But 13 years earlier, in 1875, two Lebanese brothers, Beshara and Salim Takla, launched from the Egyptian port city of Alexandria an economic weekly newspaper they called Al-Ahram.

Within two months, the Takla brothers turned it into an economic daily before relocating to Cairo.

It has since become Egypt’s newspaper of records.

Beshara and Salim Takla called their publication al-Ahram – Arabic for Pyramids – in honor of their host country and its history.

In 1892, prolific Lebanese novelist Georgie Zaydan (1861-1914) created al-Hilal, the oldest cultural periodical in the Arab world and the only journal that has been issued regularly for more than a hundred years.

Zaydan called his publication al-Hilal – Arabic for Crescent – to show the appreciation of a Lebanese Christian émigré of the Muslim faith of most Arabs.

It is futile and stupid to compare years and dates. I certainly don’t mean to suggest that al-Ahram is anywhere near the Financial Times. I only mentioned dates and brands to compare not what we accomplished, but what we lost.

Over the years, we managed to lose tiny Lebanon’s outsized overseas role, whether in Ecuador, New York, Rio or even Alaska.

Lebanese émigrés proved time and again their human capacity to be exemplary citizens in host countries whenever they were prevented from being ordinary citizens on their native land.

How do you cope with such hard fate?

Is this tiny country fated to be a gateway for its citizens’ exit and a portal for the entry of invaders and transients?

To escape Ottoman persecution, Lebanese moved to Egypt, where they found safety and dignity under Khedive Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian commander in the Ottoman Army, and further away to Malta.

In Egypt, they diffused publishing, brain work and theater arts. Fatima (Rose) al-Yousef, who was born in Lebanon’s Tripoli in 1898, became the queen of the stage and the press in Egypt.

The Rose al-Yousef magazine, which she founded in 1925, is still one of the most popular and widely-circulated weeklies in Egypt and the Arab world, along with its sister weekly Sabah al-Khair.

There is nothing childishly romantic about remembering the launch of al-Ahram on the occasion of the FT’s 125th anniversary. By association of ideas, the two events evoke the here and now.

Today, for instance, we find ourselves deploying fighters to Syria from Lebanon’s North and South. Today, families in seeing their intellectuals wing their way among Arabs find themselves threatened by the latter’s military wings.

Lebanon was a university graduating Arab scholars. It has turned into a training camp for those bracing to fight their own people and scorch their land.

This is not moaning about the brilliant past but lamenting the bleak present. The past will be rekindled in future history books, albeit in abridged form.

On his visit to Lebanon last September, Pope Benedict urged multi-faith Lebanon to be a model of religious peace and coexistence for the Middle East. He was probably referring to Lebanon as it was from the late 19th century until its assassination in (the civil war of) 1975.

Lebanon was a beacon of humanity in those years. It was shining through such novelists as David Malouf in Australia, Amin Maalouf in Paris and Milton Hatoum in Brazil. All three wrote on one subject: human fraternity and Man’s faith in Man.

In each continent around the world, you will find a Lebanese looking for peace of the souls that is lacking in Lebanon.

In Miami, Florida, I looked for the daughters and sons of Anthony R. Abraham, who I had met in the mid-1970s through Danny Thomas, the most renowned Lebanese in America after Khalil Gibran and through Anthony R. Abraham I got to meet lawyer Richard Shadyac.

What joined the three was Lebanese before the coup d’état.

Danny Thomas founded St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a pediatric treatment and research facility focused on children’s cancer diseases. He bequeathed his fortune to St. Jude. Richard Shadyac and Anthony Abraham, who died in 2009 and 2011 respectively, also left part of their fortunes to St. Jude.

All three cannot vote in Lebanon, because we want to suffice with the voters we have.

Philanthropist Anthony Abraham graduated from the University of Detroit but dropped out of law school during the Depression to work for the Chicago Evening American, then launched his own Help Wanted News and became wealthy when he sold it.

Abraham and his family moved to South Florida in 1951, and launched a Chevrolet dealership in the outskirts of Little Havana. He prospered again, turning the sprawling two-block business into the largest Chevrolet dealership in South Florida.

