They drove alongside his limousine as he was travelling home and blew his brains out with an automatic rifle, leaving Kamal slumped over his morning newspaper in the back seat. Across the room stands a far more disturbing man: Michel Aoun, the rebel Christian Maronite general who claimed he was the president of Lebanon in 1988, opened a war of “independence” against the Syrian army which cost 1,000 lives, and then turned against a rival Christian militia, killing hundreds more. Aoun, still alive in Paris, donated his own uniform for his look-alike and – proving that vanity, at least, does not die in exile – telephoned a message for the palace visitor’s book which compares his own banishment to that of the Emir Fakhredin the Great Neither, it seems, ever stopped loving his country. The 17th-century Emir is sometimes called the father of modern Lebanon, a prince who mutinied against Ottoman rule after uniting the clans of the Lebanese mountains on his side. Aoun, of course, sees the Syrians as “his” Ottomans.There are less bloody characters beneath the arches.
The distinctly odd English traveller Lady Hester Stanhope, grandaughter of Pitt the Elder, who wandered Egypt and the Holy Land and retired to the Lebanese mountains to meddle in local politics, sits with an irritating smile on her face. Not far from her is Alphonse de Lamartine, the 19th-century French writer who recommended Palestine as a future colonial project and carved his name on a 2,000-year-old cedar of Lebanon.But it is difficult to shake off the smell of blood. The one-armed French General Henri Gouraud, who chopped off Lebanon from Syria after World War I and gave it to the Maronites – arguably the cause of all its recent wars – stands stiffly to attention in dress uniform. Not far from him is Pierre Gemayel, the Christian warlord whose son Bashir – one of the most savage of militia leaders – was blown up by a bomb in 1982; his death in turn led to the massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Chatila.
And, at the back of the atrium, there stand three men and their murderer, alongside a priest, all in early-19th-century dress. Emir Bashir II has invited local tribal leaders Abdul-Ahad Baz, Gerious Baz and Bashir Jumblatt to swear eternal fidelity among each other before God They are holding out their hands above a Bible and a Koran The date is 15 May 1807. That same day, the Emir’s men murdered the Baz brothers; they cut down Bashir Jumblatt 10 years later The brothers were ancestors of Samir Baz. Bashir Jumblatt was Kamal Jumblatt’s great-grandfather.Even the palace itself stands in a town whose name is synonymous with violence. In 1983, Druze forces surrounded Deir al-Qamar and shelled it mercilessly until its Christian militia defenders agreed to leave.
Walid Jumblatt lifted the seige as a “Christmas gesture”.”When I was at school, I was taught English history and French history and I had to wait for my father to teach me Lebanese history,” says Samir Baz, whose bedroom in the palace is scarcely 40ft from his waxworks “So this place is a history lesson for my people. I say: `Here are no politics – here is only a museum.’ “Whether the Lebanese will learn from their history is, of course, another matter !Heroes and villains (mostly villains)… Top, from left: Father Mattr Hakim, a Christian priest who created a free school for both Christians and Druze in the Chouf mountains in the 19th century; Kamal Jumblatt, father of the current Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, assassinated in 1977; Michel Aoun, the rebel Christian Maronite general (now living in exile in Paris) who claimed to be president of Lebanon in 1988. Above, from left: Alphonse de Lamartine, the 19th-century French writer and traveller who first identified Palestine as a promising potential colony; and (from left) Abdul-Ahad Baz, Emir Bashir II, Patriarch Tyran, Gerious Baz and Bashir Jumblatt on the occasion in 1807 when they swore eternal fidelity to one another, at the Emir’s invitation; the Baz brothers and Jumblatt were subsequently murdered on the Emir’s instructions, two of them that same day. There are painters, writers and composers who have had long, tranquil and productive lives So it seems. Pierre Bonnard painted his wife, the meal table and the garden for decades, without deviation or dismay. He may have felt some private despair, agonising over colours and compositions; he may have dreamt of greater fame, big money and limos to Monte Carlo.
But he didn’t trash the garden, betray his wife or cut off body parts And there has never been a movie about Bonnard. More or less, the same, even tenor of life seems to cover Nabokov, Stephen Sondheim and Titian, whose lives, as we know them, show no graver trait than perfectionism. Of course, perfectionism will kill you, too, and can be brutal on others; and even smooth appearance may be a clue to subterfuge and turmoil. As Thoreau might have said, if he’d studied artists instead of pond life, most artists lead lives of quiet desperation. “Why complain?” you ask – “they have their calling and purpose.” But suppose they don’t want it; suppose their vocation feels like a malady they cannot shrug off? Then, to do their work, artists must enter into a strange pact in which they allow us to feel that their consuming-but- insoluble tasks are easy – or natural. Beyond that, they can’t explain and shouldn’t complain, for their lack of choice over what to do in life (their calling, their curse) is also their terrible strength. The Mozart of Amadeus (1984) is like that – a child, a buffoon, a beast, unfit to possess his own music That’s how the bitter Salieri sees him He can’t explain Mozart, so he complains.
