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Andrew Ghareeb

Andrew Ghareeb 1: “Words of thanks failed him, so he left the tribune in tears.”

Kahlil Gibran’s door was open, but not his heart. He remained an unreachable mystery, even for those closest to him with the exception of one woman to whom he opened his heart and who opened her heart to him. His relationship with Mary Haskell remained an unfathomable secret and was revealed only following both of their deaths in his letters to her (325 letters) and her letters to him (290 letters). These letters combined with her journals (47 notebooks), all of which she deposited at the Library of the University of North Carolina at

1 I met with Andrew Ghareeb on June 17, 1990 following which he lived for ten more years and died in Springfield on Sunday, March 12, 2000 at the age of 101. The Near East Section of the Library of Congress honoured him on May 23, 1991 within the framework of a series of ceremonies in Gibran’s honour, following the inauguration of the Kahlil Gibran Memorial Garden in Washington by the then-President George Bush Sr.

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Chapel Hill, where they are still kept in the Rare Book Collection. Virginia Hilu consulted all of the documents and published many of them in her book, Beloved Prophet. Tawfiq Sayegh similarly used these materials for his book, Adwa’ Jadida ‘ala Gibran (New Lights on Gibran). These treasures indeed shed new light on the mystery of Gibran and his relationship with Mary Haskell, his long-time patron who shied away from the spotlight. These materials make clear he never published any text in English – from The Madman to The Earth Gods, published two weeks before his death – without her perusal and blessing.

Gibran knew, in life, how to prepare for his immortality after death. His ability to prepare for his death remains a mystery to this day. It is as though he lived his life with a clear sense of how best to memorialize his life after passing. He succeeded, for he is still defying death, appearing every now and then in a new persona, a new revelation, and a new light that is added to the many spotlights already focused on him.

Death seems but a foreign concept when it comes to the man who is still living every day in our spoken and written words. He remains the daily focus of readers and researchers in numerous languages, and the demand for his books keep many printing press staff busy with new editions the world over. For no sooner is one work reprinted than it runs out of print.

On one stormy and snowy afternoon in Baskinta at the end of February 1988, I was the last person

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to leave the funeral of Gibran’s long-time friend, Mikhail Naimy, in the house where he penned the majority of his works in Al-Shakhroub.

When I gave his coffin one last look, I thought I was bidding farewell to the last grape in a blessed bunch that revolved around Gibran and I recall whispering to myself, “The last of his friends died today.” Little did I know that I would later meet the last of Gibran’s living friends in the United States.

Andrew Ghareeb is mentioned in the book co-authored by Boston sculptor, Kahlil George Gibran and his wife, Jean, Kahlil Gibran: His Life and World, published in 1974 (in English, large format, 456 pages). Prose Poems (New York: Knopf, 1934), by the publisher of Gibran’s works, features a foreword by Barbara Young, with a noticeable mention of Andrew Ghareeb, who translated the twelve poems in the volume from Arabic into English. Grape Leaves, A Century of Arab American Poetry (University of Utah Press, 1988), by Gregory Orfalea and Sharif Elmusa, asserted Ghareeb was the first to have translated Gibran’s Arabic works into English and the last one who did so during his lifetime.

The thought I would one day meet this man, the last living memory of Gibran, never crossed my mind. One day, I was visiting a friend, Professor Adnan Haydar in Amherst, Massachusetts, and he told me about Andrew Ghareeb, the father of his friend, a fellow professor, Edmund Ghareeb. I asked

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him to accompany me to Chicopee, near Springfield, MA, where Ghareeb, then 92, was living.

On the ensuing trip, I pictured Ghareeb as a debilitated man who retained whiffs of Gibran’s memory. When I came in, however, I encountered Ghareeb, a man as tall as an oak tree who had a husky voice reminiscent of the sturdiness of our blessed rocks in Lebanon. I realized that I, in my forties, could learn not only much about Gibran, but also about life from Ghareeb, who was in his nineties. He offered a wide range of stories about Gibran. My interview with him is below.