Throughout his long life, the savvy businessman with the omnipresent cigar was also devoted to numerous causes involving faith and philanthropy. As a child, he had vowed, “If, by the grace of God I ever could, I would feed the poor and help the sick.” He more than made good on that promise.

Abraham was the last living founding member of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.

In 1976, Abraham, who named one of his sons Thomas after his friend Danny Thomas, founded the Anthony R. Abraham Foundation, which gave millions to stateside hospitals and charities. The foundation also supported schools and hospitals in Lebanon and Haiti.

His daughter Norma Jean, whom he adopted from an orphanage in Lebanon, is continuing his charitable work and philanthropy.

Abraham was also a founding member of Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church in Coral Gables.

Coral Gables has all the hallmarks of Ashrafieh before the Beirut neighborhood was set upon in 1975. An aura of Lebanon also permeates the Anthony R. Abraham Family Gallery at the new Coral Gables Museum.

In the Lebanese renaissance era between 1955 and 1975, intellectual rivalry was chiefly over a cultural identity, according to Dr. George Younan. It involved thinkers like George Corm and Anis Freiha.   

But don’t look around you now. The year 1975 marked the bloody start of the coup d’état against the Republic of Humanitarian Tweeting. It was the year Said Akl launched a newspaper to cover battlefront news and gulls overflying Beirut were felled by Kalashnikovs. What remains of the Kalashnikovs that arrived in Beirut in crates are now exported to Syria.

The image – but not the message – is of Lebanon now being swamped by waves and dark clouds from all sides. It is only natural for the political mayhem to be mirrored in the press and on campuses and playgrounds.

I don’t think anyone remembers seeing a media pandemonium such as we see today. The buds of breakups and hatred are everywhere. Advocates of unity and forgiveness are treated as outcasts.

Lebanon’s elder statesmen formulated the National Charter, drafted the Constitution and charted the roads to togetherness and the ways to communicate. These evaporated under today’s politicians.

Two Lebanese outraced Europe to launch a financial newspaper a century-and-a-half ago. Today, we are a state lacking a national economy and electricity, a state whose legislators meet a few miles from Kandahar to draft an electoral law smacking of sickly sectarianism. It’s another chapter of the coup d’état.

نقل فؤادك حيث شئت من الهوى .... ما الحب إلا للحبيب الأول

My first love at first sight

My bullet-riddled Alfa Montreal

Let your heart meander along the passion path,

But love forever belongs to your first-love.

No matter how many homes a lad fancies,

He’ll everlastingly yearn for his first.

It’s the closest I could get in translating the following Arabic verses dating back to the ninth century:

نقل فؤادك حيث شئت من الهوى

ما الحب إلا للحبيب الأول 

كم منزل في الأرض يعشقه الفتى

و حنينه أبدا لأول منزل

They belong to Syrian-born poet Abu Tammam who spent his youth in Homs, of all places.

According to contemporary Syrian poet Adonis, Abu Tammam "started out from a vision of poetry as a sort of creation of the world through language, comparing the relationship between the poet and the word to the relationship between two lovers…”

All this is to recount my first love at first sight – not of a woman but of a supercar.

Of all the Volkswagen Beetles, Chevrolet Camaros,  Nissan Patrols, Mercedes and BMW 4x4s I owned and drove over the years, my heart belongs to that supercar.

It was a hot summer night in 1973 and I was walking towards the Palm Beach hotel on Beirut’s seafront when I passed by the Ain el-Mreisseh showroom of “Bassoul-Hneine” car dealership. “Bassoul-Hneine” were and still are the agents for several car makes, chiefly Renault and Alfa Romeo.

The showroom was well lit. The sight of a supercar in metallic gold, sitting majestically at one end of the showroom, hit me like lightening. It was indeed love at first sight.

After spending some 10 minutes admiring it from the front and the driver’s side only, because of the way it was parked, I spent a good part of my shuteye time wondering about its interior, its specifications, and above all its price.

Bassoul-Hneine were regular advertisers in my weekly magazine. So first thing in the morning I called in my advertising manager Adel Merhi and described what I saw.

File photo of a Montreal in mint condition 

I said, “Adel, in two words: Go buy me that car from our client Bassoul-Hneine. I presume the price is prohibitive, so try for a cash-and-barter deal.”

