CHRISTIAN WAS BARELY 21 YEARS old and had returned to Beirut after several years of studying science at the Sorbonne in Paris. He’d come back to ‘fight for something in which I truly believe’, he told me, implacable in his determination to make some kind of impact against an enemy whom he would refer to as ‘fucking barbarians’.
His job, while I remained on assignment in Lebanon, was to act not only as a military escort, but also as my general factotum. Duties included protecting and feeding me, as well as finding us a place to put our heads down after dark. It was a thankless, unforgiving task in a society where any contact with a foreigner is regarded with distrust. Together, to his credit, we overcame a labyrinth of obstacles.
His name, in itself, was a declaration of sorts in a country where religious divisions have given rise to 14 centuries of conflict, and to my eternal regret, his death was pointless, utterly so. I would have liked to have said as much when I met his mother afterwards, but it would have been inappropriate: he was her only child and his death was not only unnecessary, it should never have happened.
Christian did a sterling job as guide, facilitator, interpreter and friend. We operated under deplorable conditions and nothing was easy. He had been detailed to accompany me as my ‘minder’ by Max Geahel, the undisputed head of the Lebanese Force Command’s G-5 office. Simply put, you couldn’t get into this war with the Christians unless G-5 – Max’s press-cum-security office – gave the nod.
Interestingly, Max was another of those characters who emerged prominently as the war progressed. American author Jim Morris, who followed me into Lebanon afterwards, described him in one of his reports as ‘the mad monk with the thousand yard stare’. It was Max who told Christian that whatever happened, he wanted me back at headquarters when I’d completed my tour of duty.
‘And I want him alive!’
The war that raged around us in the early 1980s eventually caused Lebanon to transmogrify. It went from the most ordered society in the region to the most violent and chaotic the world has experienced in the past few centuries
For many years, once hostilities had started, the country remained an anarchist’s fantasy. Murder was the norm and the word compassion wasn’t part of its lexicon. By the time all this madness had ended, there were about 100 different militias, each with its quota of zealots – some Christian, the majority staunchly fundamentalist Islamic.
Apart from Amal, Hizbollah, the Christians and the Druze communities – together with perhaps a handful of other political or factional groupings – very few of the rest maintained even a semblance of order. Within their ranks, only the most powerful individuals ruled, and they did so absolutely and without compromise. Foot soldiers were expected to do their bidding and if they didn’t, they were killed.
It is one of the oldest axioms, dating back to before the time of Caesar, that in a prolonged struggle, you eventually become like your enemy. So it was in Lebanon. With both Christian and Muslim, the crust of ideology made an honest reckoning in this singularly violent society uncommonly difficult.
At first glance, this was a nation that had lost all reason. The journey from progression all the way through to mindless mayhem had been swift, with huge numbers of people killed. Now and again, entire towns, settlements and ghettos – some Christian, others Muslim – were wiped off the map. Sabra and Shatilla (both Islamic) were among them. There was a Christian town south of Beirut where it was estimated that between 10,000 and 12,000 people – men, women and children – were systematically slaughtered one morning in the early days of the struggle. Things went on to deteriorate to the point where there were people in the streets of Beirut, Sidon, Tripoli and elsewhere slaughtering each another with the kind of ferocity that has recently surfaced even more mindlessly – be that even possible – in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The battle in which young Christian died extended over a 20-mile radius. Still worse, both he and I, together with two more of his colleagues had – truth be told – actually been responsible for the bloody sequence of events that had begun a few hours before his death, ultimately causing Beirut’s Green Line to erupt along its length. It was a most horrific experience.
It started on the night of Saturday, 21 May 1981. Some Syrian soldiers had been killed by the Christian Lebanese Force Command following a surprise attack that had been launched – at a whim, mark you – by none other than Christian and his two compadres. Clearly, the trio could never have envisaged the terrible consequences that were to follow. How were they to know that in a single rocket strike, they would end up killing half a dozen Syrian troops hunkered down on a first-floor balcony on the Green Line?
In any event, I was the media guy they were trying to impress and if nothing else, they were appallingly successful.