Obituary: Dean Fawzi El-Hajj

Washington DC, Monday December 6, 2022
 

Those who lived in Ras Beirut during the 1980s and 90s, and who walked around the American University of Beirut (AUB), would have noticed young men and women hanging out "intimately." With militias ruling the country, AUB administration could do little to stop such behavior, but by the end of the civil war in 1991 and the disbanding of warring militias (except Hezbollah), the Dean of Students Fawzi El-Hajj issued a memo banning "public display of intimate amorous behavior on campus." (AUB campus is fenced and only accessible to ID-carrying AUB community). A funny dude went around campus and translated the memo as such: ممنوع الكج بأمر من الدين حج.

During my student years at AUB, and serving multiple times on the student government and for years as the editor-in-chief of the weekly student paper, my interaction with Dean Hajj was daily. He treated crazy students (like me -- planning to dismantle AUB, the USA, colonialism and the galaxy), by letting us into his office and giving the impression that his meeting with the student was extremely important to him. He ordered two cups of coffee (and asked, in a true Levantine fashion, how the student wanted it -- black or with sugar), then offered the student a cigarette, lit it for him lit his own and the two puffed it out together. (He chain smoked). He was a problem solver but spoke in code, which I eventually learnt. He referred to parties by names of their AUB student leaders, so instead of saying Jumblattists he'd say "students of Wael Abu Faour," and instead of saying Aounists, he'd refer to them as "the group of Ziad Abs."

He censored my publication heavily, which caused continous bickering between the two of us. He wanted AUB to remain neutral for fear that politics would invite unwanted militia (and later, Syrian intelligence) attention. 

One time, at the Iraqi Cultural Club, we organized a campaign against the UN embargo on Iraq. While I was standing on campus alone minding my own business, a Syrian intelligence came to me and started asking me with his distinctively Alawite accent (which they used to scare people) about Iraqi students (like myself) at AUB. I couldn't get him off my case so I took him to Dean Hajj, who -- very fatherly -- told the Syrian intel bully: If you want to take Hussain to Beau Rivage (the Beirut hotel headquarters of Assad's intel who ruled Lebanon), take me because I'm responsible for everything he says and does.

On Sunday, Fawzi El-Hajj died at age 89. He will live in the hearts of thousands of AUB alums, yours truly first and foremost.

Hussein Abdul Hussein '94, December 6, 2022