Within maybe two hours, Adel rang me from Bassoul-Hneine to say, “The car is mindboggling. It’s their one and only ‘Alfa Romeo Montreal’. But the dealership wouldn’t budge on the price (the equivalent in Lebanese liras of $14,000, if I remember correctly) – 90 percent in cash upfront and 10 percent in advertising space.”

I answered Adel, “Do the deal, but don’t leave the showroom before they put a ‘Sold’ tag on the car. We will finalize and pick up the car tomorrow.”

That’s what we did.

On starting the engine, I was thrilled to hear a vigorous V-8 roar. And the five-minute drive home felt like sitting in a fighter jet ready to launch.

On arriving home to take my three excited little boys’ for a spin, I could see their popcorn leaping out of its box.

The Alfa Montreal was a technological flagship. It was innovative, impressive and expensive. It was more expensive to buy than the E-type Jaguar or the Porsche 911.

The Montreal's design by Giuseppe Bertone was anything but conservative. Among its innovative features were headlight eyebrows that pivoted down only when needed to give the car a clean, menacing look with its headlights off.

The Montreal's dashboard and five-speed manual gearbox

One of its key features was an easy-revving, small displacement gem of a V8. A detuned version of the 33/2's brilliant engine was dropped into the front of Alfa's Montreal. This motor, with its tidy alloy construction and SPICA mechanical fuel injection, was far ahead of its time. It made 200hp out of just 2.6 liters, a very respectable specific output for a naturally aspirated car. A five-speed manual gearbox and ventilated disc brakes were also used. In short, it was one of the liveliest powerhouses of its day.

There were 3,917 Montreal's produced between 1971 and 1975 and they were never exported to the United States.

Enjoyment of my Montreal lasted just over a year. By late 1974, the steady rumble of an approaching civil war had me send the family to England.

By early 1975, the internecine strife in the country saw me hide my “first love at first sight” in the basement garage of the Sabbagh Center on Hamra Street, where I had a PR boutique.

A stray shell hit the office within months, but the Montreal remained safely “mothballed” in the third level basement for a year-and-a-half.

A lull in the civil war in 1977 encouraged me to get the car out with the help of car electricians and tyre mechanics. But most if not all highways and inner city roads were inaccessible, roadblocks were everywhere, the gas pumps were invariably dry and carjackers were a good many.

Within weeks of its recovery from “internment” in the Sabbagh Center, the Montreal was riddled with bullets while parked in front of my building during a firefight involving al-Mourabitoun and a rival militia.

It was time I thought to part ways.

I agreed to sell the Alfa superstar to a dear friend who wanted it for his younger brother. The brother escaped unhurt when he crashed it beyond repair within months.

That first love at first sight was also my last.

How I got to know the world’s most beautiful woman and richest man

Portraits of Soraya and Adnan Khashoggi

The time is early February 1974. I am at work in Monday Morning, the nonpolitical English-language weekly magazine I founded and started publishing in Beirut 18 months earlier. The tabloid-size periodical is thriving and its offices in the Wadi’ Beshara Building on Rue Maamari, just off Hamra, is a magnet for reporters, writers and photojournalists.

My receptionist Huda Asmar, who comes from Damour, walks in one day and says a foreign female photographer wants to show you her portfolio.   

Enter a stunning doe-eyed woman with plenty of je ne sais quoi whom the late Norman Parkinson at one time described as “the most naturally beautiful woman I have ever photographed.” She introduces herself by her first name, Soraya, and shows me an impressive sample of her photographs and color slides for sale.

I ask if I could keep some on consignment and whether she would accept occasional freelance assignments. She answers yes to both questions, gives me a telephone number to reach her and takes leave.

Within the week, I ask Huda to ring Soraya and request photos to illustrate a feature on around 30 food-and-drink establishments in Beirut that a reporter has already evaluated.

Next morning, a man delivers an envelope from Soraya containing not contact prints for the feature, but some 60 black and white photographs. They were all taken and developed overnight.

I am deeply impressed.

The lady photographer with the dazzling looks passes by my office hours later to say she will shortly be flying to Cairo, where she can do some work for the magazine.

