Karim has kindly translated my last article in Al-Akhbar. Many people have asked me about the identity of the "Dangerous Man." Of course, it is not me: I don't view myself as heroic. Guess.
The Dangerous Man: When Lebanese History Changed (Forever)
What follows is a short (or a long) story. The details and events portrayed in it are fictional, and any similarities (all similarities are reserved for the grains of sand according to Mahmoud Darwish) with actual events are coincidental and unintended. References to certain known personalities are purely symbolic, and thus any reference to Fouad Boutros for instance, may be a reference to Shafik El-Wazzan, or vice versa.
It’s the anniversary of the Lebanese Civil War, an occasion marked usually with an abundance of lies, of falsifications and of waving that flag adorned with the cedar or is it the oak tree. People dance the Dabkeh in circles and talk about how Lebanon is incredibly similar to those capitals where the White Man lives. Michel Suleiman boasts of the resemblance between Lebanon and Paris and Switzerland, all in one speech, while Samir Franjieh - who decided not to run for the election because it appears that his kinsfollk family has abandoned him in Zghorta – maintains incessantly that Lebanon is “not at all like those dark jungles of Africa”.
As for Al-Nahar, which is a both explicitly and implicitly sectarian, racist, bigoted, elitist, chauvinist, right-wing, and class-segregationist newspaper, it spares no occasion, or lack thereof, to cheaply promote any U.S administration, even the Bush administration. It does that so vehemently that it recently designated an ordinary plane used as a crop duster in America as a “military plane” just for the sake of improving the image of American aid to Lebanon. Al-Nahar chose to “commemorate” the occasion in its own way by innovating a rather original story about the initial spark that caused the civil war, and which differs from how people actually remember it and from actual facts that history hasn’t forgotten, nor forgiven. In this story, Al-Nahar rendered Pierre Gemayel Senior a devout spiritual hermit who was praying in a Beirut suburb church in 1975, when he was purportedly attacked. But it was never proven that there indeed was an attempt on the life of Pierre Gemayel on the morning of the ‘Ayn-El-Remmaneh massacre. The propaganda and lies machine, however, seems to work overtime during the anniversary of the civil war; and yes, this is indeed the same Pierre Gemayel who confessed to his awe and admiration of the Nazi Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) in Germany, and of the Fascists in Italy in the 1966 issue of Al-‘Amal Al-Sanawi [an official Phalanges’ publication] Magazine.
Al-Nahar also decided this year to claim that the victims in the bus of ‘Ayn-El-Remmaneh were heavily armed militants who belonged to the PFLP-GC, and that the barrels of the rifles were already out of the bus’s windows, provoking the Phalangists and “begging to be shot at”. The official account disclosed by [then prime minister] Rashid Al-Sol’h to the Lebanese parliament seems to be without any value to the newspaper that is keen on broadcasting propaganda in an era where newspapers are smudged with crude oil, and with funding originating from the capitals of the white man.
Meanwhile, and more importantly, one man must be remembered on the anniversary of the civil war. He is that invisible man, whose deliberately obscured role must be celebrated and talked about.
Who amongst you has met this grave and dangerous man, and who amongst you has not heard of him? His reputation travelled ahead of him to five (or more) continents. He is both known and unknown. Who amongst you has shaken his hands or ran across him in the street? Should you ask about him, you will not learn much about him. Yet, you bathe everyday in the grace of his actions even if of those, you are unaware. He is far from being festive or from seeking the attention of the media, but quite the contrary, he is unmarred by all that jazz. He is nameless and unapparent. This abomination that calls itself a nation might only be destined to become truly independent when this man should be honoured with statues made of granite and placed in all public squares. If this homeland became truly independent you would have seen statues of him everywhere, and you would have seen his name replacing other names like Charles Malik, Alfred Naqqash - who had Zionist inclinations even prior to the establishment of the enemy state- and Majid Arslan –was one of Lebanon’s many (not so) brilliant contributions to the wars with Israel. What shame must we feel towards the people of Palestine! If Lebanon were a real country, the dangerous man’s image should be on the cover of every school textbook.
