Basil Fulayhan is dead. Lebanese member of parliament and former economics minister in Lebanon died in Paris today. He was sitting next to Rafiq Hariri when the massive explosion occurred on February 14th. I had mentioned before that I was a childhood friend of Basil's brother Ramzi (who is now a practicing physician in the Boston area) when I was at IC school in Beirut. His father was the physician for my mother too. I remember Basil all those years. I have not kept in touch with Ramzi or Basil. Ramzi and Basil were excellent students, but who always struggled with the Arabic language. I last talked to Ramzi in 1990 when I was teaching at Tufts University and Ramzi was practicing at the Harvard's children hospital (if I remember correctly). I knew Ramzi's wife from AUB, and she was a progressive and serious intellectual. Basil got an MA from Yale, and then received his PhD in economics from Columbia University. He worked at the World Bank before being recruited by the Hariri juggernaut. Basil became a close confidante of Hariri, and Hariri made him his closest advisor. But I disagree with the Prophet of Islam when he said: "Mention only the virtues of the dead." Basil should never have gotten into politics, and he knew very little of the region in which he lived, and the people, amongst whom he lived. He was one of those Westernized elite kids who knew more of the West than about the East, where they belong (at least by birth and residence). There were many students like that in that elitist (I say elitist, not elite as they prefer to advertise themselves) school; he was one of the students who lived miles away from poverty and refugee camps and never ventured there once. His fellow classmates at Columbia (Ahmad and Samah) told me that in the 1980s, they would be protesting or demonstrating against the various injustices and bloodshed affecting Lebanon and Palestine, and he would pass by them unaffected. But with the Hariri magic touching him, he came to represent Lebanon and the Lebanese people in international fora, AND negotiating on their behalf. He conducted negotiations with the EU about EU partnership in total secrecy. How could he know about the poor and destitute in Lebanon, while he was advocating unrestrained and cruel globalization measures that Hariri found to be perfect for Lebanon? His family came from Palestine, but that was a family secret that nobody talked about or admitted. I do offer my condolences to Ramzi on Basil's death.