ALI AMIN

Within days, she sends me a message on the teleprinter of Egypt’s official Middle East News Agency (MENA).  She asks if Monday Morning would be interested in an exclusive interview with Ali Amin.

Soraya interviewing Ali Amin at al-Ahram in Cairo

The press baron had just been named editor-in-chief of the authoritative daily al-Ahram, replacing the deposed monarch of the Arab press, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal.

Ali Amin was stepping into Heikal's shoes after nine years of self-exile following the release from jail of his twin brother Mustafa on President Anwar Sadat’s orders.

I quickly wire Soraya my go-ahead for the interview.

Inside 48 hours, I receive six photographs and a transcribed text of the taped interview – signed “Soraya Khashoggi” – again, courtesy of MENA in Beirut.

When I show the text and pictures to my co-editor Imad Shehadeh, he looks at me and asks, “Which Soraya Khashoggi? Do you know her?”

-- “I know Soraya. I don’t know her surname.”

-- “Strange, because the wife of Adnan Khashoggi is called Soraya. Can it be her?”

-- “No idea, but who’s Adnan Khashoggi anyway?”

Imad briefs me on the man in a few sentences and we agree on a byline: “Text and Photographs by Monday Morning’s Special Correspondent Soraya Khashoggi.”

With Soraya away in Cairo and the “Khashoggi” riddle still unsolved, we decide to make the four-page interview with Ali Amin the cover story of the 25 February 1974 edition.

Key questions and answers from the interview:

Soraya: What’s your opinion of the new freedom allowed in the Egyptian press? Did you have any part in this new policy?

Ali Amin: No. I did not have any part in it. But to say Anwar Sadat gave us back the freedom of the press is the wrong way of putting it. I do not accept the idea that the ruler gives freedom to us. We took back our freedom, of course with the approval of the President – and we feel that this is good for us, the people, and also better for the President himself. Before this, al-Ahram was a newspaper in which the ruler said what he wanted to his people; now it is the other way round – it is a newspaper through which the people will say what they want to their ruler. I feel strongly that had we had the freedom of press, we would never have had the defeat of June 5 (1967)…

S.: What, in your view, has the reaction of the people been since you took over as editor in chief?

A.A.: Well, the circulation of the newspaper is the real mirror, and the circulation has increased.

S.: How much?

A.A.: I think it has increased about 70,000 in our weekly issue and by 20,000 to 25,000 in our daily issue…

S.: How do you feel being back in Egypt after so many years (in self-exile)? Did you ever feel that would never happen?

A.A.: No. I always believed this would happen. I always knew the day would follow the night -- and it was a long, long night. I always believed the sun would rise again, and it did.

S.: Did you ever fear that you would never again see your twin brother Mustafa, who spent so many years in prison, alive?

A.A.: No. I always knew I would see him. I was never afraid of that.

S.: What is your opinion of the forthcoming Islamic Summit? (The summit started in Pakistan two days after the interview was conducted.)

A.A.: The Islamic conference will show the unity of the Islamic countries, but I want to tell you something: We Egyptians are many Muslims and many Christians. In the (1973) October War the only General who died was a Christian, Gen. Shafik Mitri Serdak. And there were two Marshals who fought in the battle and crossed the Suez Canal; one of them is a Christian.

…I want to tell you that when I was a boy, I witnessed the 1919 Revolution, and one of the greatest successes of this Revolution against the British was that its leader Saad Zaghloul – my great-uncle -- united the Moslems and the Christians, and for the first time in our history, we fought together…

S.: What did you do in all the (nine) years you spent outside Egypt?

A.A.: I wrote. I wrote a column in (Beirut’s daily) al-Anwar. I wrote many articles for other papers, I followed all the Egyptian and Arab press and I worked in the (Lebanese) As-Sayyad publishing house.

S.: You chose England to spend most of your exile in, why?

A.A.: Because I spent all my youth in England and studied five years in Sheffield University.

GAAFAR NIMEIRY

The first question I ask Soraya on her return to Beirut from Cairo is: Now that you have identified yourself as Soraya Khashoggi, are you related to Adnan Khashoggi? Is he your husband by any chance?”

