Twenty five years ago, I remember returning from the USA. We were on our way back to Lebanon because a man named Bachir Gemayel was elected president. I am sure now that there were many others like us who had heard. There many like us who had fled earlier in the hope of returning. This was before the time when people just wanted to leave for good. This was still when the Lebanese war was only 6-7 years old. People had not yet been demoralized; there was no war generation yet.

I remember that we were in Cyprus because you could not fly into Beirut airport from London. We were waiting for a boat to take us back. I was a kid not more than 9 years old but I had heard Bachir speak. I knew who the Lebanese Forces were. More importantly I knew who the enemy was. “A3ref 3adouwwak, el Souri 3adouwwak”. I was as old as the war you see, and the slogans of war were my language, and the spoils of war, my hobby. I knew of guns, and tanks and bombs and planes better than I knew anything about sports. I collected shrapnel and bullets. I knew that a bomb shelter was not safe unless there were two ceilings above it and enough sand bags to hide the entrance. I knew where the bombs could come from and how far they could reach. I was going back to Lebanon but it had not been that long since I had left.

My parents had hope now. The years of raising these kids in turmoil might now be over. The voice of Bachir kindled that spirit in all who heard him. The feeling that things might not just get back to normal, was overshadowed by the dream that things could be even better than they were. That was the spirit I felt and the energy that was palpable amongst all Lebanese. Bachir was the fire of the indomitable Lebanese who would not accept to be humiliated or shamed or disenfranchised or exiled or beaten or ever told what to believe.

Bachir Gemayel for those brief moments was an image of what Lebanon had a chance to become.

My hair still rises with excitement and replete understanding when I hear Bachir’s words. I cry every time I listen, the same tears that I saw my father cry when we heard from our hotel room in Nicosia that he was dead.

There is no way to explain how much I learned when I saw my father cry for the first time. I saw that a man who I thought was more powerful than the world itself, was vulnerable, maybe even weak. The idea shocked me and I remember seeing him sob with his face in his hands like a man who had lost his dream or his family or his future. It was not any kind of sadness. It was a knowledge that a flame had been extinguished that we could not afford to lose. My father knew that the loss of Bachir was the loss of Lebanon as we wanted it to be, at least for the future to come. That excited family who was returning with hope to their home, to their homeland, to their dreams was stopped dead in their tracks. We did get to Lebanon, but this was not the same Lebanon.

This was not the Lebanon of Bachir; The Lebanon that was going to stand up to Syria, to Israel, to America, to Russia, to the Arabs, to the Palestinians and most importantly to the thinking that we needed anyone of those mentioned to survive.

I remember when LBC first opened and how Bachir’s voice would ring out of that station louder that any sound because it was the voice of truth. It stood out shrill and clear and full of passion. It reminded us of who we were and where we were going. It was the soundtrack of revolution and of resistance.

The spirit of Bachir was that of unity. It was the answer to every politician who took his orders and kissed that hand of a foreign power. It put fear in the hearts of the vain and treacherous and inflamed the hearts of the patriotic and free.

Bachir was the spirit of the Lebanon to be, not the Lebanon of the past, certainly not the Lebanon of today.

Bachir was the fire that would burn the hands of all those who chose to meddle in our affairs and the light that shone for any who chose to see.

Where is the spirit of Bachir today? Are there not men and women and children who still hear that voice? The voice calling out for us to say the truth; because only the truth will help us strive to change that reality. To make that reality the dream that we want it to be.

I ask you as Bachir did more than 25 years ago, let us put Lebanon first and foremost and join the only political party that can insure our future, the party in which each of us is a leader;

The Party of Lebanon.

Please say a prayer for the Spirit of Bachir Gemayel that it may live on in our hearts and our conviction.

May God bless the citizens of Lebanon wherever they are in this world