Henri Zoghaib (HZ): How was Gibran’s aura before you met him?

Andrew Ghareeb (AG): Great, it was great. When I was growing up here in America he was widely famous. We would wait for his writings in Mir’at al-Gharb (by Najib Diab), Al-Founoun (by Nasseeb Arida), As-Sayeh (by Abdul Massih Haddad) and the Al-Nisr newspaper (by Najib Gergi Badran). He was well known and much loved; a subject of pride for the Lebanese community. His subjects and style were new. Newspapers in Beirut would often republish what he published here, even though his writings often resulted in negative reactions by puritanical clerics there. He was particularly active within the Lebanese community to help his compatriots in Lebanon in the wake

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of WWI. Ameen Rihani, a prominent figure in the Lebanese community in those days, contributed to the defence of our folks there. Rihani and Gibran were the first to write prose poetry in Arabic. Rihani did not continue this poetic journey as he rather devoted himself to politics, philosophy, and travel, whereas Gibran persisted in writing in his modern style.

HZ: What prompted you to get to know Gibran?

AG: His writings had a great impact on me and were quite close to my beliefs and aspirations. One day in 1926, I read “Wa’azatni nafsi”, a piece he wrote in Mir’at al-Gharb, and I enjoyed it. So I translated it into English and published it in our local newspaper, The Springfield Republican, along with an article on Gibran. I sent the translation to my friend, Mikhail Naimy, who had an office in the As-Sayeh magazine in New York. He replied by sending a letter of appreciation and congratulations along with two of his poems in English to be published in The Springfield Republican. A few days later, he invited me over for lunch in New York and introduced me to Nasseeb Arida in whom I immediately sensed an attachment and loyalty to Gibran. In 1928, I read “Ayyouha Al-Layl”, a piece written by Gibran in Mir’at al-Gharb. I translated this piece into English and sent it again to Naimy, who showed it to Gibran and wrote back, saying: “Gibran loved your translation and asked

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me about you. I told him you are Lebanese and you love his writings, which you translate into English. He said that your translation is quite faithful to the original text and asked to be introduced to you.” A month later I was in New York and I went to the As-Sayeh office (on 21 Rector Street in Lower Manhattan) where I found Naimy having a heated phone conversation with Gibran over his latest book Jesus, the Son of Man. Naimy was seemingly preparing an article on the book and was discussing with Gibran the words he had written about the Sermon on the Mount. I heard Naimy say: “I understand you take liberties with people and have them say things about Jesus as you wish, but I don’t understand how you took liberties with the Sermon on the Mount, wherein you cannot change so much as one letter because that’s how it was pronounced by Jesus himself.” I do not know how Gibran answered, but I understood that the man knew what he had written, believed in what he said and was certain that what was mentioned in his book was indisputable, as proven by the fact that Naimy ended the conversation without getting any answers to his questions. When he told Gibran I was at his office, Gibran asked for me to come to him. And so I did. I took the subway to West 10th Street, then walked to building no. 51, where Gibran lived on the third floor. His door was open (as I would always notice later on). He welcomed me in with his drawing apron on, and he was

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alone. I remember that moment as if it had only just occurred: his pale face, his elegance, the clutter around the studio, which he referred to as the “hermitage”, and an ancient stove filled with old ash in the middle. He inquired after me, my family and many other details. His questions were affectionate and he was a fine listener. I immediately gained the impression he cared much about me, despite the fact I just met him. I understood later on that he was always like that, i.e., caring for his fellow Lebanese. I felt that he liked my company and my translations of his writing partly because I was a Lebanese. Then he asked me to read what I had translated for him. He listened intently and was deeply moved. I was reading his piece, titled “Al-Shuhra”, and I got to the last line, which read, “All I found in the sand was my ignorance.” He liked the fact that I had translated the word “ignorance” in English as “blindness” (in Arabic) and he said: “That is exactly what I wanted to say. You have translated my thought rather than my word. I am pleased with your translation.” He stood up and offered me a copy of his new book, Jesus, the Son of Man, which he signed in Arabic. Before he left, he questioned me closely about his aura within the Lebanese community, the impact of his books on community members and what they were saying about him and his books. He was extremely keen to know what people thought about him, and this keenness and inquiry persisted throughout all

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my subsequent visits with him. On one of these visits, I offered him a rare old book from my private collection that contained ancient Persian drawings and poetry, which he appreciated. He thanked me profusely and offered me a copy of a new, recent edition of The Prophet, which he signed in Arabic.

