The residence of Dr. Tobie Zakhia

Myrian Harry in the Footsteps of Renan
Fréderic Zakhia, L’Orient-leJour, 5th August, 2019
Translation from the French: Kenneth Mortimer

In 1922 a certain French author-jounalist by the name of Myriam Harry while staying in Lebanon decided to visit Amsheet, a small half-hidden village, “unknown to tourists,” she wrote. Her purpose was to visit the tomb of Henriette Renan, sister of the philologist and archaeologist Ernest Renan, who had died in this village when accompanying him and his wife during an archeological expedition in Phoenicia financed by Napoleon III and launched in 1860.

It was the custom of Myriam Harry to visit places in the Levant and to write articles and reports on them. This was not her first say in the Middle East; daughter of a Jewish merchant converted to Protestantism, she was brought up in Jerusalem and spoke Arabic. Having reached Jbeil (Byblos), she went on towards Amsheet, which had a certain francophone tradition. It was where the Renans – Ernest, his wife Camélie and his sister Henriette – once stayed, worked and wrote. The visit and its description revealed the secrets of a countryside and nature now gone for good under the uncontrolled spread of concrete urban sprawl.

Myriam Harry and her team followed a clearly defined route between olive groves, vineyards and mulberry orchards. After a long climb “lovely slender palm trees appeared,” she relates. Behold a characteristic of Amsheet, many date palms which have inspired writers. Then, continues Harry, there appeared solid houses of stone which appeared still higher than the palm trees. Another characteristic of the village was the imposing old residences in hewn stone with balconies with battlements and round upper windows worthy of admiration. On reaching the sepulcher of Henriette next too the Nootre Dame church and after getting information from the village people, Myriam Harry describes the tomb in an article of 1922 in the French daily Le Temps. Above the tomb itself were four walls making a sort of mausoleum. The writer mentions the presence of four funerary urns on the angles of the walls. These urns are still to be seen but have never served to hold any ashes, as Myriam Harry seems to have thought, for according to the Maronite tradition incineration is not used. In front of the sepulcher on September 24th, 1961, anniversary of Henrietta’s decease, one can imagine the village people in mourning assembled to pay their last respects before the coffin of the deceased placed in the tomb belonging to Renan’s hosts, the Zakhias. One might have expected her remains to stay there only a short time, but her brother Ernest, leader of the mission and future professor at the Collège de France, was persuaded by his wife not to let the remains be transferred to France. Henriette was finally buried with great pomp, according to the church register, following to the Maronite rite. Henriette now rests close to the illustrious Mikhaël Bek Tobia al-Kallab, the most eminent personality in economics, politics and philanthropy in Mount Lebanon during the first half of the nineteenth century.

The Last Hours of Henriette

Is it possible to visit the tomb without seeing the places where the Renans once lived? No, and that is why Myriam Harry turned her footsteps toward the Renans’ residence and saw the room in which “the dear French lady” passed away. Events followed each other fast for these French expatriates. Henriette had already had problems of health because of her lengthy voyages during the mission and the sudden changes of temperature when crossing the deep cold valleys of Tannoureen to get across to Toula, a village of Batroun where a fierce sun beat down. After a short stay in Beirut to organize the return to France, Ernest and his sister Henriette decided to return to Amsheet aboard the Caton, a ship which was afterwards to take them to France with the objects and tombs discovered in the historic sites in Lebanon. Once back in Amsheet, Henriette had an attack of malaria. Her brother also had a bout and fainted on the very same day that his sister died. Four French doctors rushed to Amsheet to try to save the lives of the Renans, Dr. Suquet specialist in illnesses of Syria, Dr. Gaillard, and two others from the French squadron. By giving quinine they managed to save the life of Ernest but unfortunately they had arrived too late fto save Henriette, who was already in her fifties. A hospital was being set up in the residence but was not yet finished and there was no local doctor. The place is now the Saint-Michel Hospital.

Invited by the Collège de France in 2912 to give a talk on the Renans at Amsheet at a colloquium about the writer, a former medical adviser and regional director gave a talk on the subject. He was Dr. Tobieh Zahia, proprietor of the former residence of the Renans and now President of the National Social Security Fund. He gave new details drawn from tradition or written evidence. The audience learned that Dr . Gaillard took away with him Harriette’s ear-rings and that among the anti-clerical colleagues of Renan, who found himself in the Maronite stronghold of Amsheet, there was a gentleman who used every diplomatic means to decline an invitation to hospitality and lodging at the Zakhia’s. He had named his dog Maroun after the patron saint of the Maronite Church. He was immediately declared persona non grata.

The Return of the Renans

In an interview with a villager near the tomb of Henriette, Myriam Harry learned that some years later, Ernest Renan returned to Amsheet with his wife in order to transfer his sister’s remains to France. In front of the sepulcher “they approached the grill and said something,” and according to the man’s story an olive tree (which probably never existed according to the photos of the time showing only an oak) shook its head as if to make them understand that Henriette wished to repose for ever in this village that she loved, a village of palm trees and “cloudless sky” as the archeologist described it.

- Residence of Dr. Tobie Zakhia: >> View Movie << (2019-02-12)