Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon

TWO Sculpting Independence: Competing Ceremonies and Mutilated Faces (1915–1957)

sculpting independence 39 Sculpting Independence Competing Ceremonies and Mutilated Faces (1915–1957) How could I forget al-Arayssi and the two Mahmassanis and Sheikh Martyr Ahmad Tabbara . . . how could I forget Said Aql, and Petro Pauli and the two Sheikhs Philip and Farid al-Khazen and many others who died at the gallows, where Muslims and Christians embraced to get our independence through great sacrifice and death for the nation? No, I will not forget. —Muhieddine Nsouli, Lebanon’s Minister of Information, addressing the crowds in Martyrs Square, Beirut, May 6, 1955 “Il n’existe pas, madame. Ne perdez pas votre temps. Il n’existe pas!” exclaimed a man who identified himself as a descendant of Emir Fakhr adDin Maan in the Esquire Bookshop in Beirut’s Hamra shopping district.1 I had walked into the store to buy a newspaper and had found the septuagenarian shop owner in conversation with two men who appeared to be regulars at his store. All three were impeccably dressed and were discussing with great animation the news of the day. As I was paying, I asked them if they knew the location of the graveyard of the 1916 martyrs for Lebanon’s independence . The descendant of the Emir vehemently proclaimed that I was on a wild goose chase. He told me not to waste my time. The cemetery did not exist! Or, as he repeatedly said in French, “Il n’existe pas!” Meanwhile, the shop owner handed me back my change and walked to a shelf in the back of his store where he picked up a Lebanese history book. He started leafing through the pages hoping to find an answer to my two 39 b 40 memorials and martyrs in modern lebanon question. His friend told him in no uncertain terms that he would find nothing, so the shop owner re-shelved the book and gave me a resigned smile. I thanked the gentlemen for their time and walked out the door, wondering how the final resting place of the men who had died for Lebanon ’s independence could have become a mystery to people who were clearly educated and knowledgeable about Lebanese affairs? A few days later, after a tour of Lebanon’s archaeological treasures displayed in Beirut’s National Museum, I asked a museum employee if she knew the whereabouts of the final resting place of Lebanon’s national heroes. She nodded and pulled a street map of Beirut out of a drawer, so she could show me the way. Warning me that the area was “sha‘bī,” which means “popular”—a polite characterization of a low-income neighborhood —she directed me to one of Beirut’s last remaining cemeteries in the neighborhood of al-Horj across the street from the Pine Forest, Beirut’s largest urban park.2 When I arrived at the cemetery gates, I asked two elderly guards if they could show me the graves of the martyrs of 1916. They shook their heads and said they knew nothing about such graves. Noticing the disappointment on my face, they said they would be happy to show me the graves of French, British, Turkish, and Polish troops who had been killed in Lebanon during the French mandate period and during World War II. Realizing that the European graves must have been the reason the museum employee had sent me here, I followed one of the guards across the spacious civilian cemetery to the military cemeteries on the opposite side of the enclosure. On the way I explained to him that I was studying how the Lebanese remembered their national heroes. He nodded his approval and said that there were national heroes in this cemetery: those killed in 1958. He became quite animated as we went past rows and rows of marble graves. Pointing in different directions just beyond the cemetery walls all around us, he said that he still remembered when the first shots of Lebanon’s 1958 Civil War were fired “over there,” so-and-so was killed “over there,” and then trouble broke out “right next to my house over there.” The dead were later buried among the civilians within the enclosure he guarded, their graves indistinguishable from others around them. Obviously not all heroes received an official burial in Lebanon, and those who did were not necessarily remembered. The elusiveness of the cemetery to honor men who in 1916 gave their live for Lebanese independence struck me as rather curious. I knew that the story...