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By Alia El-Solh
This is the epitaph Riad would have had on a small white grave by the
sea near his “friend” the Imam. (The Imam Al Auzai an emiment scholar
of Islam who lived in the eighth century and protected in the name of
Islam, the Christians of Lebanon against the ill treatment of the Abbassid
governor of the region.)
But the people of Lebanon had decided otherwise: another grave, another
epitaph altogether. They were paying a farewell tribute to the man who
gave them a new vision and a new taste of life, who taught them that
dreams had no walls and that through freedom only they could make them
come true.
By public subscription from the poorest to the wealthiest the nation
raised a mausoleum with the inscription:
To Riad El-Solh
from the grateful nation.
1898-1951
***
“Beware of the misbehaving Freedom, it will either disintegrate into
chaos or be dismantled by a dictator in the name of order.”
This ominous warning was uttered by Riad El-Solh on day one of Independent
Lebanon, more than half a century ago.
That was the answer he gave to a group of his fellow freedom fighters
who had come to him and asked: “What comes next?” “Next we shall learn
how to live with Freedom after we have learned how to die for it. Remember
Mayssaloun, we were all marching to our death for honour, for pride,
for freedom. But no one ever bore in mind: for a better life, a happier
life or a more productive use of Arab skills and intelligence. No it
was all revenge on history and the brilliant past revisited.
We were defeated at Mayssaloun and we had to start all over again. But
as of today we are free men in a free country. The time has come for
us to dump that syndrome of defeated people in perpetual anger. This
land is not only fit for angry heroes, there should be enough room for
happy human beings too.
It should flow with contentment, serenity, joy and prosperity as well
as justice, equality, dignity and culture.”
Riad El-Solh would count the blessings of Independent Lebanon for hours
on end. He was very protective of that new born independence for fear
it is misused or abused.
Freedom was Riad’s first and everlasting love. His quest for it started
years and miles away.
The time: a sunny day of the year 1908.
The place: Salonica in Greece.
A few youngsters running along the beach, screaming joyfully: Missolonghi,
Missolonghi. That was the name of the game, the very popular one among
Greek boys at that time. It aped the famous battle between Greek freedom
fighters and the Turks. But before starting their fake battle, the boys
were already fighting over who played what role. The highly coveted
one was that of the famous Greek freedom fighter, the hero who defended
Missolonghi in 1823. Botzaris the brave.
Among the boys were two newcomers, Riad and Ahmad the sons of the newly
appointed Ottoman governor to Salonica, Reda El-Solh. At a glance the
two El-Solh boys grasped the rules of the Greek game. Leaving the other
boys to their precast battle, Riad grabbed the wooden swords awaiting
the young warriors and proclaimed himself Botzaris the Great.
“You cannot be Botzaris,” said a Greek boy, “you are the son of the
Ottoman governor.”
“Well I’ll be Kapitan Pacha, the Turkish admiral who in the end had
beaten you all,” replied the governor’s son.
“You cannot be that either. My father told me that you Arabs are no
rebels, no fighters, no heroes. You serve under the people who have
stolen your countries and your freedom.”
Our Arab boy did not quite understand the Greek child’s words, but he
surely felt them deep in his flesh and soul as a disgrace and had an
irresistible urge to react.
He took his younger brother’s hand and jumped into the sea to drown
all the wooden weapons.
The angry Greek boys followed them and the battle ended in a tragedy
which was to become a turning and decisive moment in Riad’s life. His
beloved brother Ahmad drowned and his little body buried forever in
the alien grave of Salonica.
Riad’s first revolt was against his father, but Reda El-Solh the Ottoman
governor explained to his broken hearted son that despite what the Greek
boy said, for generations on end his forebears were Arab freedom fighters,
but unfortunately fighting is not always rewarded with freedom, it is
often punished with more repression.
The new strategy was to infiltrate the structures of the Ottoman Empire
and break them from within to emancipate the Arab provinces.
A few months later the governor took his son to Istanbul to meet the
Ottoman Sultan. The ruler who knew the boy and was quite fond of him,
greeted him gently and lifted him to his lap.
Being seated there on the lap of the mighty Sultan, surrounded by the
glitters and gilt of the imperial palace, in short on top of the world,
and yet nothing mattered to Riad, the little Arab boy, but the fact
that he could not be “Botzaris,” a hero not even in mock battles.
As the officer brought the coffee tray, at a glance Riad decided to
avenge his brother’s death and his people’s shame. He pushed the tray
as an awkward move and the boiling coffee splashed about burning the
Sultan’s hands and staining his studded sword. The stain on the sword
was the good omen. This was all the little boy could do at that age
and in this place. The only arm in his possession was the cup of boiling
coffee and he used it. It didn’t occur to him that he had no choice
but to remain silent and obedient. He was not seeking an alibi but an
action. It was his first act of rebellion. Thus he became the youngest
freedom fighter ever.
