Profits from The Prophet

. . . Unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.

Kahlil Gibran's 1923 view of money matters, as spelled out in The Prophet, may have had some roots in his memories of the rough-and-tumble commerce practiced in his native village of Bsharri, Lebanon. Eight years later, when the author lay dying of tuberculosis in St. Vincent's Hospital in New York, he scribbled a one-page will in which he bequeathed the royalties from seven books to the people of Bsharri. After all, the books were not selling very well; they would bring a few thousand dollars a year to the relatively poor town. It was a generous gesture, made in love and kindly justice.

At first the villagers reacted in kind, but as Gibran became a cult hero of the young, royalty income mounted to a current $300,000 a year. The town dissolved into political, legal and physical fighting for control of the money.

Like most of Lebanon's mountain villages, Bsharri (population about 10,000) is run by the leading members of its major families. Each of those seven families named one member to a committee that quietly administered the Gibran estate. When the Gibran boom started in the '50s, however, committee membership suddenly became a source of political power. Any goatherd who sought assistance from the estate became politically indebted to the member who sponsored him. And financial kickbacks were not unheard of either. Soon families split apart in the clamor to win a committee position. Age-old feuds gained new fury, and at least two deaths resulted. Ultimately the two largest families--each with about 1,500 members--set up rival committees.

To add to the confusion, Gibran's sister Marianna, who lived in Boston until her death last month at 94, sought to win control of the copyrights as each one came due for renewal. In defense of their inheritance, the villagers of Bsharri retained New York Lawyer George Shiya, a Lebanese-American, and Shiya won the long legal battle for them. Then he claimed his agreed-upon fee--25% of all royalties from the renewed copyrights, a sum that could amount to perhaps $1,000,000. At a cost of still more legal fees, the Bsharri villagers fought Shiya all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. They lost that scrap four years ago.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese government was in despair at the waste caused by all the fighting. Though the village had received an estimated $1,000,000, it had little to show for the money except $200,000 worth of investments in real estate. The bulk of the money had simply disappeared. Almost no records had been kept. In 1967 the government finally threw out both competing committees and took over management of the estate itself.

The effect was surprisingly salutary. After glumly watching from the sidelines for four years, Bsharri's warring elements made peace. Last year, with governmental agreement, a new committee was elected, this time with two members from each family and one additional member to represent residents who belong to no major family. One hundred Bsharri students have received scholarships or interest-free loans to study at various schools and universities. A music academy for Bsharri children has been opened. Two new schools and a mobile medical clinic are planned. "We have learned a great deal from the troubles we have had in the past," says Committee President Emile Geagea. Last week he was en route to the U.S. --to get a new lawyer and check on current negotiations to promote Gibran's books in a series of TV specials.

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