Heroes, Just For One Day

December 17, 2010 - December 8, 2024

Never Meet Your Heroes (An Indictment)

People say, "Never meet your heroes." They are right, but not for the reasons you may think.

This is Bassel Shehadeh. He was many things: a software engineer, a filmmaker and director, a musician, a kind man, a Fulbright scholar, and, above all, a hero.

Telling his story is above my paygrade and I would not do it justice. Exceptional stories call for exceptional writers. But I can tell you some of the facts.

Bassel was born in Damascus where he was a cultural force. He studied computer science, but had dabbled in the arts, filmmaking, and archaeology. He was arrested at the "intellectuals protest" at the onset of the Arab Spring. After his release, he received a Fulbright to study film production in the US. However, after one semester of studying abroad, he decided to abandon his studies and go back to Syria to document the Syrian revolution with his camera, and to train local photojournalists. You can read more of the details here.

Bassel was born in Damascus. He was born again in Homs. He will be born again many times, not least whenever I tell someone about him.

He was a friend of a friend, and I had met him a few times. The first was in a small church in one of the Christian quarters in Damascus, where a local choir was playing Mozart's Requiem. Later, in that same neighborhood, the authorities would not let his many friends give him a funeral and a procession.

Next to a hero, you will always be lacking.

Do Meet Your Heroes (Amazing Grace)

People say, "Never meet your heroes." They are wrong, but not for the reasons you may think.

I met May during the peak of summer 2013. I had moved to Beirut on a near-permanent basis. The revolution I had put all of my dreams on had started turning more chaotic and violent, as the regime it sought to topple cranked up its torture and killing machine to levels rarely seen in human history.

The peaceful revolutionaries I had known had by now died, either physically or in their ideals. People were taking up arms, seeking to defend their dignity and their dreams. I could contribute something when revolution meant shouting words or dreaming big. But I could not contribute anything when it meant shooting a bullet.

I lamented this impotence for the better part of that summer. Imagine Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another, but younger, more depressed, and without a child or any tether. My laments took on many forms, but mostly, it was the drinking. When I met May, the drinking had gotten so excessive that I was bringing my trusty flask with me anywhere I went, including the algorithms and data structures class I had signed up for that summer.

May was going through Beirut on her way to her own exile in France. She was a famous star, having had leading roles in many famous movies and TV series. Many of her colleagues were happy to sing praises to the powers that be. They would participate in cheap Soviet-style propaganda pieces or narrate hollow patriotic speeches. May wasn't one of them. She spoke her mind and acted her principles. She told me stories about love and friendship. She laughed easily and a lot. She was the kind of woman "that makes you wish you spoke a little French." For these crimes, she was arrested and then released shortly before coming to Beirut.

May spent a couple of weeks in Beirut, staying with a childhood friend of hers, who happened to be my best friend's father. I spent much of my time in that house hanging out with my friend, playing board games, listening to wiser adults speak, and drinking. In those few weeks, I had gotten to know May well; we each found something familiar about each other, or perhaps she was just being kind to a college kid in need.

One day she told me she had noticed all my drinking. She said she wasn't worried (she was), but that she had a request to make. She told me not to throw my life away. During that time, the first thing that greeted me when I woke up was the grief. But "the drinking does not make the grief go away," she said; "it only dishonors those for whom you grieve." She wouldn't ask me not to drink, because she knew that wouldn't work (and she wasn't prudish about drinking herself). Instead, she only asked me not to drink before 5pm. No more drinking in class. No more drinking for breakfast.

She pleaded with me to do that for her sake. How could I refuse an icon? So, I did what I was told.

We went to see her off at the airport. There were a lot of tears, but she reminded me of her admonition. She said we would see each other again, and when we did, I would have grown into a beautiful man.

May Skaf died in France in 2018. She was 49 years old. The doctors said it was a heart attack, but I know better than to think her heart could attack anything.

I have had a couple of smaller run-ins with alcohol since, but her words always come through.

Meet your heroes someday. You will do for them what you could not do for yourself.