From the Sultan’s lap Riad marched to his own freedom and to that of
the Arab world. He fathered the independence of Lebanon and became an
active member of all liberation movements from Waters to Waters, that
is, from Morocco on the Atlantic Ocean to Iraq on the Arabian Gulf.
After the impromptu in the Sultan’s Seraglio, he threw a bomb on the
Turkish Wali’s carriage at age thirteen, at age sixteen an Ottoman court
sentenced him to be hanged with his father ex governor and ex-member
of the Ottoman Parliament. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonement
in Anatolia. Until November 22nd 1943 when Riad El-Solh came back from
his last jail in Rachaya, a free man to a free country, he had already
collected from Turkish and French authorities five death sentences,
a dozen life terms and tremendous hardships like hiding in forests and
caves weeks on end, escaping in a fisherman’s boat and on a cattle train.
He had it all except resting in a rose garden surrounded by his daughters.
But in the end he had fulfilled his childhood dreams, succeeding where
his ancestors and even Botzaris the Great himself had all failed.
Riad El-Solh had even succeeded with a bonus: Lebanon was not only independent
in 1943 it became the very first Arab country to accede to independence.
It was not an easy task, because at that time the country was labelled
the weakest, the least homogenuous, the most precarious of them all.
And yet the first on the rope. That was an omen, once more Lebanon should
always lead the way with all the blessings conferred on free souls.
Free Lebanon became the platform for all liberation movements in the
Arab world in Riad El-Solh times and after his death.
His legacy was “Lebanon, free country, also Freedom country.”
From 1943 to 1975 there was no better forum in the Arab world for free
choice, free speech, free research, free creativity, free enterprise,
free breathing. . . and this last item was not the least with the ever
growing number of military regimes in the region.
For day after day democratic Lebanon was becoming more and more insular
in that sea of dictatorships until it was finally confirmed as Liberty
Island. For power seizing by a bunch of ambitious officers in the name
of the People anger was never to be scheduled in Lebanese political
agenda.
Riad El-Solh used every endeavour to persuade the nation to disentangle
the concept of freedom as applied to a country and freedom as applied
to men. He would repeatedly preach “Being a citizen of an independent
country does not always make you a free man. Only human rights and democracy
do. But those blessings do not become effective by decrees only, they
should be implemented by all the shareholders, you the people. The People
of Lebanon more than others, with its multiple ethnic and religious
groups should always keep in mind that fraternity without equality will
remain an empty word. The true cement is democracy and the ballot box
will remain our best friend: free to choose, free to change. A far better
way to soothe our anger than the officers’ tank. Ultimately a popular
uprising will always be safer than a take over by a few. . . Believe
me there is no such a thing as pawning your freedom and your rights
for safety order or stability. It will take bloodshed to take them back.”
Thus spoke Riad El-Solh anytime, anywhere addressing popular rallies
of a million as well as chatting with his family around the dinner table.
We, his daughters were his latest recruits but we had the privilege
of receiving the first flashes of his ideas. He used to think loudly
in front of us in spite of our young age. Why not, he was ten when he
had learned through a tragedy what it was like to fight and die for
freedom. Now he wanted us to learn through awakening and faith how to
properly live with it, hence to keep it alive.
He wanted to humanize the notion of freedom: from a passion to a blessing,
from a projective fiery quest to a lively multifaceted way of life.
For, there is a tremendous difference between freedom as a missing object
you have to battle for and freedom at hand which you have to handle
knowingly for fear of losing it again by misuse or abuse.
Knowingly means not to live beneath it because you ignore the protection
of human rights; not to step over it because you dismiss democracy as
codified freedom, which makes it accessible to everyone: seen by the
blind, heard by the deaf, obeyed by the mighty and open to the outcast
but closed to the outlaw.
With enthusiasm the people of Lebanon followed Riad El-Solh in his dream
of making Lebanon the pilot country in the region for democracy, culture
and prosperity by keeping the windows wide-opened to ideas, to research
and creativeness. Beirut would become little Bagdad in the days of Al-Amin
the scholar philosopher-caliph, little Damascus in the days of Abdel
Malik the builder-caliph, little Grenada at all times with its innovative
taste, beauty and joy.
For this pilot country and hence for the Arabs. Riad’s dreams had no
walls.
Living then in Lebanon was a sort of ascent to a better quality of life,
a higher self esteem. The two promoters of achievement and progress.
Lebanon was described as little America, the golden land, where all
neighbours or otherwise wanted to be.