HZ: How do you remember him now?

AG: He was a recluse who did not like to go out.

He lived permanently with hidden anger and yearned for the time he spent in nature. He was aware of his mounting importance on the world level and this awakened in him a special feeling.

This was neither conceit nor arrogance. Rather, it was steering away from anything that did not serve this road to fame. One sign of his living as a recluse was to dedicate himself fully to writing, drawing, and his request to not give out his phone number (Chelsea 9549) so that he would not waste time.

He was always well dressed anytime I came by. Whenever I came to New York, I would pay him an impromptu visit. His door was open so I would knock and go in, and he always welcomed me with his low, husky voice and treated me to a Lebanese welcome. He would go to the corner of the studio and brew Lebanese coffee, and we would talk, sometimes in English and sometimes in Lebanese Arabic, which on his side, was laden with a Bisharri accent. He used to smoke a lot,

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barely finishing one cigarette before lighting up the other. His elegance was an indicator of his mood. He loved beauty in all things and often talked to me about it. He walked sedately and I never saw him nervous or stressed. When outside the studio, he would always walk with his cane, as was the habit in those days.

HZ: Did you meet with him outside your quiet sessions in the studio?

AG: I met him once, during a major ceremony organized in his honour by the members of the Pen Bond on the eve of his birthday (January 5, 1929), which coincided with the Silver Jubilee of his literary life (25 years between 1904 and 1929). Mikhail Naimy sent me an invitation to that celebratory dinner at the McAlpin Hotel in New York. I met Naimy in Manhattan and we went there together about two hours ahead of time. Nasseeb Arida rode with us. Gibran had already arrived there ahead of us and he was pacing the grand hall with his cane. He welcomed me and asked me to help him sign the book, Al-Sanabil (The Spikes of Grain), which was published by the Pen Bond, especially on this occasion as a means to gather excerpts of Gibran’s writings. We sat side by side and I started opening the books on the first page where he would write, “With love” and sign, “Gibran Kahlil Gibran” until he finished signing all 400 copies. He was calm and composed

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with an elegant handwriting and bearing. About four hundred people were present in the hall on that night, including Lebanese and American poets, painters, lawyers, and businessmen. Eighteen speakers took the floor, including Mikhail Naimy, William Catzeflis, Abdul Massih Haddad, Raschid Ayoub, Nadra Haddad, Elia Abou Madi, and Philippe Hitti. In conclusion, Gibran took the floor to deliver a thank-you address. No sooner had he started in Arabic and expressed his thanks in English than he choked on the words. His lips quivered and he started crying, and subsequently left everyone in the audience in tears at his outpouring of emotion. We were about to leave the hall when a New York Times correspondent stopped to discuss his impressions of the event, then asked whether he agreed with the controversial 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which prohibited the sales of alcohol, spirits, and intoxicating liquors and was opposed by alcoholics. Gibran immediately said: “Yes, I agree with it.” When I visited him on July 15, 1929, I asked him if he was pleased with my work. He never once discussed with me a word in my translations. I asked him for written permission to translate his Arabic texts into English and he gave it to me without any hesitation, as he went to his table to write and sign the permission in English.

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I started publishing my English translations of his Arabic texts in The Springfield Republican (Massachusetts) and The Golden Book magazine (New York). When I sent my translation of the piece, “Al-’Ard” (The Land), to the latter, they asked to publish my English translation along with the Arabic original. I sent them the Arabic text, which was published in As-Sayeh. However, they published it with a faulty layout because the printing officer did not speak Arabic. Gibran was sad, but he understood the situation and did not get angry. He was forgiving and always busy with some mystery, as if always waiting for an unexpected development.

