Saturday, March 03, 2007

Today, Joseph returns to Lebanon. Here, a page of tributes. One is by his friend Mahmud Darwish, who said that Joseph instigated you to think, that he elevated the daily column to the status of high political literature. I once was doing my usual criticisms of Rahbani Brothers in front of Joseph. Joseph, looked at me in strong disagreement. He told me that Mahmud Darwish once told him that he would give up all his poetry for one line of poetry by `Asi Rahbani (the one about ya wayli min `atm al-layl--does somebody remember the full line here?). Another tribute is by his close friend, Hasan Dawud, the novelist. When my sister Mirvat introduced me once to Hasan Dawud she told me about his agony at the time: how he lost a whole manuscript of a large novel when traveling in Italy--I think. And then there is a tribute by his former colleague at As-Safir, Basim As-Sab`--who is now a major Hariri propagandist. I am not exaggerating when I say that you will not find one person--politics aside--who will have one nice thing to say about this man. Well, there was one man who admired this person (As-Sab`, that is), but he was killed in 2005.