Among newcomers were the Syrians who resented the first military coup
in the Arab world, that of Colonel Husni Al-Zaïm, whose alibi-anger
for the coup was the defeat in Palestine of the Syrian army decoyed
by its civilian government. But once in power Al-Zaïm did nothing
to avenge the lost honour of his army. He had only opened the flood-gates
to military coup d’Etat in the Arab world, triggered a series of democracy
dropping countries and a wave of Freedom orphan citizens seeking a foster-country.
Lebanon as shaped by Riad was one of the most sought after shelters.
One of those Syrians, a member of the last freely elected parliament
before Al-Zaïm would tell you: “I decided to stay in Lebanon waiting
out for better days in Syria. Besides, parliamentary life is so active
in Lebanon with legislation always in the making, with might surrendering
more and more to right: no ruler would be above sanctions not even Riad
El-Solh, father of the nation. I attend most sessions of the Lebanese
parliament.” For that man, being in Lebanon was like extending his mandate
in his own parliament and giving himself a new term in democracy.
***
Another brand of refugees was that Iraqi Jew who would confide gratefully:
“After the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, it became hard for
a Jew to worship in Baghdad. So I came to Lebanon to remain faithful
to both my hebraic creed and my Arab being and culture. In Baghdad I
had to drop my Jewish half as related to the new state of Israel, and
nonetheless accept to be degraded to half a citizenship. In Israel,
if I had followed the trend of the Aliyah, I would have had to drop
my Arab half and nonetheless accept implicitly never to acceed to a
first rate citizenship because of my origins stigma. Whereas in Lebanon,
I was welcome as an Iraqi guest and never discriminated against as a
Jew.”
In fact Lebanese Jews had been extra protected during the 1948 Arab
Israeli war for fear that some people might confuse the Jews with the
Israelis who were fighting the Lebanese army in the south of Lebanon.
The two measures, fighting against the Israelis and protecting the Lebanese
Jews were simultaneously taken by Riad El-Solh who had an exact vision
of the Zionist danger. In his student days in Istanbul he had known
and discussed with a number of Zionist activists and zealots and had
acquired the deep conviction that the Idea of Israel as a homeland to
the Jews who were nowhere else at home could not be particulary attractive
to Arab Jews. They have never felt as being aliens or visiting citizens
in their respective countries, and never were they singled out for ill
treatment as their European counterpart. The holocaust made them cry
on their co-religionist, but at no time made them see it or transpose
it as a possible Arab threat. Riad was protecting the Jews of Lebanon
not as guest citizens but because he didn’t want any fear to intervene
in their lives that would make them question their identity and reach
the age of uncertainty and with it the door out of Lebanon. A single
Lebanese Jew emigrating not even to Israel, merely to Argentina or Brazil
because of ill-treatment and amalgam between an irreprochable Lebanese
citizen and an Israeli agressor, just because they both share the same
religion, would destabilize Lebanon as a multiconfessional democracy
in the making and give a solid alibi to the sectarian state of Israel.
The small Lebanese army was fighting against the Haggana on the southern
border, because Riad wanted the Lebanese people to feel concerned and
try to keep out of bounds the enemy of today and the distabilizer of
tomorrow.
With faith and in spite of its weakness the Lebanese army won one of
the few battles where victory was on the Arab side: Al-Malikiah.
***
This war was to bring a wave of Palestinian refugees to the whole Arab
world. One of them would tell you. As a matter of fact my family had
left Palestine to X or Z Arab country. But once grown up I chose to
come to Lebanon because freedom is not mere rhetoric there. It is true
life and we found much more free-handed backing to our struggle than
anywhere else. The people of Lebanon has wide-open windows onto the
universe. In Lebanon I have learned how to address the world. I became
an expert at right and efficient appeals for Palestine, shrewd at deciphering
true from false promises. Whereas in neighbouring countries windows
if any were of a shorter range, narrower because always shared by the
jammings of the brother host.
A Saudi guest of Lebanon would explain. I still live in Saudi Arabia
but I spend half of my time in Lebanon, where my daughters are schooled.
This was his way to express his yielding to woman’s liberation.
***
A Kuwaiti would boast I have built the most beautiful mansion in Bhamdoun
where I live most of the year. This is his way to proclaim that he was
free to choose. He had democracy at home, he was choosing a certain
quality of life. . . . And so many others from Somalia to Algeria.
***
All those Arab guests were singing Freedom Song and the people of Lebanon
so proud to give them the tune.
And then came the end of joy and Freedom. Too much of a good thing and
Riad was no more, he was assassinated on one of those roads to freedom
away from home. He would have repeated what he had always said.
“Dreams have no walls but freedom should have a roof woven with yarns
of rules, laws and ethics.”
Riad Knight of Freedom was he the hero of the useless?
No as long as there are free men on earth. And freedom fighters in the
south of Lebanon who decided to die for freedom, took up the torch,
they will hand it to their sons who will one day open Riad’s book and
learn again how
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