Homage

What remains of Hassan Rifai is the image of a respected, composed jurist, an authority on administrative and constitutional law, arguing in a calm, quavering voice as he pointed out the deviations and failings of politicians in relation to the parliamentary democratic system and the Constitution. And yet, the former MP and minister, who died on September 3, 2025, was also a man in revolt. A dissenter. Even at one hundred. Especially at one hundred! He had been one as a child, haranguing crowds in Baalbeck against the Mandate, and remained one throughout his career as a lawyer and parliamentarian. At one hundred, utterly disillusioned with the Republic and its buccaneers, his quiet anger had not subsided. “Lebanon is an impossible country!” he told the author of these lines in an interview conducted a few years before his death and never published. But make no mistake. Hassan Rifai was neither a nihilist nor someone who rejected everything outright. He had fought all his life for a certain idea of Lebanon. More specifically, for Greater Lebanon, united and plural. And he appreciated the Lebanese experience for what it was worth, including all that was positive in it. But human beings had disappointed him. And yet it was precisely the human being he was seeking. He never found that person on the Lebanese public stage. At least not in the service of the Republic. Rifai was a man of law, always elegant, irreproachable, everything one would expect of a man of his moral and intellectual stature. But he was also uncompromising. Merciless, even. No doubt his attachment to his country and its democratic system had led him to acknowledge only one loyalty: a certain code of values and a certain idea of the Republic. That was why he was critical of every mistake and every abuse, beginning with those committed by his own political friends. He spared no one. Neither communities nor clans, neither religious leaders, he was secular himself, and certainly not political officials. No one escaped his scrutiny, and Rifai took a certain pleasure in dismantling the myths and received ideas that portrayed this or that president of the Republic or prime minister as an exceptional leader. His yardstick was objective: the consistency of actions with democratic principles. As a result, no one truly found favor in his eyes. The conclusion was devastating: none of the country’s leaders, throughout its history, had genuinely respected Lebanese parliamentary democracy. None. That did not mean he placed everyone on the same footing. He had enough critical distance to recognize the qualities and shortcomings of each. He liked to quote Léon Duguit: “Constitutional law has no safeguard other than the good faith of those who apply it.” He had almost made it his republican credo. And his verdict was merciless: that good faith, quite simply, he had not found. Too many politicians, and not enough statesmen. And above all, a great deal of lying and hypocrisy. One day, a senior political figure advised him: “Do not build roads for people. Otherwise they will stop coming to you.” Despite the respect he had for this political ally, the remark left him bewildered and shocked. It contained an entire conception of power: never permanently solve the problem of those one claims to represent, because once their need disappears, so does the very reason for their dependence. The project of the state was thus postponed indefinitely. Or, at the very least, whenever good people did exist, the system prevented them from reaching positions of responsibility. Rifai was a rebel, yes, but one armed with the rigor and precision of a master craftsman of administrative and constitutional law. That was undoubtedly what set him apart within Lebanon’s political milieu. He was rebellious enough, in any event, to pay a price for it. In August 1982, he survived an assassination attempt after opposing the Israeli diktat. At Taif in 1989, he was almost cast out for having immediately discerned the existing flaws and the traps added to the constitutional reforms. From 1992 onward, under the Syrian occupation, he endured political ostracism for opposing the security apparatus underpinning Syrian tutelage and Rafic Hariri’s policies. But he was fair. He could oppose political confessionalism while acknowledging that abolishing it at the present stage would be disastrous for Lebanon, and that a system of majority rule based purely on numbers would once and for all toll the death knell of the Lebanese formula and of the Christian presence in Lebanon. He could agree that Christians had been wronged by the constitutional reforms of Taif, Sunnis too, he maintained, while at the same time recalling the excesses committed in the exercise of power by presidents of the Republic between 1943 and 1990, and warning against a nostalgic return to those practices under the refrain of “Christian rights.” A drift toward a presidential or semi-presidential system would, in his view, endanger Christians. The importance of the parliamentary system inherited from the French Third Republic lay precisely in the fact that the president of the Republic was not politically accountable to the Chamber of Deputies. That placed him, according to Rifai, in a privileged position. Above the fray, he could steer the ship of the Republic safely into port without becoming bogged down in struggles for power. That moral responsibility to preserve the Constitution and the Republic was, in his eyes, far more important than any political responsibility. But the principal parties concerned still had to be persuaded of that. Rifai could recognize the importance of administrative decentralization while refusing to allow that demand to become an ideological slogan concealing separatist ambitions. In this regard, he recalled that Beirut and Mount Lebanon had been favored in the construction of Greater Lebanon, while the peripheral regions, particularly his own, Baalbeck, had been neglected. That had contributed to weakening Lebanese national sentiment, which ultimately depended on well-being grounded in respect for human dignity. Commitment to citizenship presupposed that everyone be treated equally in terms of development. Without equality among citizens, sovereignty could only falter. That, indeed, was the meaning of his first speech in Parliament in 1968. The events that followed gave that warning a singular gravity. Economic, social and territorial imbalances contributed to fueling the demands of the left and of part of the Muslim street in a country already strained by sectarian tensions, foreign interference and the growing power of armed organizations. They thus contributed to the gradual weakening of the state, before the war, successive occupations and the emergence of para-state structures. Ultimately, Hassan Rifai embodies something of that Lebanese model of the cosmopolitan, complex personality who stands outside communal and partisan trenches, enjoys almost unanimous respect, especially beyond political circles, yet is consulted within those same circles only when needed and for self-interested reasons. Lebanon does not like minds that are too independent and too unruly, even if its system still contains cracks through which such people can exist and make themselves heard. They are tolerated, but they must remain on the margins. The survival of the state of zaamat and the state of jamaat depends on it: a system that invariably prefers turning to foreign patrons rather than to people capable of generating, proposing and implementing solutions from within. Lebanon’s political system and its protagonists detest the notion of responsibility, which they find profoundly anxiety-inducing, and prefer dependence or, worse still, servility. Yet Rifai repeatedly said, once again quoting Léon Duguit: “Where responsibility lies, there lies power.” Should it then come as any surprise that in Lebanon, where responsibility is nowhere to be found, power is nowhere to be found either? Or, more precisely, that it is always elsewhere?

