Nothing can ever make up for such a loss. No consolation can fill the chasm left behind by all that was lost: experiences not lived, accomplishments unrealized, books unread, joys unshared, evenings that never came to be — all that a writer, a professor, a political activist could have continued to give and receive over the span of twenty years, had fate not torn him away in an assassination at the age of forty-five. With him perished unfinished projects, boundless dreams, and an unquiet longing that had never settled for the present.
And nothing fills the absence — the absence of a voice, a smile, an idea sparked mid-conversation, a shared mischief, a flash of wit or piercing insight. Nothing replaces that touch of self-assured vanity that Samir carried — in meetings, in gatherings — which made neutrality toward him almost impossible.
To remember him, twenty years after the blast that shattered an Alfa Romeo on a street in Beirut, is also to summon the memory of a life interrupted — that of a comrade, a friend, a brother-in-struggle, who had committed himself to a political path that remained, like his own journey, unfinished. His death was, no doubt, one of the reasons for that incompletion.
Through his intelligence, clarity of vision, and his rare ability to walk a tightrope of chosen fault lines, Samir succeeded in turning his multiple affiliations into the foundation of a broad and generous identity. He carved a singular path for himself — and never betrayed it. He remained true to who he was, never diluted, never silent, even within the communities he moved through.
From Achrafieh — where he was raised and spent the early years of the war supporting the camp opposite to that of his milieu, without ever severing social ties to it — to Paris, where he discovered the Arab world through its exiled intellectuals and grew deeply attached to it, while never abandoning his desire to return to Lebanon; through his commitment to leftist politics — which never stifled his personal freedom or his sensibilities — to his weekly columns in a newspaper whose editorial line he often disagreed with; to his masterful use of the French language in L’Orient-Express, turning it into a language of dissent against the dominant right-wing francophone discourse in Beirut — Samir moved, at times quietly, at others turbulently. He was Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian — but also French, Egyptian, and deeply drawn to Italy for reasons historical, political, and even football-related. He loved cinema and dreamt of writing detective novels — a dream, alas, cut short on June 2nd.
Between 2000 and 2005, he devoted himself to what he considered the cause of all causes: Syria. His commitment had multiple roots: a Lebanese one, first — in response to the Syrian regime’s domination of Lebanon and the many crimes it committed there; a Syrian one, second — in response to the regime’s brutality against its own people, and to the deep, life-shaping friendships Samir had forged with Syrians; and finally, a Palestinian root — often referred to as “Arafatist,” so profound was Samir’s admiration for Yasser Arafat, and his shared defiance toward the Assad regime’s criminal policies against the Palestinians.
In these final years, Samir dedicated his political writing almost entirely to Syria. He did so with fierce resolve, even at the cost of losing friends. He voiced disappointment — affectionately yet candidly — toward close Syrian intellectuals in a letter addressed to Farouk Mardam-Bey, who was to him like an elder brother, reproaching them for omitting Lebanon from their calls for change. There is no doubt that the Democratic Left Movement, which we co-founded, was an attempt to build a bridge between Syria and Lebanon — a bridge that the attempt on Samir’s life sought to destroy, to render impassable in both directions.
But assassins do not always write history — even when they hold its reins for a time. Our struggle continued after his death. The Syrian revolution, which erupted in 2011, despite its evolving phases and changing actors, ultimately brought down those same criminals — though not by the hand of those whom Samir, and many others in Lebanon and Syria, had hoped would embody the alternative.
What matters is this: the Assad regime fell. Syria and Lebanon were freed from its grip. And the head of that regime — now a fugitive from justice — is holed up in hiding, unable to flee his own den. That, in itself, is a public vengeance — and a deeply personal one. A vengeance for Samir, twenty years on, at the end of two decades that also saw the passing of Gisèle Khoury — his beloved companion and partner in life’s final decade, to whom we owe the creation of a foundation, a prize, and a Beirut square bearing his name. And also the passing of the novelist Elias Khoury, our steadfast comrade in every cultural and political battle since 1994.
“I say that we are the dead, but I know that some of the dead endure,” wrote Ahmad Beydoun on June 2, 2005, in tribute to Samir. “And it is an endurance that offers no solace, but serves as a vengeance akin to fate.”
Today, on June 2, 2025, I dare to say: I have at last found some measure of solace. And vengeance has become destiny.
Ziad Majed
