Michael Sheridan revives memories of Edmond Khleif, legendary Damascus bureau chief

When Michael Sheridan, a foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times of London, wrote a column about his old Reuters colleague Edmond Khleif, he awoke family memories stretching back almost a century.

Edmond, as he was always known in Reuters, walked a tightrope as Damascus bureau chief during the Hafez al-Assad dictatorship, covering Syrian affairs during wars against Israel and clashes with the United States. He had started as a stringer for Reuters in Damascus in 1957.

Sheridan's column recalled a legendary figure who would reduce much younger visiting correspondents to ruin with epic evenings of whisky, frogs legs and stories of spies and politics, all delivered in a chain-smokers' rasp.

A Palestinian Christian from Nazareth, Edmond's memories included leaving his native land in 1948. He witnessed the hanging of the Israeli agent Eli Cohen. He knew almost every significant figure in the Palestinian revolutionary movement, including radicals like George Habash, founder of the PFLP.

Sheridan, who was correspondent, Beirut, in the early 1980s, wrote that Edmond had privately predicted the worst for Syria.

"I'd always wondered what had happened to him because we had lost touch in his old age," Sheridan said. "He had never married but the Khleifs were a big Palestinian clan and I knew he had many relatives."

The answer came in messages from members of the extended Khleif family in the United States as soon as the article appeared on The Sunday Times website.

"You captured uncle Edmond exactly the way he lived: a man who enjoyed life, his scotch, his smoke and above all his friends, the likes of George Habash," wrote Ayham Khleif, a nephew.

"Your description of Edmond was accurate enough that it brought back amazing memories," said another nephew, Samir Khleif, director of the Georgia Regent University Cancer Center.

"Uncle Edmond was my hero growing up," said Majd Khleif, who recalled bringing his uncle his first Black Label on the rocks every weekend when he came round for lunch after work at Reuters.

From the family, Sheridan learned that Edmond retired and left Syria before it was torn apart by war.

"His last years were quiet," recalled Ayham Kheif in an e-mail message. He rented a flat with a garden near his surviving brother and sister in Amman. He died a few years ago in hospital in the Jordanian capital from complications of emphysema, at the age of 84.

"Until his last days, Uncle Edmond enjoyed politics, his friends and his scotch,” said Ayham. "He always missed being in Damascus where he lived for decades but he knew there will be no return."

Ayham provided old family photographs showing Edmond at the centre of a big family group as a young man.

Sheridan said: "We don't often get to write articles that bring delight to people so this was a real pleasure as well as a tribute to a great character."

PHOTO: Edmond Khleif (left) with colleagues Khader “Zaim” Nasser (centre) and Elias Na’was (right) - three Palestinian journalists who reported the Middle East for Reuters from the 1950s until they retired in 1987. The photograph was taken at a Middle East editorial conference in Istanbul in November 1986. ■