Every year, when the second of June comes around, Samir Kassir rises back into memory as though he had never truly left. The years go by, faces change, circumstances and events follow one upon another, yet there are certain people the passing of time cannot reduce to mere remembrance. They remain present in the details of our lives, in the words we write, in the ideas we defend, in the dreams that never had time to be fulfilled. Twenty-one years have passed since the assassination of Samir Kassir, and I still have the feeling that that ill-fated morning has not really ended. Samir was not, for me, a journalist or a writer or a thinker whose articles and ideas I followed from a distance. He was a friend, an exceptional human being who possessed that rare ability to reconcile profound culture with human simplicity, intellectual boldness with personal warmth. He believed in Lebanon the way a believer believes in his great cause. Lebanon was not for him a political slogan or a media discourse, but a space for freedom, for life, for plurality. He saw beyond the present moment and read the future at a time when many were unable to see even the present. I knew him close to people, despite his intellectual stature. He listened more than he spoke, he engaged in dialogue more than he attacked, and he persuaded through the force of an idea rather than the raising of a voice. Little wonder, then, that he left a deep imprint on everyone who knew him or came near him. When Samir was assassinated, I did not feel only the loss of a great journalist. I had the sense that a part of the Lebanese dream had just been subjected to an attempt on its life. That day, the grief was not only personal but national as well. It was the awareness that the free word had become a target, that men and women of conviction were paying for their courage with their lives. But fate willed that Samir’s flame remain alight through the one who had shared his life, Giselle Khoury. Giselle was far more than Samir’s wife. She was the companion of his intellectual and human journey, the witness to his dreams, his struggles, his victories and his disappointments. After his assassination, she could have withdrawn into her private grief and contented herself with tending to memories. She chose a far more difficult path. She chose to continue what Samir had begun. She carried his name, his cause and his memory with a rare love and an exceptional faithfulness. She did not allow time to fold away his page, she did not allow the assassins to triumph over the idea by killing the one who carried it. She went on speaking of him as though he stood at her side, and went on defending freedom, justice and truth as he himself had done. In Giselle I saw something of Samir, and in her continuity I saw a prolongation of him. She knew that the person departs, but that the message endures. And so she did not commemorate Samir’s memory each year as a simple occasion for sorrow, but transformed it into an act of fidelity and a stubborn affirmation that the word must remain stronger than fear. When Giselle in turn departed, the grief seemed to redouble. As though a beautiful page of Lebanon’s cultural and media history had just been closed. Both were gone, but the story remained. The story of a love that had united two people, each of whom believed in the other as they believed in Lebanon. And the story of a struggle for freedom that does not stop at the limits of a single life. On this twenty-first anniversary of the assassination of Samir Kassir, it is not only the portrait of the great writer and the brilliant thinker that I find within myself. I find the friend, the human being, the face that always carried a deep faith in the ability of the Lebanese to build a better future. And I find Giselle Khoury as well, who proved that faithfulness is not a word one speaks but a path one walks. She kept the trust until the last day of her life and carried the flame that had fallen from Samir’s hands, to pass it on in turn to a new generation that believes in freedom, in sovereignty and in the state. The assassins may have succeeded, on that June morning in 2005, in silencing Samir’s voice. They failed to silence the idea. Great ideas do not die, and the men who sow freedom in the minds of others never truly disappear. Today, twenty-one years on, Samir Kassir remains present among us. In every free word, in every journalist who refuses to yield, in every citizen who dreams of a just state, in every Lebanese person who still believes that this country deserves a better future. The long absence has not extinguished the memory, it has made it more present still. Certain people, whatever distance time places between them and us, remain closer to us than many of those who live at our side. Such was Samir Kassir. Such remained Giselle Khoury. And such will endure the story of freedom and fidelity that united them, alive in the memory of Lebanon for as long as there is anyone left to believe in the free word and in the right of people to dream. Their names will stand as testimony that memory is not a simple return to the past but a resistance to forgetting, and that the freedom they defended draws its strength from those who refuse to relinquish it. Between Samir and Giselle extends the story of a country that is forever searching for itself, and that finds in people like them one more reason to hold fast to hope. People pass, but the true imprint endures, lighting the way for generations to come and bearing witness that Lebanon is built only through freedom, and preserved only through memory.

Fourteen years already. Fourteen years have passed since Nassir al-Assaad’s departure, and yet my brother’s memory remains intact in the hearts of all those who knew him, loved him, esteemed him, or simply crossed his path on the road toward a Lebanon he dreamed of as free, sovereign, and dignified. Nassir belonged to that generation of men who sought neither the spotlight nor honours. He believed deeply in just causes without ever seeking any personal gain from them. A discreet but determined artisan of the Cedar Revolution of 2005, alongside Samir, Fares, Elias and Samir, but also Walid, Gebran and others, he had understood early on that Lebanon could not survive without freedom, without pluralism, and without a State. He was one of those who act more than they speak. One of those who build in silence. One of those who refuse compromise but always maintain respect for others and the modesty of great men. His commitment was neither circumstantial nor opportunistic. It proceeded from a deep conviction: that Lebanon deserves better than divisions, tutelages, illegitimate arms, and foreign dependencies. He believed in an open, modern Lebanon, rooted in its history and faithful to its vocation of coexistence and freedom. But beyond the committed man, Nassir will above all remain in our memories as a man of immense humility. Despite his responsibilities, despite his real influence in many political and intellectual circles, he retained a rare simplicity, a sincere closeness with everyone, and a moral elegance that commanded respect. For me, he was not only a man of convictions or an engaged figure of his time. He was, above all, a brother. A deeply loved brother, a fellow traveller, a confidant, a reassuring and faithful presence. His absence has left, for fourteen years now, a void that time has never truly filled. Certain fraternal bonds transcend words: they are made of memories, glances, silences, simple moments that continue to inhabit an entire life. I miss him in the great milestones as in the details of daily life. I miss his wisdom, his reserve, his quiet humour, and that unique way he had of calming things without ever imposing his presence. He was young when he left us. Too young. And as is often the case with men of conviction, time seems to have given even greater value to his path and his legacy. Today, as Lebanon traverses one of the most difficult periods in its contemporary history, the memory of Nassir reminds us that there still exist men capable of placing the national interest above personal interests, men capable of believing in Lebanon even when everything seems to push toward discouragement. The finest tribute we can pay him is not only one of words or memories. It is to continue defending the values to which he devoted his life: sovereignty, the dignity of the State, freedom, dialogue, and hope. On the occasion of the fourteenth anniversary of his passing, we think of him with emotion, pride, and fidelity. Because some men never truly disappear. They become a part of the memory of nations. To Nassir, with affection, gratitude, and respect.

