Lebanese poet, Unsi Al-Hajj, died today. He has been ill for a while. I never thought that I would get along with him ever until I met him several years ago. He came from An-Nahar newspaper, which as you know I abhor. Al-Hajj was active in the journal "Shi`r", which leftist and Arab nationalists opposed. I have some of the old issues and some are valuable but I disagreed with the outlook and purpose. Al-Hajj later edited the Culture Supplement of An-Nahar in the 1960s and 1070s (until the civil war) and it was a great success. He started the supplement at an early age and succeeded in injecting it with some liberal progressive thought in a newspaper that was and is reactionary, through and through. I can't lie and say that I was a consumer of his poetry: my literary preferences are rather more classical and perhaps conservative in Arab poetry. I am told that Al-Hajj never read me (although we wrote in the same paper and our articles both appeared on Saturday) until sometime in 2008 when I wrote a scathing critique of his friend, Joumana Haddad. He became a strong supporter and in fact edited and corrected my articles weekly. My colleague Khalid Saghiyyah told me that when he heard Unsi's laugh it meant that he was reading my article. I met him several times during my rare visits to Lebanon. He is very nice and sociable and easy to get along with. He did not carry himself like the obnoxious Lebanese journalists of his generation (or even of all generations). His door was always open and loved the company of young female reporters. I used to ask him about his experience at An-Nahar and about the Rahbani brothers and he was most forthcoming and candid but did not want me to write about his answer during his lifetime. He told me that he used to write the articles that appeared with Jubran Tuwayni's name in An-Nahar Al-`Arabi wa-d-Duwali and that Ghassan Tuwayni would call him and urge him to make some grammatical mistakes in order that people believe that Jubran was indeed the author. He told me about his big salary at An-Nahar and that it was quite tempting to stay there but that he could not stomach the political views of Jubran Tuwayni and he left to protest the stance of An-Nahar toward the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. He told me about the foreign financing of An-Nahar about about briefcases of cash from Kuwait--a typical story about Arab newspapers, of course. He was not a leftist by any means but he told me that he disagreed with the right-wing Phalange views of his father, Luwis (a brilliant editor of An-Nahar in the 1960s and 1970s), who revealed his own true colors in his really revealing book, Min Makhzun Adh-Dhakirah. I would ask him a lot about the Rahbani brothers and he confirmed to me that indeed Mansur's role was marginal and that `Asi would call on Mansur in his presence and say: Mansur. Here, take this poem and make me a song. I need it this week. He was into astrology (which bores me to death as interesting as he was) and would ask me about my sign. When he sensed my disregard, he protested: I don't follow astrology like the common people but purely the scientific version of astrology based on the movement of the stars. In one of this last columns, he wrote about people he met in life under the title "Intimacy". I was rather surprised that he mentioned me but never understood what he meant: "As`ad AbuKhalil, the anarchist, fortunately".
أسعد أبو خليل الفوضوي لحسن الحظّ.