The fact that there has been a dangerous man at all, is proof that history – whether evolving through class struggle as per Marxist laws or convoluting in spiral ascension of dialectic discourse as per Hegelian laws – progresses rather swiftly, hauled up by one “arm” or two at the most. Usually, this is improbable and unlikely and is neither usual nor accidental. It is rather imposed by the rare instances brought by “pivotal turns”, as they would call them in Lebanon, for dramatic effects. But in reality, such moments do not follow this theory of so called pivotal turns, or the theory of “what if”. They are in effect, and in many ways, more similar, nay, exactly are, what Marx called a “Moment of Enthusiasm”: in such a decisive moment, a man or a woman steps in and decides upon affirmative action on our, and on your behalves. He stepped in without fear or hesitation or confusion, and on your behalf, while others slept or stood aside. The dangerous man was, in part, always tormented. He did not complain of any illnesses or financial troubles, nor did he occupy himself with the rivalry between neighbourhood gangs during the Civil War. His mind was lucid, his conscience clear. He was a different breed of men. The dangerous man never dreamt of the cedar nor did he ever extol it as such. Oak, Cedar, and Cherry trees were identical to him. He dreamt of a flag other than the one fashioned by Saeb Salam and Sa’di El-Munla and inspired by a colonial flag. He did not believe in the artificial borders of the abnormal homeland nor in the words mentioned in the Ta’if accord about the intransience of the Lebanese entity (probably copied from the delusional decisions by the “Saydet-El-Bir’ [Notre-Dame of the Well] meeting in’77 [a Lebanese fascist gathering of the time] - a different well than the one celebrated in song by Wadi’ El-Safi) revolted him and repulsed him ever more away from the belief in the Lebanese entity as a true and final homeland (an ideology known as Al-Kiyaniyya in Arabic). The dangerous man did not belong to any sect, and renounced them all. He discarded them without ever joining any of them. The dangerous man met not even one cleric nor did he ask for the blessings of any of them. That’s perhaps because he read what Robespierre or what Al-Shidyaq had to say about the clergy.
The dangerous man does have worries: They were many, but his were a different kind of worries. He is a Lebanese by name, but again a different kind of Lebanese. While he did grow up in Lebanon, he is not truly Lebanese. He never bought into the idea of a Lebanese entity, not even for one second, but rather mocked it and dismissed it. When the multitude stood for the national anthem, he was busy counting the birds around him or clipping his fingernails with his teeth, and when he was asked to wave the flag of Saeb Salam and Sa’di Al-Mounla, he grabbed and waved the nearest Palestinian Keffiyeh (scarf). For the dangerous man, Lebanon comes last and not first. He associates the infamous slogan “Lebanon First” with the era of Israeli dominance in Lebanon. Lebanon came last because the dangerous man supports the dissolution of the Lebanese entity, and its fusion not into the horrible regimes that surround Lebanon, but into a larger, wider and freer entity, one that replaces all the other entities surrounding Lebanon.
He was never deceived: He did not believe not for even for a day that Lebanon was free. Those fake tales about independence and its heroes, and of the detention of that bunch of politicians who professed prostration before the French colonists, the latter having brought them into politics in the first place, at the fort in Rashayya, never fooled him. Others might have been fooled, but not him.
The dangerous man endured the war years and knew firsthand all its details, pains, triumphs and its ups and downs (not everything about the war was ugly to him). “By virtue of his work” he ferried quite often between West Beirut and East Beirut. It was not far-flung for him to end up being mixed up in the war. While this war spawned gangs and militias, it also spawned ideologies and resistances (different from the militias created by Israel in Lebanon and implanted under different names, including that war gang headed by the little Lebanese Nazi in Beirut and which wreaked havoc under orders from Tel Aviv). He did not belong to Shaker Berjawi’s gang or to thugs implanted by Yasser Arafat in all neighbourhoods, towns and villages. He did make it his specialty to indulge in theft and harassment at which others excelled. But the dangerous man supported a decisive military victory that would put an end to the war. He considered that a fraction amongst the Lebanese has bluntly allied itself with Israel for decades now, and that those must be punished to set an example for posterity. He wanted to rout this faction so that no one will ever dare again ally themselves with the enemies of the nation. The dangerous man’s aspiration to achieve decisive victory was faced with two obstacles: First, the Syrian regime was opposed to any decisive strategic victory of the Lebanese National Movement, and had (most probably) assassinated Kamal Jumblatt when the latter (somehow belatedly) reached the conclusion that a decisive victory against the isolationist camp is imperative. The second obstacle was the leadership of Yasser Arafat himself who was also opposed to achieving a decisive military victory (but for different motives mainly related to maintaining personal power and bargaining strength.) But the dangerous man wanted an early decisive victory. Those [in the other camp] would not cease their transgression nor desist willingly, he used to say. I would ward them off with my own chest and neck, he used to say, beseeching those who would hear him.