The feast of Saint Joseph (March 19), patron of the university that bears his name, brought to the mind of its new rector, Father François Boëdec, SJ, the memory of Alban de Jerphanion, the first Jesuit martyr of the seemingly endless war that erupted in Lebanon in 1975 – whose latest chapter, hoped to be the last, began unfolding in early March. Five other martyrs of that conflict fell after Father de Jerphanion. In tribute to their sacrifice, and with the publication of a new biography devoted to one of their holiest figures – the Dutch priest Nicolas Kluiters, whose cause for beatification is under way – this work is presented here, revealing previously unpublished details about the motivations of those who killed Father Nicolas. At the same time, it sheds light on the broader meaning of the gift he made to Lebanon, so that the country might endure as a model of “freedom and pluralism” for both East and West, at a moment when a heavily militarized nation threatens to strip it of a vital part of its territory, marked by the memory of Christ’s passage. The offering of love made by Nicolas Kluiters, SJ, found an unexpected echo in that of a fellow seminarian – Ghassibé Keyrouz, a young man from the neighboring village of Nabha. Ten years his junior, Ghassibé had shown remarkable gifts as a catechist, and Nicolas had taken him under his wing, guiding him toward the priesthood. Ghassibé was killed in 1975, around Christmas, as he was on his way home to spend the holidays with his mother and sister. The day before, prompted by a mysterious premonition, he wrote and left on his desk, in his room at Notre-Dame de Jamhour College, a testamentary letter in which, sensing he might be abducted and killed, he forgave his future assailants in advance. This remarkable letter quickly spread around the world. Here are its essential passages: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: “When I began writing this testament, it was as though another voice were speaking through me. These days, everyone – Lebanese and residents of Lebanon alike – lives in danger. As one of them, I see myself being kidnapped and killed on the road leading to my village of Nabha. And if this intuition proves true, I leave these words to my family, to the people of my village, and to my country. To my mother and my sisters, I say with full confidence: do not be sad or at least do not weep or grieve excessively. This absence, however long it may seem, is in truth short: We shall meet again, we shall surely meet again in the eternal dwelling of heaven. There is joy there, and sorrow if we are separated. Do not be afraid: God’s mercy will bring us all together again. “I have only one request to make of you: forgive, with all your heart, those who have killed me. Pray with me that my blood – even if it is that of a sinner – may serve as a ransom ( fidya ) for Lebanon’s sin; that it may be united with that of all the victims who have fallen, from every side and every religious community, and offered as the price of peace, love, and concord, which have vanished from this country and even from the world. May my death teach people charity; may God comfort you, watch over you, and guide you through life. Do not be afraid; I do not regret this world at all. What grieves me is that you will be sad. Pray, pray, pray, and love your enemies. “And to my country, I say: ‘The inhabitants of one house may hold different views; they do not hate one another. They may grow angry with each other, without becoming enemies; they may argue, without killing one another. Remember the days of harmony and charity; let go of those of anger and discord. Together we have eaten, drunk, and worked; together we have raised our prayers to the one God; together, we must also die. My father was the partner of a Metouali (Shiite) whom I called ‘Uncle Hussein’, a name I was found of using. They remained partners for seventy-five years without ever breaking their agreement or settling accounts. Remember this: one often cannot borrow a hundred pounds from one’s own brother; yet it is enough to turn to someone in the village – whether Metouali, Maronite, Sunni, or Druze – for them to come to one’s aid. Everyone knows this, yet sin blinds us. Each person must return to prayer, according to his belief and conscience, so that God may dispel anger and reduce to dust the schemes of the powerful of this world, on the soil of this country, which should not have to pay for their machinations with its blood…’ “In heaven, I will not rest as long as this situation in Lebanon endures. “Let my funeral be a day of ordination, not of burial or sorrow. “For my burial, let Father Boutros celebrate Mass, without a large gathering of priests or an official notice. If Abou-Khalil can fashion my coffin from a few old crates, that will suffice. No funeral meal. Let people forgive me… without gunfire. I am dust, yet by God’s power, I will partake in divine life. This is how it should be done. “People will talk, but do not let that concern you. If only they had a shred of pity, they would not kill one another, nor allow the wolves to triumph over us… How deeply mistaken they are!” An Olive Tree Watered with Blood Nicolas was profoundly shaken by the violent death of Ghassibé Keyrouz, which occurred while he was temporarily in Europe. Keyrouz’s death would foreshadow Nicolas’s own fate, as well as that of five other Jesuits serving in Lebanon. According to Christian Taoutel, archivist at USJ and head of its history department, the civil war also claimed the lives of Father Louis Dumas, who celebrated morning Mass and was shot by a sniper on October 25, 1975; Father Michel Allard, killed on January 15, 1976, when a shell destroyed his room; Father Alban de Jerphanion, kidnapped and murdered in March 1976 while escorting a visitor to the airport; and Father Finnegan, an American Jesuit, struck by a shell on February 26, 1984, while traveling from the Jesuit residence in Achrafieh to the Hôtel-Dieu de France to celebrate Mass. Father Finnegan treasured being with patients, insisting – even under bombardment – on visiting the sick in their rooms and sharing in their suffering. The war also claimed Father André Masse, director of the Saint Joseph University campus in Saida, who was shot on September 24, 1987, by two intruders who had entered his office, open to all. Father Joseph Nassar, SJ, who discovered André’s body bathed in blood, cleaned the floor after the initial aid and watered an olive tree he had planted with the mixture of water and blood. Without seeking to confront the Syrian dictatorship or the monolithic Islamist ideology, even as Israel occupied part of Lebanon, Father Kluiters – an apostle of Jesus, of development, and of diversity – continued to move freely throughout the Bekaa. Indifferent to his own safety, he refused to confine himself to Barqa or accept any form of isolation that might distort Jesus’ message or render it exclusive. He was not merely serving Lebanon’s Christians, but the very principle of their “coexistence.” For this, he came to be regarded as a spy for Samir Geagea and was ultimately eliminated from a land that was no longer meant to be “a model of freedom and pluralism for East and West,” but had instead become a penal universe, a prison of thought, and a model of intolerance. His death made Nicolas Kluiters a champion of kenosis of which the Jesuit provincial, Father Dany Younès, would speak during a ceremony honoring Father André Masse, who fell two years later. Echoing Christ’s words, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord,” Dany Younès said, “Father André Masse relinquished his life to serve a country at war.” He added, “André did not come to die in Lebanon. Yes, his choice cost him his life. But that choice embodies a core value of the Society of Jesus and of Saint Joseph University. Education is always a form of emancipation, a pursuit of peace within a society at war. Remembering André Masse today urges us to nurture the same passion that animated him – the passion for humanity that challenges structures of oppression.” No – neither André Masse, nor Nicolas Kluiters, nor any of the Society of Jesus’ members who fell victim to the war – “came to Lebanon to die.” On the contrary, they came to give life. They came so that the Lebanese – all Lebanese, without distinction of religion – might “have life and have it abundantly.” This truth must be underscored today, as a belligerent nation threatens to excise from Lebanon a territory sanctified by the passage of Christ, one that is dearer still than the Holy Valley, the Cedars, the Sea Castle, the Temple of Baalbek, and the Palace of Beiteddine combined. Read More on the Same Topic: – “He Died So That Lebanon Might Live,” the Ultimate Sacrifice of Father Nicolas Kluiters, SJ – The Martyrdom of Nicolas Kluiters SJ, in Lebanon: Confronting Evil