HZ: What memories do you have of your last visits? Did disease sketch the lines of death on his face?

AG: On my penultimate visit, he told me upon my arrival to the studio: “Come, Andrew, see what my brothers and loved ones at the Pen Bond have done to me.” He showed me an issue of As-Sayeh in which “Al-Soufi”, the last piece he wrote in Arabic, was published, albeit without his name at the end. I consoled him as I asserted that this was certainly an oversight on behalf of the printing officer and that neither Abdul Massih Haddad nor any of his friends had anything to do with it. He remained calm as he answered: “I like to think about it like that and I do not doubt any of these loved ones.” He was forgiving and always focused on what was most

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important. Indeed, the next issue of As-Sayeh published the following in a prominent position on its first page: “The poem, entitled “Al-Soufi”, which was published in the previous issue without mentioning the author’s name, was written by our genius Gibran Kahlil Gibran.” During this penultimate visit, I promised him that I would translate “Al-Soufi” into English and that I would show him all my translations of his Arabic works. He was pleased with the idea and we agreed that I would visit him on March 20. On that day, March 20, 1931, I was on my way to visit him (little did I know that it would be my last visit to him) when I heard a voice calling out to me on one of Manhattan’s crowded streets. I turned around and there was my friend Salloum Mokarzel. I told him I was going to see Gibran to show him my translation of his new poem, “Al-Soufi”, before sending it to The Golden Book magazine. He insisted on taking it to be published in his own magazine, The Syrian World. So I gave it to him and went on my way to visit Gibran. We had a long session together, during which he seldom spoke as he was concentrating upon listening to my English translations on his texts without making any comments. When I was done, he said: “I will seek a publisher to have this book published in your name. Your work is quite close to my spirit. You have translated the spirit rather than the shape of words.” He went to his table and brought a

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copy of his new book, entitled The Earth Gods, which had been published during that same week. He wrote his autograph in it, offered it to me, and promised to give me one of his drawings as a present. I noticed he was unusually pale and I asked him if he was in pain, upset, or ill. He waved the answer away with a distressed smile and asked me, as usual, about what the Lebanese community thought of his writings. My answer fulfilled his expectations and his curiosity to know the extent of his widespread fame. Then he said in a deep voice: “Andrew, all my fame among our people, whether here or in the Arab world, has not brought me a penny’s worth of copyrights or printing rights for all the articles and books I published in Arabic. They publish my works without my knowing about it. They use my articles and writings without my permission. They take advantage of my works in Arabic and they don’t send me a single penny. When I publish here in English, I get revenues from the articles and poems I publish in newspapers and magazines, and from the books published by Knopf. If it were not for the drawings and paintings I am selling, I would be in need now.” Then he went into a deep silence. During that session, I understood why he was no longer interested in having his works published in Arabic. I remembered what Mikhail Naimy told me when he asked him about his opinion about the translation of his English works into Arabic by Archimandrite Antony Bashir, and Gibran said:

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“Let him write what he wants Mischa. Whichever way he translates, my spirit will be in him.” Before I left Gibran on that March evening, he told me: “I will ask Alfred Knopf to publish a book with your translations of my texts. Bring me the full manuscript towards the end of September, which is the publishing season, and I will have talked to him about it.”

I bid him farewell and I left. I was worried about his paleness and the way in which he could hardly walk, but I did not have an intuition that this would be the last time I’d ever see him.

Three weeks later, on the noon of Saturday, April 11, 1931, I was going out of a café in Springfield when I heard a newspaper boy shout: “late edition … late edition for the latest news.” I drew near and I bought the latest issue of The New York Times, which announced the sad news of Gibran’s death on the front page. His death had a tremendously tragic impact on the Lebanese community.

HZ: What about your book after that?