“Yes he is,” she answers with a disarming smile, “and we are the proud parents of five children: Nabila, Mohamed, Khaled, Hussein and Omar. Do you want to meet Adnan by any chance -- or interview him?”

-- “I do, of course.”

-- “Adnan and I will travel this week and I could interview Sudanese President Gaafar Nimeiry  at one point during our trip. Are you interested?”

“Indeed I am!”

The interview with Nimeiry  -- titled “Sudan will be garden of the world” -- appears as a cover story under Soraya’s full name in April 1974. Among the subtitles:

-- “The national-unity problems of Sudan and Lebanon are similar: they are artificial”

-- “We will be one of the world’s four major food suppliers before the year 2000”

-- “We have some promise of future oil and gas discoveries”

ADNAN KHASHOGGI

In mid-May 1974, Soraya sets up my appointment to interview her husband, who is said to be the richest man in the world. He receives me warmly and courteously at his luxurious offices in the Gefinor building in Ras Beirut on a day sandwiched between two of his business trips.

I interviewed Adnan at his HQ in Beirut's Gefinor

I ask him how he managed to build up one small Saudi company into a business colossus that is wrapping its arms around the globe.

“My success? I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time,” he tells me before expounding on his Triad Holding Company.

He describes it as a multinational mammoth chiefly engaged in (1) commercial and investment banking and venture capital (2) industrial and commercial development, and (3) worldwide trade – with operating companies in Indonesia, Brazil, the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

Why “Triad”?

The name springs from the involvement in Adnan’s giant business enterprise of his two brothers, Adel and Issam.

“Q.: There have been rumors in the media about your involvement in arms deals. Would you care to comment on them?

“A.: We don’t deal in arms. I certainly don’t have a shop that sells guns and bombs. Our marketing company does represent large American and European industries that manufacture both civilian and military equipment. One example is Lockheed, which builds the Tri-Star, a commercial plane, and the F104, which is a fighter. We market both products, and our customers for this kind of equipment are usually governments or airlines.”

The interview with the courteous Adnan, which Soraya did not attend, makes the cover story of the May 20, 1974 edition of my magazine.

With the buildup towards Lebanon’s civil war quickening, Soraya rings me shortly after to say she was moving with the children out of Beirut for safety reasons but will stay in touch.

Shirley Bassey (Photo from Wikipedia)

Indeed she did stay in touch by telephone and even sent me an interview for Monday Morning with Shirley Bassey. “The greatest singer in the world today” talks in it about Um Kulthoum, Lebanese audiences, her career, her personality, her fans and her future. The interview appeared February 10, 1975.

It was the last time I heard from either Soraya or Adnan save for one telephone conversation later in the month. They are at Beirut airport, probably waiting for to refueling of their private plane. Soraya asks me about the political tension gripping the country. When I start moaning about the difficulty of publishing an apolitical magazine in a politicized atmosphere, she tells me, “Wait, Adnan wants to have a word.”

Adnan comes on the line and says, “Hi, I overheard Soraya mention ‘problem’ -- what problem are you facing?”

I say turning the magazine political is vital for its survival in this politically charged atmosphere. The exclusiveness that governs issuing political licenses to Lebanese newspapers and magazines (allowing them to cover politics) means I have to buy an existing political publishing license.

Adnan: “Why don’t you do that?”

-- “I can do that. But to put the newly acquired political publishing license to use, I first need to join the Lebanese Publishers’ Union, which is a protracted procedure.  Alternatively, I need to set up a shareholding company with a minimum capital of half-a-million Lebanese liras.”

Adnan: “Okay, go the shorter route. Don’t worry about raising the capital. I’ll fund it in full...”

Soraya's June 1999 write-up for The Mail on Sunday 

A few weeks after our conversation, I choose to take the longer route. I buy an existing political publishing license -- weekly ash-Shiraa -- from Monsignor Antoine Cortbawi, join the Lebanese Publishers’ Union as sole owner of a political publishing license and turn Monday Morning socio-political starting May 1975. (See my post “The cost of gagging Beirut -- Part IV”)

I must say here, at least for the record, that Soraya never accepted a penny for any work she did for me, nor did I ever take up Adnan’s unqualified and openhanded funding offer.

I was saddened by their divorce but have had no contact with either over the past 35 years.