The feast of Saint Joseph (March 19), patron of the university that bears his name, brought to the mind of its new rector, Father François Boëdec, SJ, the memory of Alban de Jerphanion, the first Jesuit martyr of the seemingly endless war that erupted in Lebanon in 1975 – whose latest chapter, hoped to be the last, began unfolding in early March. Five other martyrs of that conflict fell after Father de Jerphanion. In tribute to their sacrifice, and with the publication of a new biography devoted to one of their holiest figures – the Dutch priest Nicolas Kluiters, whose cause for beatification is under way – this work is presented here, revealing previously unpublished details about the motivations of those who killed Father Nicolas. At the same time, it sheds light on the broader meaning of the gift he made to Lebanon, so that the country might endure as a model of “freedom and pluralism” for both East and West, at a moment when a heavily militarized nation threatens to strip it of a vital part of its territory, marked by the memory of Christ’s passage. The insertion of a thoroughly Dutch man into a Lebanese environment did not come easily. It required a substantial degree of adaptation and renunciation. Gifted in the arts, Nicolas Kluiters had initially set his sights on painting before discovering a calling as an apostle. The contrast was stark: a refined sensibility set against the harshness of the human landscape around him. He also consciously turned away from a West whose achievements, wealth – and, perhaps, illusions – were admired by his new parishioners. In his journal, his biographer notes, he wrote: “I am convinced that Western culture is in full decline in all areas of its expression. Its scientific achievements and knowledge amount to a practical waste of strength and energy. (…) The present greatness of the West is founded on military and economic supremacy, not at all on spiritual greatness.” He had to convey his convictions to men and women who saw him both as an “outsider” – his Arabic pronunciation was at first barely intelligible – and as a brother. At times, he was troubled by the language barrier, watching Maronite priests administer the sacraments to people who were meant to be his own parishioners. Within him, an apostolic vocation and social resistance were in constant tension. Moreover, his ministry brought him into contact with a form of clericalism for which he, at times, felt “a deep repugnance.” So much so that, a few months before his martyrdom, he considered devoting himself to poorer communities and even contemplated going to Sudan, believing he was no longer of use in Barqa. Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, however, took a different view, judging that the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts still needed his presence. The priority, therefore, was to consolidate his work, despite the danger. He resumed his mission. Tortured and Killed Upright, direct, and at times impulsive – he occasionally slapped students in class before correcting himself – Father Nicolas established himself in Barqa as an indispensable authority in both spiritual and civic affairs. Yet his life was not as austere as the Lebanese thistle, nor was he an unknowing stoic. A sensitive man, he formed closed friendships and, like any ordinary person, drew admiring glances, which he met with quiet reserve. He became widely popular. It was this, ultimately, that cost him his life. “See how the people follow him,” his enemies are said to have remarked. He came to be regarded as “undesirable” by Syrian and by rising Shiite groups which, according to his biographer, sought to “empty the Bekaa of its Christians.” An opportunity to eliminate him was actively sought. He was even warned directly by one or two Syrian soldiers he had picked up while hitchhiking. On March 14, 1985, the opportunity arose. After visiting the Hermel region, where he had celebrated Mass for a group of nuns, he set off in haste to return to Barqa, taking the road through the mixed villages of Nabha and Qaddâm – a route he usually advised visitors to avoid. It was on that road that he fell into an ambush, was arrested, tortured, and killed. Even forty years later, readers of the biography may find the account shocking. After days of searching, his body – already in an advanced state of decomposition – was recovered from a ravine in the area, where it had been lowered after death, hands bound with a rope. The medical examiner determined that he had died on March 14, the day of his disappearance. His funeral was held on April 3, 1985, at the Jesuit fathers’ convent in Taanayel. He is buried in the convent cemetery. Hell at Work The sadism of his torturers and killers was proof enough that it was not only men at work, but that hell itself seemed to have joined in. In his pastoral work, Father Nicolas occasionally discerned anomalies he attributed to “impure spirits.” For example, he recounted that during a baptism, the glass of a window had shattered from a sudden gust of wind “just as he had commanded Satan to depart.” Two or three times in his life, Father Nicolas experienced a vague, overwhelming dread, as if he were being swallowed by a chasm. He is no longer here to speak of it, yet the fact that his body was later recovered from a ravine is unlikely to be mere coincidence. Every Christian life carries its share of spiritual struggle against the Adversary, its own agony, its own Garden of Olives. We have, on this subject, an extraordinary testimony from the renowned French war correspondent Jean-Claude Guillebaud. In his book How I Became a Christian Again , he recounts how, while covering the war in Lebanon, he was confronted with “the question of Evil” (his capitalization) because of the “funeral procession of massacres” that accompanied the conflict. To him, these massacres were evidence of a “barbaric jubilation that could not be explained solely by ideological or religious passion.” Father Kluiters’ body was officially identified by his dentist, Dr. Sleïman Khnaisser, who recognized him by the dental work he had performed on his lower jaw. The medical examiner declared that in his entire career, he had never seen a body “so horrifically treated.” Beyond the blows, he noted signs of strangulation and throat-slitting. The ruthless treatment of Father Nicolas Kluiters’ body stands as a striking example of the demonic horrors that marked Lebanon’s civil war. Next Article: The Troubling Testament of Ghassibé Keyrouz, Right-Hand Man of Father Nicolas Kluiters, SJ Read More on the Same Topic: “He Died So That Lebanon Might Live,” the Ultimate Sacrifice of Father Nicolas Kluiters, SJ

The feast of Saint Joseph (March 19), patron of the University that bears his name, brought back to the memory of its new rector, François Boëdec s.j., the recollection of Alban de Jerphanion, the first Jesuit martyr of the interminable war that broke out in 1975 in Lebanon, and a new episode of which, hopefully the last, opened in early March. Five other martyrs of this war fell after Father de Jerphanion. As a sign of homage, and with the publication of a new biography dedicated to one of their holiest figures, that of the Dutch priest Nicolas Kluiters, whose beatification process has begun, we present here this work, which includes unpublished details on the motivations of those who killed Father Nicolas. We also take this opportunity to highlight the general meaning of the gift he made to Lebanon, so that our homeland remains a model of "liberty and pluralism" for the East and the West, at the very moment when a militarized nation threatens to amputate an essential part of its territory bearing the memory of Christ's passage. Exalted as a land of holiness, Lebanon is also a country where, alas, priests are killed. The new rector of Saint-Joseph University, Father François Boëdec, mentioned this year (2026) in the annual discourse on the state and future of the University the figure of one of the first Jesuit "martyrs" of the civil war: Father Alban de Jerphanion, hatefully shot by a group of armed men on March 14, 1976, at the intersection of Mar Mikhaël church, while he was going to the airport to drop off a traveler. The words of the new rector pave the way for the remembrance of five other Jesuits "who died for Lebanon to live," particularly the Dutch priest Nicolas Kluiters, whose beatification process is underway. A documented biography has been dedicated to this model priest by the essayist, novelist, and journalist Carole Dagher (Passion for a neglected land, Lessius). A supplement to this work, The