But there are some who believe that the dangerous man did not become truly dangerous until 1977. He took a decision that a peace treaty with Israel should never be allowed in Lebanon. While everyone around him were glued to their chairs in front of the television, watching Sadat descend the plane with his yellow smile, the dangerous man immediately left the house. He could not bear to watch this on the television. He decided that this shall not pass in his country. Dealing and collaborating with the enemy will not become an ordinary event like it has become in Egypt, Jordan and in Ramallah. The dangerous man never accepted any talk of a semi Palestinian state: For him, any stance that is not based on the utter rejection of the Zionist entity and on the total liberation of Palestine is a sacrilege and a heresy. The dangerous man decided that there will be no new Sadat in Lebanon, despite the fact that there were now many candidates aspiring to take up this role. The dangerous man walked, and walked without stopping to take a breath, on the day that Sadat dared to set foot on the tarmac in Israel. He walked from Tetuan [in North Africa] to Jeddah in an hour or two. There are those who exaggerate by saying that he crossed that distance in a minute or two. But the dangerous man is truthful. That day, he felt that he was only floating in the air. On any given day, he would pace the ground with his steady gait. But he was now like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment: He counted each step that he took, and each breath that he drew. Sometimes, but not all the time, his breathing could have even be heard. The sun shone on his hair, rendering it glittery, and he was unbendable by winds and torrents. To those who didn’t know him very closely, he came across as someone deeply agitated.
He could not believe what they had done to him. They put his world in ruin and disarray. He used to think of himself as a peaceful pacifist, but they managed to provoke him. They wanted to smear his homeland with an Israeli stain. They invited the hoards of the Israeli enemy into Lebanon, and then they wanted to set up Israeli, Phalangist, Lebanese Forces’ and Sham’onic colonies and settlements in his own country. He did not want to bear anything that he could not truly handle. Yet, he paced the floor back and fro, weighing his options and devising his plan, and counting the days and nights that lay ahead. But he decided that he shall not put up with long and endless nights like Sharazad before him. They did not understand him nor believe him. They thought that they could redraft the map, and redraw the features of faces, and replace his eyes with coloured eyes: He did not have blue eyes. He renounced his present and refused to see the Israeli flag. The dangerous man used to say that this flag’s only function was to be burned. When someone spoke to him about a “civilized” resistance, he walked away. When someone asked him about this Liberal Wahhabite or that, he would reply that he had never heard of any of them before.
The Dangerous man was never convinced that Israeli alone was the enemy. What about Israel’s fifth column working from within? He often wondered. Are those traitors amongst us then, friends? This perturbed him deeply. How can the enemy invade, prevail and occupy without the inside men (and women) who were in his assistance? He asked many times: would Nazi Germany have ever been able to pacify France in that era, had it not been for the French collaborators? Did the French resistance, which eliminated without a blink of an eye any collaborator, consider those people, friends? As he saw the joint checkpoints between Israelis and Lebanese forces following the 1982 invasion, he wondered, who are these people? Are they Friends? Are they compatriots? “No way in hell!” (Those last words are his)
He felt his lungs collapse as he counted the number of enemy soldiers wandering about in his own land. In those moments, the dangerous man was going into what is known in movie making as, slow motion mode. The cars were now moving like tortoises and planes like reptiles. Who are those soldiers now standing on the dangerous man’s land? Are they not those same people who stole the land of Palestine and its olive trees, and terrorized its people with massacres and mass murder? As he was walking, he was counting Israel’s massacres one by one by one. The Dangerous man, unlike Gebran Bassil or Mai Chidiaq, never repeated those false accusations about the Palestinians selling their own land: He knew all about how some Lebanese families (such as Tiyan, Tueni, Sorsoq and Salam) had sold the lands they owned in Palestine. He did not believe his own eye when he saw enemy soldiers strolling down the streets that he knew by heart and like the back of his hand. How can a man, who devoted his entire life to the liberation of Palestine, find himself now under the Israeli occupation of Lebanon? The task at hand doubled in importance and severity from that cursed moment onwards. Were he a screamer, he would have screamed, but screaming was not in his nature. He instead was a deep thinker, a beholder, a planner, then a decision maker. When that little Lebanese Nazi was threatening his country’s sons and daughters with “the upcoming decision”, insinuating the coming Israeli occupation of Lebanon, he used to respond to him without even seeing or hearing him: “but the decision is not yours, boy. The decision will never be yours”. When he heard the little Nazi denying the charge of being an Israeli collaborator, he became absolutely disgusted. When the Arab League’s envoy, headed by none other than Saud Al Faysal (the caller of Fitnas), demanded that he sever his ties with Israel, he said that he had no ties with Israel and that he was a Lebanese patriot. The dangerous man did not listen to the little Nazi as he gave his speeches. He used to stare at him, with a calmness clad with deep rage, and without hearing him at all. He would say that their talk can all be found in Hebrew newspapers, and that it would be enough to read those to know what is going on in those traitor minds of theirs. He used to say that while the little Nazi was spewing all that talk about Lebanon, he used to receive a whole bunch of orders from across the border. And when the little Nazi was spewing all that talk about patriotism and the (surface) area of Lebanon, the dangerous man would say nothing at all. He knew later on that the little Nazi was summoned to Riyadh to bestow the Saudi blessings on him, and to promote him in the Arab world; Prince Sultan’s “exclusive agent” in Lebanon Saeb Salam had already given him the sectarian Islamic legitimacy, to facilitate his promotion in all of Lebanon. As for the seal of the backwards Shi’ite Feudal chieftains [Al-As’ad], he decreed the legitimacy of the “election” under Israeli occupation, only days after he announced the same election illegitimate under the occupation. They want me not to take those as my enemies, he used to decry to himself.
