The Annual Conference of the Arab Thought Foundation was covered widely by all media outlets, including Al-Hayat, which spares me the need to repeat what has been already published. Instead, I will use that to highlight things that touch the heart. I sat in the second row during the opening ceremony, as I did during the Second Annual Conference nine years ago, behind President Emile Lahoud, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, may his soul rest in peace, who sat next to Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, Emir of Mecca and President of the Arab Thought Foundation. This time, President Michel Sleiman, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Saad Hariri sat in front of me. Nine years ago, I told Prime Minister Rafik Hariri jokingly that I am sitting behind him with a Degtyarov [Russian machine gun] to protect him. This time, I said to brother Saad nothing; Lebanon had failed to protect Rafik Hariri. While at the opening ceremony, my thoughts wandered and took me to what Lebanon witnessed in the last five years, what has changed and what has stayed the same. I tried my best to mull over the events I came to see, without attempting to probe the future, for there is no time like the present, especially when my experience in reading that metaphorical crystal ball was a failure, having once predicted that the Lebanese civil war would end in six months, and missed the mark by fifteen whole years. The closing of the conference was excellent, like its opening. The ceremony was launched with a splendid poem by the Prince, who is also a poet and a painter. Awards for outstanding creativity were distributed, including the “Lifetime of Giving” award, which was given to the Doyen of Arab Press and my dear friend Ghassan Tueni. I was pleased to see that the award winners included some dear friends, some of whom I had myself nominated in my capacity as a member of the Board of Directors of the foundation, along with other members, such as Shaikha Mai Al Khalifa, Minister of Culture in the Kingdom of Bahrain, and Mariam bint Fahd, President of the Dubai Press Club, in addition to Abdullatif Al-Hamad, Chairman of the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development. Ghassan Tueni was given a newly established special award. When the members of the Board of Directors nominated him, Prince Khaled Al Faisal gave his approval immediately. As the Secretary-General, Dr. Soliman Abdel Moneim was eager to find out about the results on the next day (Saturday) in Beirut, I sat with him at the airport in Jeddah and called Shadia al-Khazen Tueni, Ghassan's wife, and explained to her what we did, asking her to inform her husband of the decision. He quickly accepted, and we agreed for him to be represented by his granddaughter Nayla Gebran Tueni, because his health may not allow him to travel from Beit Mery to Beirut; and so it was. After the assassination of Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005 – which turned the worldwide day that celebrates love to a day of hate in Lebanon -, many others were assassinated in Lebanon, including Gebran Tueni and Samir Kassir from Al-Nahar. Then colleague May Chidiac survived miraculously. However, I always considered Ghassan Tueni to be a ‘living martyr'. The things he has gone through would shake mountains. He has the patience of a saint, and can probably teach saints some patience as well. He was a 21 year old student at Harvard when his father Gebran died in 1947 in South America, while he was attempting to join the Lebanese delegation to the United Nations, which was headed by Camille Chamoun, to defend the Palestinian cause. The young Ghassan thus travelled to Chile and Argentina, only to return to Lebanon with his father's corpse. He married Nadia Hamadeh, and their daughter Nayla was diagnosed with cancer when she was six and soon passed away. Then it turned out that Nadia herself had cancer. Over 20 years, she was afflicted by this malignant disease, suffering terribly until she died in 1983. She was buried near her daughter in the garden of the family home in Beit Mery. In 1987, Ghassan's second son Makram died in a car crash in Paris, and in December 2005, his eldest son was assassinated. Ghassan Tueni's life is a Greek tragedy par excellence. No one among my friends or acquaintances has suffered as much as Al-Nahar's publisher, who also underwent major heart surgery. While I have always been an admirer of his culture and his morals, words fail me before his faith, especially when I compare him to what I know about myself. I'm trying to understand the mysteries of divine justice with the ongoing tragedy of the Palestinians, or with a tsunami in the Far East that claimed the lives of two hundred thousand impoverished people, or an earthquake in Haiti near the capital that killed thousands and caused an epidemic of cholera, instead of hitting the north of the country for example, and causing minor damage. Ghassan Tueni's faith, by contrast, would grow more with every calamity that befell him. His book “Let's Bury Hatred and Revenge, a Lebanese Destiny”, which was translated from French, is a journey of faith before being an autobiography. He begins his book with a painting of the Virgin Mary at a Conference on the Dialogue of Civilizations in Doha who appeared in a dress adorned with Quranic verses, and continues with a chapter entitled “Learning Faith” in which his deep orthodox faith takes him to icons and churches all around the world, from Lebanon, Syria to Turkey, Russia and other countries. All throughout, Tueni remains a symbol of tolerance and dialogue among religions. I shall continue with an article on Ghassan Tueni, his book, and my relationship with him tomorrow. [email protected]