art of reconciliation in a torn Lebanon, has just been published by Dar el-Machrek. It is written by Francis Berkemeijer s.j., a compatriot and contemporary of the assassinated priest. This new work provides details on the circumstances of the passion and violent death of him who is considered "an artist of reconciliation"; a man who succeeded, through hard work, tact, self-forgetfulness, and perseverance, in developing Barqa, a forgotten Maronite village in the Bekaa, to the point that its inhabitants no longer felt the need to leave it. For Father Nicolas Kluiters' greatest achievement is undeniably having reconciled two families in Barqa who no longer spoke to each other. Revealed for the first time in this book, the details of his violent end attest to the courageous and holy death at 45 of a man of God, after unspeakable suffering; they also reveal the extent of the shortsightedness, cynicism, and cruelty of the Syrian Assad dictatorship, whose intelligence services are not strangers to his death. Christians, the real challenge "The miracle of my vocation in Barqa is that I was able to experience how villagers who fought among themselves became men working together," Nicolas writes in his diary. "In Barqa, there is no home without a photo of Father Nicolas," asserts the author of the new biography, who is in charge of the company's archives. "I believe that the reconciliation of the Barqa families is his greatest miracle," he adds. "For Nicolas, tensions between Christians and Muslims were not the biggest challenge. The real challenge was above all the vendettas between Christian clans, which often led to blood feuds and where members of families living in the same village no longer wanted to have contact with each other," the biographer further explains. These disputes erupted particularly when "abduction marriages" ( khatifé ) occurred, Father Berkmeijer specifies. Probable signs of a shift in mentality towards freedom of choice for spouses, the older generation could oppose these unions with an absolute rigidity of conduct that led to a total breakdown between families, and sometimes to acts of revenge. They say it's easier to bend an iron bar with bare hands than to change hearts. This change was the miracle that occurred in Barqa thanks to Father Nicolas. One of his means was simply personal contact. He worked wonders with a group of Palestinians who were blocking the construction of a chapel dedicated to Saint Charbel, near mountain pastures where Barqa goatherds went in summer. The Palestinians ended up helping to pour the roof. An "abandoned" region Arriving in Lebanon in 1966, Father Nicolas exercised his apostolate in the northern part of the central Bekaa plain, a primarily agricultural region which, despite the richness of its soil, remained poor and neglected. The newcomer had to confront the spiritual, cultural, and material poverty of his rural environment. In Barqa, where his pastoral service was concentrated, two clans of the same Maronite family coexisted without speaking to each other, attending Sunday mass in two distinct churches, located at opposite ends of the village. In this tribal environment, the law of vendetta was still in force, and an offense could only be "washed" in blood. It was to this unsophisticated Christian society that he devoted most of his energy, living for several years without a home, sharing the lives of the inhabitants, eating and sleeping in their homes. As a true Dutchman, this upright man of temperament had to get used to "Lebanese vagueness." Barqa was not his only concern. He traveled extensively in the region, providing catechesis, evangelical evenings, baptisms, first communion training sessions, and masses. Around the archipelago of Maronite villages scattered at the foot of Mount Lebanon (eastern slope), all villages were Shiite or "mixed." Left to themselves, placed in a minority situation, exposed to the tensions of war and the risks of displacement outside their region, all the inhabitants thought only of emigration. Nicolas quickly learned that the choice was clear: either give the inhabitants the means to survive, or resign themselves to their departure. But in his eyes, there was no choice: he threw himself wholeheartedly into the development of the village. To this end, he even obtained a diploma as a social worker from the Lebanese School of Social Training, now affiliated with Saint-Joseph University. Construction of a road and pipelines In a few years, with the active collaboration of the inhabitants, he succeeded in building a road leading to the agricultural lands above the village; there, he had concrete channels built to irrigate the fruit trees - a substitute for hashish cultivation. He managed to have an auxiliary school built in the center of the village, thus bringing its two conflicting parts closer together, and secured the arrival of nuns from the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts to take care of it. On the same site, thanks to the Order of Malta, a dispensary was opened. He was finally able to set up a sewing workshop in collaboration with a Beirut factory that provided the material, thus creating work for the women of the village. Loving men for the love of God doesn't come naturally. For the world, selflessness does not exist. For a Christian, selflessness is the only virtue that allows one to overcome the ingratitude with which work is sometimes received. The components of Father Nicolas's holiness in social work have not yet been clearly enough elucidated to be offered as an example. Let's say that they first include professionalism in the execution of tasks. Sustainable development held no secrets for Nicolas Kluiters. But he was a methodical man who "hated improvisation," says Father Berkmeijer. It also included the spirit of partnership between the families of Barqa or between the families and the clergy. Finally, it included absolute non-discrimination among the beneficiaries of the completed projects. All the villages surrounding Barqa benefited from his dispensary. Finally, it included the love of poverty, the fraternity of the poor. "It was from the mouths of the poor," his journal says, "that the Lord spoke to him most directly." Next article: The martyrdom, in Lebanon, of Nicolas Kluiters s.j., facing Evil (2/3)

It is no easy task to compress, within a few lines and paragraphs, the trajectory of a great historian who lived nearly a century and who remained, until his final days, immersed in research, writing, and reflection — his mind never ceasing to follow what unfolded in his homeland. His cause was always singular: Palestine. Walid Khalidi, who left us just days ago, gathered throughout his long life many remarkable qualities, the most defining of which — attested repeatedly by those who knew him and borne out by his research and books — was that he served as the guardian of the Nakba's narrative and the very man who dismantled the Zionist account of Palestine. Since his passing, obituaries have appeared in the world's leading newspapers, Arab and international alike, focusing on his substantial scholarly achievements, the many roles he played in political affairs, and the varied activities he pursued in different capacities. Two essential qualities, it may be said, defined Khalidi's character — this Arab Palestinian scholar recognized equally by Western and Arab academic communities for his encyclopedic knowledge and intellectual authority, particularly on the Palestinian question. The first of these was his strict adherence to the standards of scientific research, without ever yielding on this point; it earned him a widely recognized authority among academics in Western and Arab universities alike. In all his published books, lectures, and articles, Khalidi never deviated by a fraction from this standard, and he extended it to all who worked with him, thereby establishing a decisive and authoritative historiographical tradition. The second was his institutional mind, which he translated into the founding of the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut in 1963, conceived as a specialized scholarly reference on the Palestinian question and the Arab-Israeli conflict. This fully independent Arab research institution, affiliated with no political party and pursuing no commercial purpose, published during the period of his tenure as secretary general more than eight hundred reference works on the Palestinian cause in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish, with some titles also rendered into other languages. One can imagine the scale of challenges facing a research institution of this kind, and the pressures from all directions that could compromise its work — pressures