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(conclusion)
James’s contacts in the IRA had put him in touch with the PLO in West Beirut. Overall, he felt more comfortable living in the Muslim side of the city. James wasn’t overly sympathetic with the “fascist” Phalange, or the other Christian militias. Once, he had the opportunity to interview Camille Chamoun, a prominent Maronite leader, for the Daily Star. Chamoun told James that he admired Adolf Hitler more than anyone else in history. James couldn’t reconcile the fact that Israel was providing men like Chamoun with money and guns.
Living in West Beirut certainly had its drawbacks. For one, the mountains of garbage lying on the streets infused the predominately Muslim side of the city with a foul odor that overpowered even the salty sea air. Walking around West Beirut at night, you didn’t actually see the trash. You saw thousands of tiny red eyes staring back at you, sometimes at eye level if the mound was large enough. Rats ruled the night.
When he arrived in West Beirut, one of James’s contacts provided him with an identification card from Amal, the major Shiite militia in Lebanon. With his Amal identification card, James was practically untouchable in West Beirut. Any Muslim guard at a checkpoint or a roadblock would know that he had some very powerful friends in Lebanon. And though he was American, James carried an Irish passport. Nobody hates the Irish, he figured.
But he couldn’t tell that to the Arab man pointing a machine gun at him. The man was determined to follow James to his apartment. My wife is there, he thought. Kathryn, James’s wife, had come from Washington, D.C. to stay with him in Beirut. The day he picked her up at the airport, there were rumors that the airport was going to be bombed. James had gathered her luggage as fast as he could, hoping to make it out of the airport before it was hit. Kathryn thought he was acting frantic. Can’t you hear the artillery, he asked her. He could never get over the sound—the feel, really—of artillery. Beirut might have been falling apart around them, but to Kathryn it wasn’t much louder than the U.S. capital.
James kept signaling the man to lower his gun. He hoped his calm manner would keep the Arab man from getting violent. Slowly, James opened up the inside of his sport coat, revealing no weapons to the man. The Arab man lowered his gun. With his right hand, James motioned to the inside breast pocket on the left side of his coat. The man must have thought he had more money in there. Instead, James pulled out a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. Now the man had a pistol pointed at him while his gun was aimed at the ground. He dropped the Kalashnikov and ran off, disappearing into the dark corners of the city. Only later, when he got home, did James realize that his gun had been on safety.
As Israeli jets circled over Bikfaya, Phalangist militiamen carried an oak coffin from St. Abda's Church to the village square. A Lebanese flag—red and white stripes with a green cedar—cloaked the coffin. The procession was silent—except for the tolling of church bells. The man who was supposed to become president, Bashir Gemayel, rested inside the coffin. His body was so mutilated that his wife had to identify him by his wedding ring.
Twenty-three days earlier, on August 23, 1982, the Lebanese Parliament had elected Bashir president of Lebanon. As the leader of the Phalangists, he’d united the various Christian militias into one coalition, the Lebanese Forces. Trained as a lawyer, Bashir was the youngest son of Pierre Gemayel, the founder of the Phalange. At the time of his election victory, Bashir was only 34 years old.
Then, on September 14, a bomb had exploded next to Bashir in his Phalange party office in Achrafieh, East Beirut. Bashir was killed along with many of his fellow Phalangists. Almost three years earlier, Bashir’s young daughter Maya had been killed by a car bomb meant for her father.
Before the funeral procession the next day, Pierre Gemayel had received mourners at his family’s home in Bikfaya. Visitors offered their condolences to Bashir’s mother, Genevieve, and his widow, Solange. Both women grieved for the son and husband they had lost to Beirut’s bloody civil war—a man whose death would incite Phalangist militiamen to massacre nearly a thousand Palestinian refugees in retaliation by week’s end.
Soon after the procession reached Bikfaya’s main square, the military bands began playing the Lebanese national anthem. Its name is its triumph since the time of our grandfathers…As former presidents and clergymen, Muslims and Christians, gathered around Bashir Gemayel’s coffin, the music echoed through valleys of pine and forests of oak. All for the country, for the glory…for the flag… 
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