This drama predates Huguette’s becoming an artist by more than a decade. The very same year her father had to give up the presidency, 1952, she married Paul Caland, a young French-Lebanese lawyer and nephew of publisher Georges Naccache, a fierce critic of her father, connected to yet another exceptionally influential Maronite Christian family. (The two families were associated with rival political newspapers; Naccache had been thrown in prison in 1949 for an article saying—prophetically—that the system of political compromises that el-Khoury had founded the nation on was too fragile to last.)
They both soon took lovers, even as they had three children, Pierre, Philippe, and Brigitte. Bechara el-Khoury would die of cancer in 1964, with Huguette helping to nurse him at the family estate outside of Beirut. It was only then that she seriously thought of being an artist, enrolling in her mid-30s to study art at American University, constructing a personal studio to work on her family estate, and changing her entire look.
Text och photo by Ben Davis. Read more here.