that make its independence particularly difficult to uphold, especially given that it is dedicated to the study of a complex question, the Palestinian cause, whose conflict predates the Nakba of 1948. To this is added the fact that the institution relies — in its pursuit of academic independence — on unconditional donations, so as to avoid becoming beholden to any particular faction or sponsor. In this regard, the Institute's director general, Khalid Farraj, has said: "Khalidi worked to embed within the institution a set of collective values and concepts that set it apart from other organizations and workplaces. The substance of these values lies in the fusion of those who serve within the institution with the shared ethos he established, and with the core of the cause for which the institution was created: to vindicate the rights of those to whom they belong, through rigorous scholarly research." [1] The mere survival of an Arab research institution — in a region that rarely prioritizes scholarly inquiry — for more than six decades, without ever surrendering to the embrace of any political, financial, or partisan entity, does credit to the institution and to those who have led it. It is the course that Walid Khalidi charted, and which he steadfastly upheld over many long years. * * *`` Walid Khalidi was a man of principle. He resigned from Oxford University in 1956, in protest against Britain's participation in the tripartite aggression against Egypt, and moved to the American University of Beirut to continue his research and teaching. One can measure the difficulty of such a choice for a scholar in his thirties holding a post at one of the most prestigious Western universities: Khalidi chose to place his national convictions above personal interests, foremost among them his academic career, interrupted at Oxford before being resumed in Beirut — a city then pulsing with intellectual vitality —, which allowed him, some years later, to found the Institute for Palestine Studies, whose headquarters remain in Beirut to this day. The renowned Israeli anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappé has written of him: "In an informal conversation we had (...), I learned that there was another reason for his dissatisfaction with Oxford: as an academic, he had sought even then to lecture and write on the Nakba of 1948, but it became clear to him that Oxford at that time did not recognize the Nakba as a subject worthy of academic study." [2] Walid Khalidi left many lasting scholarly marks on his field. Among the most significant was his exposure of the contents of 'Plan Dalet,' drawn up by Zionist paramilitary organizations to seize control of Palestinian territory, particularly in 1947 and 1948 — a plan that dismantles the claim that Palestinian lands were uninhabited, or that their inhabitants departed of their own volition. Khalidi dwelt at length on the United Nations partition resolution, stating in terms that remain arresting today: "The partition resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947 became so central to the victors' narrative that a collective historical amnesia erased all that preceded it — in the distant, the intermediate, and the immediately prior past — as if the partition resolution were the very origin of the Palestinian question, rather than the tragic culmination (for the Palestinians) of everything that preceded it since the beginnings of political Zionism." [3]` Because scholarly inquiry cannot be severed from the course of politics and its transformations, Walid Khalidi participated — without ever engaging in ways that compromised his academic independence — in numerous spheres of political activity, contributing where he could to the formulation of a Palestinian position and vision anchored in legitimate national rights. He "was part of the inner circle of the Arab Nationalists' Movement and enjoyed the confidence of many of its leaders (...), and he built close relations with the founders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Fatah movement, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (...). In the early 1970s, Khalidi was engaged in private communications with the United States on behalf of the PLO." [4] For those who may not be aware, he played a central role in drafting the celebrated speech that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat delivered at the United Nations in 1974. A further landmark was his participation in the joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation at the Madrid peace talks in 1991, which rested on the principle of "land for peace" — a decisive juncture in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, even if it was gradually emptied of its substance and superseded by the Oslo negotiations, conducted in secrecy and culminating in the well-known agreement of 1993. On the Nakba, on Palestinian villages, and on the systematic displacement of the Palestinian people, Walid Khalidi published two landmark reference works: All That Remains and Before Their Diaspora — their examination alone is sufficient to dismantle the Israeli narrative that the State of Israel was built on a land without a people. Khalidi's books and writings will remain a reference for researchers and students for years to come; he was a devoted mentor to hundreds of scholars who trained under his guidance, in universities as well as at the Institute for Palestine Studies. In the wake of this great historian's passing, the Palestinian cause must remain an obligation borne by all free people across the world — for it is a moral and human cause as much as it is a political one. [1] Farraj, Khalid, “On the Centenary of Walid Khalidi: The Mission That Became a Working Method, Special supplement on the occasion of Walid Khalidi's centenary”, Journal of Palestine Studies, no. 143 , Beirut ( Summer 2025): 123. [2] Pappé, Ilan. "Walid Khalidi and the Genesis of Palestine Studies, 1963–2025," ibid.:57. [3] Journal of Palestine Studies , vol. 9, no. 33 (Winter 1998): 3. [4] Khalidi, Rashid, "Walid Khalidi: Pioneer and Innovator." Journal of Palestine Studies, special supplement, op. cit.:18–19.

Twenty years ago, Gebran Tueini was literally pulverized in a car-bomb attack. His assassins from the Damascus–Tehran axis, together with their Lebanese accomplices, had placed him on the blacklist of “dangerous personalities” to be eliminated at all costs, insofar as the latter had managed, within a few years, to reconstitute a distinctly Lebanese idea of a plural and coherent front, one that guaranteed sovereignty and freedom. A compact front, capable of transcending the divisions inherited from the civil war and the sectarian compartmentalizations on which the axis had waltzed for decades in order to divide the Lebanese more effectively, and thereby establish itself as the authority responsible for settling the very conflicts it had itself created, according to the classic logic of the arsonist-firefighter. Tueni embodied, par excellence, the archetype of fervor, courage, and combativeness for a large segment of the youth of that era. He was respected as a free personality, fearless and beyond reproach, by broad swaths of Lebanese society, across all communities. He possessed an undeniable media presence that was not inherited from the paternal figure of the immense Ghassan Tueini. Certainly, the daily An-Nahar passed from father to son, but Gebran forged his own voice, his own identity, his own personality, and his own battles — at once similar to and different from those of Ghassan. Where the father had withdrawn from politics in its narrow sense — that of militant action — to impose himself as what he had always been in essence, a giver of meaning to politics, Gebran fully embraced engagement on the ground. He was in the event itself, not outside it, nor above it. An-Nahar , under the dual imprint of father and son, alongside Samir Kassir and a brilliant team of journalists, analysts, and editorialists, had become, under Syrian occupation, far more than a political party: it embodied the idea that another Lebanon was possible — free, sovereign, emancipated from tribal and communal shackles, a generator of meaning, and capable of reconnecting with a cultural vision of Lebanon as a country-link with the world. More than that, through writing and thought, it unsettled the cold, monolithic comfort of tyrannies by opening its columns to opponents, including Syrian dissidents. It is difficult to grasp that two decades have already passed without the inspiring and contagious flame of Gebran Tueini — a man of exceptional charisma, a tribune capable of galvanizing crowds through the sheer force of an energy that was at once elegant and animal. It is no