AG: A while after Gibran’s death, I took the manuscript to Knopf and he said: “You have to go to Barbara Young. She is now entrusted with his legacy and is his executor.” I met her for the first –and only– time in Gibran’s hermitage, where she had been along with her daughter. She was a tall, corpulent woman with

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a strong personality and I knew she had been with Gibran ever since she met him in 1923, when The Prophet was published and she offered to be his secretary. She said she would allow for my book to be printed by Knopf, provided she could write its introduction. I told her Mikhail Naimy had asked to write the introduction, but she harshly refused and asserted in a tough tone: “Then the book will not be published and I will not allow you to publish it.” I told her I would have it published by another publisher since I had an authorization signed by Gibran, which I showed her. However, she firmly retorted, “This allows you to translate, albeit not to publish. I alone am allowed to publish and I give the final permission.” I was baffled, because Mikhail Naimy had returned to Lebanon in 1932 and I, too, was preparing to return soon after. I felt there was no choice but to accept her demand. And so it was that the book was published in 1934 with Young writing an introduction in which she said that I had masterfully “assimilated the Arabic original of Gibran’s spirit and conveyed his magic into English.” She made slight modifications to some pieces, including “Ayyouha Al-Layl”, and added some prose to sections while downtuning my translation of Gibran’s poetic streaks in the original English text. I went back to Lebanon and Knopf subsequently sent me the translation royalties twice a year (in early January and early July) at a rate of $4,000 a

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year. I kept receiving this sum for many years as new editions were published of the book. It became part of Gibran’s classical collection and was sold along with his other popular books. When I returned to Lebanon, I told Mikhail Naimy about Barbara Young’s demand, but he did not comment. I understood that he was at odds with her and that he held her responsible for the disappearance of Gibran’s first will in which he had stated that he had earmarked amounts of money for his Pen Bond friends. Indeed, Gibran used to provide them with financial assistance on an individual basis and this explains why they dispersed after his death, why their magazines and newspapers stopped and why things deteriorated into personal disputes between them. Therefore, all of this came to the light following his death, when his second will dated March 30, 1930, which contained no trace of what Gibran had told his Pen Bond friends (knowing that Naimy later alluded to in his book about Gibran that he had written two wills). Barbara Young, with her authoritative personality, might have had something to do with the new will. Her severity was such that she was compelled, when Gibran was dying, to send after Naimy to the hospital through Salloum Mokarzel, albeit only when Gibran had entered into his final coma. As Naimy recounted in his book on Gibran, all he heard from him was “Gh-r-r… Gh-r-r… Gh-r-r…” Naimy’s aversion towards her was so intense that he did not name her in his book,

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merely referring to her as “an American poetess who met Gibran towards the end of his life.” I later learned that following Gibran’s death, she “camped” in the studio, arguing that she feared things would be stolen, and started issuing copies of his paintings and selling them in various exhibitions as Gibran’s works in order to finance projects to print his legacy.

HZ: Following Gibran’s death, why was there all this fuss about Naimy publishing his book on Gibran?

AG: I went back to Lebanon in 1934, two years following Naimy’s definitive return. I used to visit him in Al-Shakhroub and he always told me that in his book he removed the towering stature of his friend, Gibran. During one of my sessions with him, he told me: “If I had only written about Gibran’s merits, I would not have been objective and I would not have served Gibran, for people would have labelled me as his panegyrist without taking my writings seriously. I wrote about some of his human lapses. For instance, he used to drink a lot towards the end to alleviate the tremendous amount of pain he was in. Some blamed me for divulging this. However, it will be left up to people to sift Gibran’s shortcomings from his merits and they will remember his merits, which are many.” Naimy himself may have had exaggerations in his book because he was not familiar with Gibran’s life as he was growing up, or with his love life,

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which Gibran kept as a carefully guarded secret. Furthermore, Naimy derived the information he did not know about Gibran from a single source, namely Mary Haskell, when he met with her on the morning of April 21, 1931, ten days after Gibran’s death. The meeting lasted for four hours in a spa near Grand Central Station before she took the train back to her Savannah (Georgia) home, after attending Gibran’s funeral in Boston. During that session, she summarized for Naimy various aspects of Gibran’s life in Boston and some of her own life, which Naimy used as a basis for his book.