The dangerous man was a contemporary of all these people. He witnessed their deception, their hypocrisy and their turncoat actions firsthand. The dangerous man almost exploded for the first time in his life when he saw rows of politicians lined up to receive the blessings of the little Nazi. The dangerous man remembers how Mohammad Safiyuddin and Suleiman Al-Ali, and other remnants of the dying feudalism, were rushing to meet the little Lebanese Nazi. Charles Rizk did not visit him except in the boot of a car, but made up later on that he had a friendship with him, because he thought that maybe this would get him closer to becoming president. The distance between Charles Rizk and the presidency, however, is the same distance between Mohammad Dahlan and virtue.
Fouad Boutros (the protector of sectarianism as can be inferred from the memoirs of both Salim El-Hoss and Karim Pakradouni) adopted the candidature of the little Nazi only after he suffered an assassination attempt (by the hands of the same man.) but the dangerous man never took a liking to Fouad Boutors: he remembers him as the person who sat in humiliation with Abdul-Halim Khaddam to sign the tripartite agreement. Fouad Boutors accepted the tripartite agreement, but is now along with others inventing virtual and unreal heroisms in opposing Syrian hegemony. This is the same Fouad Boutros who became suddenly mute when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.
The dangerous man never understood how some can have difficulty expressing the truth, and their true feelings and opinions. People, it seems, have not yet decided to live free, like the dangerous man did.
The 1982 Israeli invasion was a perplexing event that deeply bothered the dangerous man, before, during, and after it happened. He still remembers the collaborators with the aggression one by one, men and women – lest we forget that woman who cooked for Ariel Sharon. He knew that those collaborators were from all sects, political parties and regions of Lebanon. Who other than the dangerous man remembers, for instance, the role of Dr. Labib Abou-Zahr?
The dangerous man read recently that a member in the Lebanese parliament used to prepare Lebanese delicatessens (and Syrian delis without her knowledge) to Ariel Sharon. The dangerous man then cursed the 128 parliamentarians of Lebanon. 128 obscene curses were uttered by the dangerous man. He cursed each and every person who did not call for the immediate arrest of that woman, and for dragging her with her head shaven (following the manner in which the French resistance dragged the female Nazi collaborators) to a trial, even a field court martial. The dangerous man does not forgive – he is not a priest with divine grace to distribute it around. When it comes to collaboration and cooperation with Israel, the dangerous man does not believe in forgiveness – nay he abhors forgiveness.
The dangerous man then heard the president appointed by the Israel occupation talk about neutrality. He remembers how this same president promised Israel in the palace at Bekfaya, while meeting enemy leaders, to give them more than what his brother gave them before him. He has not learnt his lesson yet, the dangerous man said under his teeth. He has not learnt the moral and abstained from the same evil. The dangerous man also knows that the same family that corrupted Lebanon politically, economically and culturally since the eighties, is the one who’s been reviving this former president in recent years.
Do not provoke the dangerous man, because he bellows when he is angry. The dangerous man has liberated you even if you do not know, and even if he is humble enough not to ask for a reward, or a medal, or even appreciation. He does not see in himself grandeur or greatness. He just would not have it to live in the Israeli era. No, he decided firmly that he will not live in the Israeli era, and the dangerous man finally had his way.
But if you pass by the dangerous man’s grave, you shan’t be able to place thereupon a wreath or a rose, or raise your hat, or greet him or even show respect. You will not find the dangerous man’s grave simply because he is alive, and in spite of all his enemies – the friends of Israel in Lebanon. Some people say that they might have seen the dangerous man meandering down the corniche. There isn’t any proof, however, that the dangerous man is back. He is roaming around us."
