HENRI ZOGHAIB
Kahlil Gibran ... People and Places
Table of Contents
Gratitude ..........................................................................................................
9
Introduction: These Testimonials ..................................................... 11 people
I – Andrew Ghareeb ............................................................................
23
II – Fouad Khoury .................................................................................
45
III – Monsignor Mansour Estfan .................................................
49
IV – Mary Haskell the Guardian She-Angel .......................
57
V – Boutros and Soumayya Gibran .........................................
65
VI – Barbara Young Visits Bisharri .............................................
73
places
I – What Is Left of His House in Bisharri ........................
87
II – What Is Left of His House in New York ...................
95
III – A Tour of Gibran’s New York ............................................. 101 gibran beyond time and places
I – Gibran’s Nostalgia for Lebanon ........................................ 123 II – Gibran The Lover ......................................................................... 133 III – Forever Immortal .......................................................................... 151 IV – Archimandrite Bashir’s Préface of His Arabic Translation of The Prophet ...................................................... 169 V – The Poet of the Culture of Peace ..................................... 181 Centre of Lebanese Studies – List of Books ........................... 193
II
What Is Left of His House in New York
Speaking about Gibran in New York differs from speaking about him in Beirut. In New York City, every street corner has a different flavour, a different atmosphere compared to how things were like back when Gibran, a man of medium height with his American hat and wealth of Lebanese dreams, walked through these places. Here, in this city, we get a deeper understanding of the deep and sensitive emotions that romantic man had in his heart. On April 10, his commemoration day, I wanted to visit him and the places where he lived. Bisharri and my visit there had completed part of the complex jigsaw puzzle that was Gibran. Now I wanted to inhabit the same places he did in New York to understand what sort of person he was during his time there. I hoped my visit to America would let me get closer to him. 95
kahlil gibran:
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people and places
What I hold of Gibran in my memory, is that he first came to New York on April 26, 1911, and lived in 164 Waverly Place, Manhattan. This humble single room apartment constituted his studio, his bedroom, and his living room. Thereafter, his friend Ameen Rihani invited him to come and live in his apartment in 28 West 9th Street. This was because he had a large room for painting and also Gibran could sleep and receive people in another room. During that summer, Gibran went to Boston to pack whatever books and things he left there and brought them back to New York in September. At that time, he learned of a vacant studio in a new building exclusively for painters at 51 West 10th Street. He wrote to Mary asking her opinion to which she quickly replied: “Go straight… and take it.” This he did: the studio had an atmosphere and a small balcony and rented out for 45 dollars per month. The light in it was as good as that which he had in Paris. It was these two places that I wanted to visit on Gibran’s commemoration day. It was a warm spring day, and walking around the streets of Manhattan was certainly not boring: every street had its own feel. There was no way you could get lost because at every corner there hung a sign bearing the street number and direction. From the Al-Hoda headquarters at West 28th Street, I walked eighteen blocks, to 10th Street in less than eighteen minutes. Images spun around my imagination with every step I took: I was imagining Gibran walking on that 96
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sidewalk, stopping at that juncture, bothered by the burning sun or sodden from a sudden rain shower. When I reached 9th Street, I slowed down. There was no trace of No. 28. I found building 26 and building 30 next to it. I asked the first person I saw about No. 28. He feigned ignorance and walked away. How strange and rude were the manners – far from the Lebanese joviality and consideration shown to you when you ask someone passing by for directions. An old man passed me. I stopped him. I asked him, “Are you a resident of this street?” He replied, “Yes.” “Where is building no. 28?” He said, “It was here. The New York Municipality demolished it. And this building replaced it: building number 26, is a four-storey building which has replaced two two-storey ones. That is why one can see buildings no. 26 and 30 but no building no. 28 in between. “Thank you,” I told him. I contemplated the “new” building nowadays, known as Prasada, an old building which was more than forty years old. The Municipality could demolish it again. I started to imagine Gibran and Rihani walking along the sidewalk of this street. I moved afterwards to the next street, West 10th. I stood for a long time at the corner. I contemplated the entrance by walking across it from right to left. This was the entrance which Gibran set foot in 97
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people and places
thousands of times between 1911 and 1931. He had gone in and out of there for twenty years, and probably more than once per day. How many times did he enter this street feeling sad, and how many times was his head full of fantasies and dreams? I was between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue, the street extended west in front of me: old trees shaded the sidewalks and old buildings stood like sentinels on both sides. The street was calm and silent and so were the passers-by. Not one of those passing by on the street cared that the day was April 10, the anniversary of Gibran’s death. This genius from my country lived on this street, and died fifty-four years ago to the day. I tried to tell myself: “Enough imagination, boy. Move on and quit these romantic fantasies.” I moved along, reading the building numbers and searching for number 51. I couldn’t find it. I found number 45 and number 55 next to it. Again I waited for someone who could help me. An old woman passed by – she might know. She might have been a resident here for 65 years. I asked her. She replied, “Oh yes, the building was here. It was torn down by the municipality twenty years ago, in 1965. They then replaced it with this large building.” I approached the “large” building. It had number 45 on it and was named, Peter Warren. This was 98
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a ten-storey building which replaced the five-storey one, and right next to it was number 55. Strange! I couldn’t find Gibran in building number 28 on the adjacent street, nor here on West 10th, where the hermitage had been at no. 51. Nothing remained in the street that pointed to Gibran and his fantasies and fertile imagination. Nothing remained at all except this sidewalk lying down in the silence of the old times, stretching in the shade of trees which witnessed the living and the dead – this echoing pavement which former years had carved out into memories. Upon Gibran’s arrival in Manhattan, he wrote to Mary Haskell: “New York is not the place where one finds rest. But did I come here for rest? I am so happy to be able to run.” Running? Indeed, it is about all that one does in New York City. People rushed to reach their work were smashed by these tall buildings. When walking, you felt as if the earth was running downward, and you were shrinking with every step while buildings rise around you as if to stifle your every movement. This was the New York of the Twin Towers, 110 stories each, the highest buildings in the world, of the Empire State Building and the Verrazano Bridge, which was the longest suspension bridge in the world. This was the New York of computers, the subway, long distances and seventeen million residents. 99
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In this New York of today, was there still a place for the dream and romance of Gibran? New York changed since the time of Gibran. It changed a lot. I left 10th Street, and in my imagination I saw a man of medium height wandering on the sidewalk, and carrying, in his imagination, a special Lebanese flavour from Bisharri. New York – 1985
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