coincidence that two of his reference figures were Kennedy and Guevara, both of whom, despite the political chasm separating them, were outstanding orators. In a sense, Kennedy’s youthful dynamism and Guevara’s rebellious momentum were reconciled in Gebran. He had the rare ability to create syntheses, abolish boundaries, and bring people together. In the eyes of tyrannical and totalitarian regimes, this is the mortal sin not to be committed. Today, twenty years after his assassination, the temptation is strong to freeze Gebran into an icon — of a political struggle deemed completed, of a movement declared imploded, dead and buried, or of a disembodied cause. A “martyr” of… This is to kill Gebran once again, endlessly. The same applies, moreover, to intellectuals, writers, thinkers, and certain singular political figures upon their disappearance, especially when they have been deliberately eliminated. Ideas continue to travel, to mature, to grow, even when their authors cease to exist. On the contrary, they enter life. They no longer belong to their owner. They merge with the wind and speak to human beings on their own. Now, Gebran — in his physical posture as in his thought — cannot be turned into a statue. It is a nonsense, a paradox. One need only reread his articles to realize this. For Gebran Tueini, freedom and sovereignty were never hollow slogans or moral postures devoid of substance. They were, for him, the two inseparable conditions of Lebanon’s political existence. Freedom as a rupture with falsehood Freedom, for Tueini, is never conceived as an abstract right or a decorative principle, but first and foremost as an operation of unveiling. He attacks what might be called the great political fiction — the one that transforms violence into isolated accidents, assassinations into mere news items, and fear into fatality. Against this collective anesthesia, Tueini insists that violence is produced by a political climate, by an architecture of domination that targets less individuals than the very possibility of a free public space. Freedom thus begins, for him, with the refusal of alibi narratives. Naming responsibilities, rejecting euphemisms, restoring political causality to events: this is the first act of liberation. In this sense, journalism is not merely a profession; it is a vital function of society, charged with preventing fear from becoming the norm. Sovereignty as mastery of decision This demand for truth naturally leads to the question of sovereignty. Here again, Tueini rejects any sentimental or symbolic definition. Sovereignty is neither a flag nor an identity reflex, but the effective capacity of a state to decide for itself. In texts of great frontal clarity, he describes a Lebanon whose institutions have been hollowed out, where justice is instrumentalized, the press muzzled, and where, above all, political decision-making is delegated to the outside. This delegation is not only imposed; it is often internalized, rationalized in the name of stability, balances, or “realism.” It is precisely this abdication that Gebran Tueini consistently fought against. It is in revolt against it that he died. For sovereignty, in his view, is not lost solely through military occupation; it also dissolves through habituation to dependence, through the gradual acceptance of a state reduced to a façade. This is La Boétie’s famous voluntary servitude. The letter to Bashar al-Assad: sovereignty through speech It is precisely within this context that one must situate and understand his famous open letter addressed to Bashar al-Assad — a text that is a thousand miles away from gratuitous provocation or diatribe. It constitutes an act of intellectual sovereignty in its purest form — a journalistic, ethical, and political landmark, two decades later. By addressing the Syrian president directly, Tueini refuses the posture of the dominated. No foolish supplications, no aggressiveness, no pomp. He speaks as an equal, as a journalist interpellating the tyrant-occupier. This simple shift is decisive, insofar as it breaks with the coded language of tutelage, the obligatory prudence, and the internalized self-censorship that were rife at the time. Above all, the letter performs a fundamental inversion of the tutor’s logic: Lebanese sovereignty is not presented as hostility toward Syria, but as the condition for a healthy relationship between two states. Tueini affirms that no lasting stability can be built on the negation of the other’s freedom, and that domination weakens both the one who exercises it and the one who suffers it. Lebanon’s freedom thus becomes a moral and political test for Syrian power. Of course, Tueni is no utopian, and he knows perfectly well that Assad understands only the language of brute force. Nevertheless, he performs a founding act of sovereignty. This is the essence of the “cultural resistance” advocated at the time by Father Salim Abou. Freedom, pluralism, and coexistence This demand for sovereignty is never dissociated, in Gebran Tueini’s thought, from Lebanese pluralism. The freedom he defends is not that of a camp, a community, or a clan. It is the political regime of coexistence. When decision-making is confiscated and speech muzzled, it is not only individuals who are silenced; it is the very possibility of a plural political community that is attacked. This is why Tueini insists so strongly that political violence does not target only persons, but the Lebanese formula itself. In this sense, defending freedom of expression, state sovereignty, and the independence of national decision-making is tantamount to defending coexistence itself — against fear, fragmentation, and the logic of fait accompli. Having militated during the war within the political ranks of the Christian East, Tueini was a “Lebanist,” and it is from this intellectual posture that he defended the idea of Lebanon. Twenty years later, in the face of the rise of a Christian particularism capable of accommodating the idea of a geographically fragmented Lebanon, it is worth remembering this. Sovereignty against hollow compromises Another essential aspect of his thought lies in his distrust of hollow compromises. Tueini consistently criticized arrangements that, under the guise of realism, enshrine dispossession. “Heart-washing” formulas, dialogues without real power, balances that freeze injustice — all of this, for him, amounted to a politics of façade that weakens both freedom and sovereignty. In his view, true sovereignty presupposes the state’s monopoly over decision-making — including matters of war and peace — and the refusal to allow the collective destiny to be confiscated by actors not accountable to citizens. Here again, freedom is not merely the right to speak, but the right not to be dragged into choices imposed without consent. There is no need to emphasize how аctual this vision remains today, at a time when the Lebanese state continues to stumble in reclaiming the monopoly of legitimate violence. A legacy that still unsettles Twenty years after his assassination, Gebran Tueini’s thought remains uncomfortable because it allows no escape: it rejects both resignation and escalation. Tueni’s leitmotif is this: freedom must be exercised as a matter of right — and sovereignty is never acquired once and for all, but must be defended daily, through speech, institutions, and political courage. Ideas, words, and language exist only when they are accompanied and translated into practical and decisive acts — into anchors. The letter to Bashar al-Assad is perhaps the starkest expression of this: a text in which freedom ceases to be discourse and becomes an act, and in which sovereignty is reconstructed first through direct, frontal, and assumed speech. Thus, freedom and sovereignty do not form two parallel struggles, but one and the same equation. Freedom without sovereignty is fragile, tolerated, reversible. Sovereignty without freedom is nothing but a simulacrum. Together, they constitute the minimal condition for a people to exist politically, without fear and without tutelage. National unity and coexistence form the cement that turns this people into a coherent, viable, living force. To think Gebran Tueini, twenty years on, is not merely to commemorate the memory of a man whose voice was silenced, but to engage in a profound examination of conscience and to have the courage to ask a more demanding question: do we, in today’s Lebanon, exposed to every wind, still live within a framework where freedom can produce sovereignty — and where sovereignty truly protects freedom? And above all, have we known how to defend the coexistence that is its sine qua non? It is by this measure, no doubt, that fidelity to his legacy is truly assessed.

