Bambi just read the sad news in L’Orient Le Jour (https://bit.ly/3Av1QRa). What a loss for Lebanon. Ouf. Her heart goes to your wife Nayla (your colleague as well), family, friends, team, and fans, not just in Lebanon, but also abroad, especially in France and in the entire Francophonie.
You were an integral part of our childhood and youth. You were a lighthouse of creativity with much humour and lovely music, which served as an artistic uprising against war and against warlords.
People literally risked their lives under the shelling to go to the theatre for your performances. They/We sang your songs or advertisements on TV. We all laughed to your satiric jokes.
You gave innocent people caught in the middle of fire a therapeutic space where they just laughed at the absurdity and cruelty of a long bloody civil war, which stole years of their lives (when it did not literally steal the latter or their loved ones).
Since 1960, and according to L’Orient Le Jour (https://bit.ly/3Av1QRa), you created and produced over 62 satiric shows in what you called “franbanais” (French and Lebanese-Arabic).
You also wrote and published several books in French.
L‘Orient Le Jour (https://bit.ly/3Av1QR) reminded us of your beautiful words: “Writers express themselves in writing, painters in painting. As far as I am concerned, I express myself in laughing” [ “Les écrivains s’expriment en écrivant, les peintres en peignant. Quant à moi, je m’exprime en riant“].
You were highly educated: law, political science, modern languages and linguistics (Université Saint-Joseph et École des lettres de Beyrouth).
Not only you cared for arts and people. You also cared for animals, presiding the Lebanese Society for the Protection of Animals (https://bit.ly/3Av1Q).
Of note, in 2020, you received the prestigious Medal of the French Order of Arts and Letters, at the rank of officer. Wow. You made your Lebanon so proud!
To conclude this post, Bambi cannot recall when precisely she listened to your last interview on her favourite Lebanese-American internet radio while working. It seems to her that this took place only a few months or maybe even weeks ago. You made her smile and laugh several times up until the last minute of the interview. Thank you for those fun yet inspiring moments.
For the readers who may be interested in remembering or discovering you, Bambi found a YouTube brief English Al-Monitor documentary (2019) about your career, along with a great interview with you. It is entittled “Samy Khayat: Lebanon’s Culture Comic“. It is filled with wisdom as well as humour.
May you rest in peace… May your memory be eternal, DEAR Mr. Samy Khayat ❤️.