Years later, I followed a debate between Naimy and Ameen Rihani, who blamed Naimy for smearing his friend Gibran in the Lisan Al-Hal newspaper. Naimy answered, “He was my friend more than he was yours. When were you his friend? We still remember how Gibran threatened you with his cane during one meeting in New York, because you had adopted a hesitant stance between Lebanese and Arab loyalty, and this caused aversion towards you among all Pen Bond members, and even within the Lebanese community.” Rihani’s famous violent reply in Lisan Al-Hal came as follows: “The New York incident was distorted by Naimy, for he sees things from his own angle.” Moreover, resentment rose against Naimy from members of the New York Lebanese community, specifically in Nasseeb Arida (whom I sensed

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was the closest to Gibran), Raschid Ayoub and Abdul Massih Haddad. Yet the most virulent of all was Ameen Rihani. I visited him many times in Freikeh, as I had come to know him during a debate between him, an Englishman, and a Jew in Massachusetts in 1930. Ameen went back and forth between the two men and silenced them with his strong arguments backed by critical thinking and sound logic. Even though Rihani disagreed with Gibran towards the end of his life on political and national matters, he remained nobly loyal to his friend, who had tremendous respect for him. Gibran even abstained from publishing with Al-Hoda Publishers (despite its fame and broad readership) out of solidarity with his friend, Rihani, who was locked in a dispute with Al-Hoda owner, Naum Mokarzel.

HZ: Do you think that Naimy’s return to Lebanon had something to do with Gibran’s death?

AG: Yes, Gibran used to help his friends and provide them with financial assistance. He was an umbrella for them in New York. Following his death, they dispersed as if they no longer had any protection over their heads. In 1974, before

I returned from Lebanon to Massachusetts,

I visited Naimy in Baskinta to bid him farewell and I asked him if he ever thought about going back to the United States to achieve fame there as he had done in the East, and he said, “Isn’t it a bit too late for that, Andrew?”

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HZ: You translated Gibran into English. What do you think of the translation of his English texts into

Arabic, specifically “The Prophet”?

AG: I conjure up Gibran’s answer to Naimy’s question about Archimandrite Antony Bashir’s translations into Arabic, and I add nothing to that. Whichever way they translate his texts into Arabic, his spirit and influence will remain clear and unique. As for The Prophet, Bashir’s translation conveyed the spirit without caring for the language. Naimy’s translation delved into Gibran’s thinking and lost the subtlety of Gibran’s astonishingly simple expression, whereas Tharwat Akasha’s translation did not grasp the depth of Gibran’s imagination.

Therefore, I believe that the best translation of

The Prophet and the most faithful to Gibran’s spirit and simple – though deep – language remains that of Youssef Al-Khal.

I spent five hours discussing memories with Andrew Ghareeb. My hand grew tired of writing and this 90-something young man never grew tired of telling his story. I wonder if he has mentioned all memories. If the answer is yes, could this be the last of the “new light” shed on Gibran – knowing that Ghareeb is Gibran’s last living contemporary?

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When I visited the Rare Book Collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I felt an odd chill run down my spine as I handled Gibran’s original letters to Mary Haskell. More than once, I could almost smell his fingerprints on the letters, which he had touched with his poetic hands. When Andrew Ghareeb shook my hand, I felt it like a Lebanese oak branch, and I shuddered when I thought I was touching the hand that shook Gibran’s so many times. I left Ghareeb and went out on the broad crowded streets of Massachusetts, where strangers resembled shadows following one another. A faraway shadow was following me on the inside, saying with a smile: “Not yet… not yet… Sixty years have gone by and many sixty years will go by still and the mystery shall remain intact and the well-kept secrets will not be told.” I know that well, because I realize this enigmatic poet will remain an unreachable mystery, even for those closest to him. This holds all the more true now that the bunch of friends and memories is down to one grape, which adorns our conversations about him.

Is it possible that the man who is still reborn in our conversations every day has ever died?

Springfield, Massachusetts – 1990

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