Passing away on December 9, 2019, Môrice Awwad remains an exception in the Lebanese cultural and literary landscape. This is the portrait of a rebellious man — shortlisted in 2015 for the Nobel Prize in Literature — and of his visceral relationship with the mother tongue, the vernacular, Lebanese, which he turned into his banner, his matrix-territory, and his reason for being. Môrice Awwad was born in 1934 into a Greater Lebanon still at its first hesitant steps, yet already traversed by the tension of everything to come: independence, the golden age, then violence and the return to servitude. But it is not his birth that matters so much as the birth of language inside him. One must imagine that Awwad was immersed — almost literally — in a Lebanese linguistic placenta, strange as the image may be, in the entrails of his mother. “I remember hearing my mother cry when I was still inside her,” he would later write. From childhood on, in the house in Bsalim, a bond forms — and it will never come undone: the language of his mother — spoken Lebanese — becomes his first home. The only one that will never crack. “My language is my mother’s language,” he said. And it was no slogan. The language inherited from the maternal figure was a physical truth, an incorporated memory, a fidelity preceding any act of will. The mother tongue is, in some sense, the Lacanian mirror stage that gives the child its first awareness of self. All the more so since the father figure is absent. There is a foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father — violent and absent — pushed to its extreme, such that Môrice, born Khoury, “adopted” the name Awwad until his death, and even further, twisting it into Môrice Kfargharib. The father’s name replaced by the name of uprootedness, of the foreigner. The vernacular axis will remain intact until the end — and in this context one better understands the desire to territorialize language as an anchoring point so as not to dissolve. His entire existence — the Ghazir seminary, returns to the village, years in printing presses, French readings, religious hesitations, assumed poverty, nights of writing — orbits around this single center of gravity: never abandoning the first language, the one given in a gesture of tenderness and necessity. To write, for Awwad, is not to separate verb from body: “When I write, I caress a body,” he said. And that body is always the same: the mother-language. The language-matrix: the place before language Everyone talks about the “Lebanese dialect.” Not Môrice Awwad, who speaks instead of a womb. He does not see Lebanese as an inferior speech, but as a matrix, a birthplace, a space where something begins anew with each syllable. The qāf becomes a hamza — as though he wished to amputate the word of an oppressive, outdated figure — the father? The final h disappears because it never breathed in the houses. Rules give way to breath. None of this is a linguistic bricolage born of chauvinistic narcissism. It is a return to origins — to the language before grammar, before separation, before school, before the State. When he translates The Little Prince or the New Testament, Awwad does not “vulgarize.” The process is one of integration, of reincarnation into the national uterus. He gives the text a grain, a warmth, a tremor, and brings the word back to the place where it becomes flesh. Leonard Cohen sang: “Show me the place where the Word became a man,” with its double spiritual and erotic resonance. Awwad does not even need to be shown the place of creation. He knows it. He lived there for nine months before breathing. And he offered it the Word. The “naquis” of language: tradition, rupture, continuity Môrice Awwad moves between several worlds: Levantine oral tradition, Christian thought, classical Arabic poetry, Latin and French influences, the traces of war. He refuses to choose: he carries them all. In this sense, his thought is not “separatist,” not enclosed within the illness of identitarian narcissism. If it were, he would remain entirely foreign to the infinite spaces that refuse all enclosure — the spaces of poetry-freedom. But he never yields on the essential: neither classical Arabic nor literary French can express what only the matrix-language knows how to say. He remains a poet-passer, but also a poet-insurgent: he refuses that Lebanese be relegated to folkloric ornament; he rejects the idea that only sacred languages can carry the universal. He forges a modernity that does not declare itself — it writes itself within tradition. His work does not balance two poles: it resolves an inner conflict. The mother-language triumphs over the school-language. The total coherence: language, homeland, combat In Môrice Awwad, everything holds together. The man may appear theatrical, even eccentric in his flair for panache, his excessive eroticization of the Word, his persona of a wild poet. Yet he is perfectly coherent. There is not poetry on one side and engagement on the other. The same language serves to write a love poem, denounce an injustice, and say “Lebanon.” Eroticism transmutes, when the moment requires it, into patriotic songs, and he finds himself engaged in struggles for sovereignty, liberty, and human rights — but never as a follower. Rather from the deep conviction that defending the matrix-language is necessarily defending the motherland and the mother-territory. One might even say he ends up eroticizing them both. His place within the engaged Lebanese intellectual lineage appears precisely here: at the crossroads between Kamal Al-Hage and Said Aql. With Aql, he shares the audacity of extracting Lebanese from its subordinate status, without falling into ideological excess. With Al-Hage, he shares the idea that language is an ontological pillar. But here their paths diverge. Al-Hage, a disciple of Bergson, despite his “Lebanist nationalism,” remained faithful, until his assassination, to Arabic as an essential philosophical language, bearer of duration, becoming, and spiritual mission. Awwad crosses the threshold the philosopher did not: he leaves behind the inherited language to embrace the real territory, the one spoken in the villages, in the kitchens, in the mouths of mothers. Where Al-Hage inscribes Lebanon in the metaphysics of Arabic, Awwad inscribes it in the living matter of Lebanese. It is no longer theory or spirit, but body and flesh. The first spiritualizes the nation; the second incarnates it. The first writes for consciousness; the second for breath. Awwad pushes Lebanese nationalism to its most radical conclusion: the country is not a concept — it is a language that comes from the womb. Kazantzakis and the fraternity of womb-languages This matricial gesture draws Môrice Awwad close to a discreet constellation of writers who understood that poetry begins when language consents to become flesh again. Kazantzakis liberating the demotiki, Lorca bringing Castilian back to the Andalusian duende, Joyce fracturing English to let Dublin seep through, Pasolini elevating Romanesco to epic stature, Darwish breathing the village back into classical Arabic, Theodorakis revitalizing the rembetiko in Greece under the colonels. All did, in their respective worlds, what Awwad does in Lebanon: they returned to language its womb, its night, its grain, its wound. Their works, so different, share the same conviction: a language lives only when it returns to the one — or the place — that engendered it. The mother-language, the school-language: a Lacanian reading In a seemingly simple phrase, Môrice Awwad reveals his entire inner mechanism: “Lebanese is the mother’s language; classical Arabic is the language of schools.” In other words, the first heals and envelops: it is love, tenderness, warmth. The second corrects, disciplines, imprisons in a mental lattice. The Lebanese language is freedom and life as one emerges from the womb; Arabic is a cold, soulless boarding school. In Lacanian terms, this is lalangue: the bath of signifiers where meaning has not yet separated from the body. Awwad says it, in his disarming audacity, in his own way: My hand is immersed in the Lebanese language like an embryo in its mother’s womb. How many writers have had the courage to probe their soul deeply enough to restore the language to such amniotic intimacy? And when he confesses having cried only twice — at his mother’s death and at Assi Rahbani’s — he spontaneously links the two matrices of his life: the biological one and the musical one of the country. Roland Barthes would have recognized in this the grain of the voice: not the word, but its density. The work: engendering Lebanon in its language The 57 books — poetry, theater, novels, translations, liturgy — that Môrice Awwad leaves behind, as the testament of his mother-work, are less genres than returns. Each text brings something back to the first world, to the first voice. To translate the New Testament into Lebanese is to say: the Word must become voice before becoming concept. To Lebanese-ize The Little Prince is to ask the world to begin again in the mouth of a child from here. The poet does not seek universality; he creates it through fidelity to the most intimate local root: the oldest womb. The poet of the matrix Despite appearances, Môrice Awwad did not seek to give Lebanon a new language. His path is not identitarian. It is not, strictly speaking, political. Awwad merely returned language to the entrails of the land — of his mother, whether of flesh or of limestone. He returned to language a womb-earth. Or, more exactly, a place of origin. A reason to survive in a regional environment perceived as desert-like, cold, synonymous with death, the opposite of the placenta of life. In a country where everything increasingly decomposes — borders, institutions, identities, and above all culture — Awwad reminds us that the only thing that does not collapse is that which returns to the beginning: the mother-language. That which distinguishes us. That which identifies us. In this sense, Môrice Awwad’s struggle was not linguistic. It was vital. A country may lose its sovereignty, its parties, its armies, its symbols, its dreams and illusions, even its bearings. But it survives only if it keeps its matrix-language. And this is why, even today, he remains what he always was: the man who returned to language its maternal womb.