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Billionaire Hariri was 'Mr Lebanon'
Billionaires are either knarled and 90, or silver-haired
and sexy. According to Hollywood, there's no other way to
be when your empire is worth more than $1,000 million.
Robert Redford is billionaire typecasting. So is Morgan Freedman.
Woody Allen is not, unless he's wearing prosthetic warts and
a colostomy bag, as a nubile nurse with a 44in bust trundles
his bath-chair down marble corridors.
Real-life billionaires are often disappointing. They're either
too young (Roman Abramovitch) or too geeky (Bill Gates) or
too plastic (Donald Trump) or too boring - just about everyone
I met at Davos in Switzerland last year at the economics superforum,
could have led a secret double life as a geography teacher
to add thrills to their CV.
Rafik Hariri was Hollywood's vision of a billionaire, a movie
god who peeled himself off the silver screen and stepped into
international politics... except that Hariri, the former Lebanese
prime minister who took the smouldering shell of his country
and rebuilt it after civil war ended, rose not from the studio
lot but from a peasant village.
When we met in the 1990s, I was struck by his resemblance
to Omar Sharif - steel in his hair and his smile, eyebrows
as black as thunderclouds and a quiet voice that commanded
attention.
We met in a hotel suite in central Europe, with a Western
businessman. I suspect Hariri had expressed an interest in
meeting me - perhaps it was one of those casual asides, to
a bodyguard or a diplomat, as they watched me on some chatshow.
I can say that Hariri's reaction to my powers was typical
of a powerful man supremely confident in his willpower - he
demanded more teaspoons from an aide, seized one and demanded
to know what thoughts he must project at the metal to make
it bend. He didn't manage it on that day, but there is no
doubt in my mind that, given time to meditate and practice,
he would have mastered the skill.
He possessed a personality of overpowering force which, I
am certain, was the cause of his success and not the effect.
The boring billionaires of Davos might rely on their bank
balances to make them sexy, but Hariri's energy would have
made him magnetic in any society. If he had never left his
village, he would still have become a man of power.
Hariri was known as "Mr Lebanon", for he had invested
his personal fortune in virtually every brick in the city
since the guns had ceased to fire.
Most businessmen had long fled, and they stayed away. Where
they saw overwhelming danger, to their lives as well as their
capital, Hariri saw opportunity.
His pursuit of it was powered by the twin turbines of his
personality, recklessness and ruthlessness.
When I call him reckless, I do not mean that he was careless
or casual about security: quite the opposite, and before our
meeting I was frisked three times by professionals who would
have found any listening device, however cleverly concealed.
I simply mean that he did not reckon up the potential costs
before he took the risks. His vision for Beirut was totally
positive, fuelled by a belief that he could not fail. That
is how he was able to persuade western banks to plough $33b
into regeneration for a city that had a worldwide reputation
as a hellhole.
His ruthlessness he demonstrated in his decisions, as much
as in his dealings with friends, enemies and politicians.
When he made a choice, he pinned it with an emphatic flourish,
as though he was drawing a curved, bejewelled dagger from
his belt and plunging its into the table top.
I was saddened, but not shocked, as I watched the news of
this year's St Valentine's Day Massacre unfold on CNN.
Rafik Hariri, who had resigned as PM last October after leading
his country for most of the period since 1990, died when a
700lb car bomb ripped through his five-car motorcade, killing
seven of the bodyguards as well as the 60-year-old Sunni Muslim
from the port of Sidon.
By an extraordinary synchronicity, the man discussing the
breaking news with me was a Lebanese Muslim. I have entertained
many hundreds, probably thousands, of guests at my home over
the past 20 years, but I cannot recall that there was ever
a Muslim from the Lebanon before.
Abed Agha had dropped over to discuss his cosmetics business,
MeMine, and to explore the possibility of launching an Uri
Geller line of products, especially a hair treatment.
I like the idea, especially as Abed's patented secret formula
is having a miraculous effect on my own follicles.
Most of all I like the idea of teaming up with Abed because
he is a Muslim from a Palestinian family. If I said the publicity
value of such a partnership, the celebrity Israeli Jew and
the brilliant Lebanese Muslim, had not crossed my mind, I'd
be lying.
Most of all, though, it's the symbolism of the connection
that appeals to me. I love the idea of a business that will
inspire others to link hands across the divide. I think Rafik
Hariri would have liked it too.
Email
him at uri@urigeller.com
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