Jonathan and Petrina

And I was bemused on June 20,1999 when I read “Byline: SORAYA KHASHOGGI” on an article in The Mail on Sunday (London). In it, Soraya recounts her extraordinary love affair with Jonathan Aitken, the former Cabinet Minister and the father or her daughter Petrina.

Soraya writes in her opening paragraphs:  

“I FIRST met Jonathan Aitken when Harpers magazine sent me to photograph him for an article.

“He was working in his rooms in Holland Park and he laughed when the photographer sent to take his picture turned up in a blue Rolls-Royce convertible.

“I was living in both London and Saudi Arabia at the time and a few weeks later in Beirut, Fawaz Najia, my editor on Monday Morning - an English-language Lebanese magazine that I worked for first as a photographer then as a writer/photographer - asked me to interview an English Tory MP on his way to the Gulf who was in town for the night. It turned out to be Jonathan…”

The cost of gagging Beirut (1)

Kamel Mroue: He spoke his mind and went his way

When Lebanon began spiraling down the abyss of civil war post-1975, I constantly wondered when the folly would stop. It was a subject I often discussed with my maternal cousin, journalist Farid el-Khatib.

Farid el-Khatib (left) and the late Michel Abou Jaoudeh

In one of our brainstorming sessions, Farid quoted famed an-Nahar leader writer Michel Abou Jaoudeh as telling him in private: “The powers-that-be wouldn’t let the internecine strife end anytime soon -- their plan is to ‘shutdown, smash and silence Beirut.’”

The three key words read in rhyme in Arabic:

تكسير وتسكير وتسكيت بيروت

Silencing Beirut meant murdering, maiming, driving out or intimidating the journalists churning out the only outspoken, free and thriving press in the Arab world at the time. But the tide to bring the State of Lebanon to its knees has been ebbing and flowing for the past 60 years. It shows by the tens of thousands of ordinary citizens killed or disappeared in the Lebanon civil war and the political killings, mostly since 1975, of:

•  One president of the Republic (René Moawad in 1989) and a president-elect (Bashir Gemayel in 1982).

•  Three prime ministers (Riad el-Solh in 1951, Rashid Karami in 1987 and Rafik Hariri in 2005).

• At least 10 sitting or former cabinet ministers and members of parliament. They are Naim Moghabghab (1959), Kamal Junblatt (1977), Tony Franjieh (1978), Nazem el-Qadri (1989), Elie Hobeika (2002), Basel Fuleihan (2005), Gebran Tueini (2005), Pierre Gemayel (2006), Walid Eido (2007) and Antoine Ghanem (2007).

• Federation of Moslem Associations and Institutions president Sheikh Ahmad Assaf (1982); Spiritual Druze Court head Sheikh Haleem Takieddin (1983); Islamic Sunni Higher Council chief Sheikh Soubhi Saleh (1986); and Lebanon's Sunni Muslim community leader Grand Mufti Sheikh Hassan Khaled (1989).

• U.S. Ambassador Francis E. Meloy, Jr. and his counselor Robert O. Waring (1976); CIA Beirut station chief William Francis Buckley (1985); US Marines Col. William R. Higgins while on an UN assignment (1990); French Ambassador Louis Delamare (1981); French Military Attaché René Goytard; Austrian Consul Gerhard Loitzenbauer (1984)…

• Sixty-three American diplomats and civilians, 243 U.S. Marines and 56 French paratroopers in separate suicide bombings of the U.S. embassy and barracks of the U.S. and French contingents serving in the Multinational (Peacekeeping) Force in Lebanon (1983).

• The president of the American University of Beirut, Malcolm H. Kerr (1984).

•  Two Lebanese Press Federation (LPF) presidents: Nassib Metni (1958) and Riad Taha (1980).

• Three press barons: Kamel Mroue (1966), Salim Lawzi (1980) and MP Gebran Tueini (2005).

• Several news media editors, writers, reporters, photographers and administrative staff. Among them: Edouard Saab (1975), Nayef Sheblak (1975), Najib B. Azzam (1976), Janet Lee Stevens (1983), Krikor Ohannes (1986), Suhail Tawileh (1986), Hussein Mrowe (1987), and Samir Kassir (2005). 

I will be posting over the coming weeks my take on six of the named victims – Kamel Mrowe, Najib Azzam, Salim Lawzi, Riad Taha, Janet Lee Stevens and Krikor Ohannes -- in the order they were killed:

KAMEL MROUE

The late Kamel Mrowe

Kamel Mroue, uncontested pioneer of the modern-day Lebanese press, was a 1915 Shiite native of Zrariyeh, South Lebanon. He lost his father when he was 10 and completed his secondary education at an American school in Sidon before moving to Beirut in 1932. He joined the staff of today’s leading Lebanese daily an-Nahar three years later after six months as history and geography teacher at Al Amliyeh school and a short stint as reporter for the daily an-Nida’.

He spent four years of the Second World War in Istanbul first and Sofia next, before returning to Beirut in 1945. He launched his Arabic daily al-Hayat on 28 January 1946 after reportedly raising a loan of LL. 10,000. He started with a staff of six working from an office provided by an-Nahar founder Gebran Tueini.

Within five years, Mroue set al-Hayat on course to become the Arab world’s most influential and widely read newspaper. By 1951, he earned private offices for al-Hayat on Ghargour Street. He founded Lebanon’s first English-language daily, The Daily Star, the following year.

Kamel Mroue was shot dead by a lone Nasserist murderer as he sat behind his desk writing his daily front-page leader for the May 17, 1966 edition of al-Hayat.

His daily column – for which he coined a three-word header -- was always precise, concise and to the point. The three-word header ("قل كلمتك وامشي") converts into, “Speak your mind and go your way.” The words summarize his professional life. He spoke his mind and went his way until his death at age 51.

I first met Kamel Mroue in 1962, shortly after moonlighting as front-page editor of The Daily Star. The editor in chief was George Hishmeh, now a Washington-based columnist and formerly president of the Washington Association of Arab Journalists.

All the major scoops for al-Hayat came from Mroue. They were then passed on in the early evening to The Daily Star for translation and concurrent front-page publishing.

If Mroue had drafted the scoop in person, Hishmeh would ask me to go to his office and pick up the text by hand, bypassing the office helper – which is how I got to meet the boss first.

The scoops and visits multiplied between 1962 and 1964, chiefly because of Mroue’s access to a flood of privileged information on the intensifying proxy Yemen war between Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

It was in late October 1964 that Mroue asked me to meet him at his office. As soon as I did, he sat me down and told me: “This is a world exclusive that I have drafted by hand as the front-page lead for tomorrow’s al-Hayat and The Daily Star. Don’t leave my office before you put it in English, type it and headline it for The Daily Star. But don’t show either my Arabic or your English texts to anyone before 1 a.m. -- (one hour before the sister dailies are put to bed).  You take both texts down for typesetting and the rest anytime after 1 a.m. It will then be too late for someone here to leak the news. It has happened before.”

I said, “Done!”

I then glanced through the Arabic text and realized it spoke of Cairo and Riyadh deciding to sponsor unprecedented Yemen peace talks involving Egyptian and Saudi officers in a Sudanese port city on the Red Sea. The port city’s name was alien to me. So I said, “Mr. Mroue, misspelling the port city’s name in English will undermine the piece’s credibility. Have you any idea of the exact spelling.”

“No, I’m not sure,” he said, “but look it up here (pointing at a World Atlas and several geography references on his bookshelf).”

I did as told, but it took me much less time to prepare the English text in full than to find the exact location on the map and correct spelling of the planned peace talks’ venue – namely, “Erkwit.”

Next morning, Mroue’s scoop made headlines around the globe and, as he wrote, the peace talks opened in Erkwit a few days later, on 2 November 1964.

Mroue was happy as a child in 1964, for it was also the year he brought the first web offset printing press to the Middle East.

His murder on May 16, 1966, came a few months after I had left his publishing house. It marked the first time that an Arab secret service – in this case, Egypt’s under president Gamal Abdel-Nasser -- had provoked the “silencing” of a Lebanese press critic. The late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat is reported to have recognized as much in a private meeting with Mroue’s widow, Salma Bissar, in 1974.

“The Cost of Gagging Beirut (2)” will be about the second victim, Najib Azzam.