On every level of the newspaper, we called him " Kir ". Journalist Jean Gueyras – who died on Sunday 23 February at the age of 95 in Cairo and who, for twenty-five years, "covered" the Middle East for The world – his real name was called Haïg Kirazian. He was born on January 24, 1925 to an Armenian family in Egypt, in the pre-war cosmopolitan Heliopolis. Effortless polyglot – Arab, Armenian, English -, rich in his plural origins, "Kir" neither theorized nor pontified on his subject. But he "felt" the region like no one.
The "pseudo" was chosen only to allow him to collaborate for a time both at Agence France-Presse (AFP) and at World. At the AFP in Paris, he works with his friend Eric Rouleau in the service of Arab listening. We follow Radio Cairo around the clock. On September 28, 1970, the program stopped and broadcast verses from the Koran. "Kir" does not wait and announces the death of the rais, Gamal Abdel Nasser. AFP is twenty minutes ahead of the competition.
At World where, on the recommendations of Eric Rouleau, he entered full-time in 1971, "Kir" was one of the pillars of Middle East service. If he willingly left the limelight to others, he was meticulous, precise, informed. At dawn, he sat at his desk in front of a pile of dispatches. To his right, window side, a huge transistor eternally connected to France Musique; on his left, an ashtray to welcome, at 7 am, the first chair bar of the day: "Kir" loved classical music and cigars, his crutches to chronicle the dramas of the Middle East. And they jostled each other, under his conscientious magisterium: Arab defeats, Yemeni civil wars, collapse of "Nasserism", Lebanese tragedies, Iranian revolution, rise of political Islam.
The joy of living in a good way
"Kir" approached them with a particular sensitivity, typical of his time. It was that of young people who had belonged to minorities in Egypt, shocked by the misery around them and seduced by a form of Third World socialism. But the hope of a progressive Arab renaissance, which President Nasser (1956-1970) had briefly embodied, quickly collapsed in the face of a regional reality made up of willingly tyrannical and corrupt regimes. These women and men were deeply anti-colonialists, often militant for the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue or all the more attentive to the national struggle of the Palestinians because it came to compensate them for the disappointments suffered elsewhere.
Nothing, however, undermined the good humor or the warm camaraderie of this man, nor an enthusiasm of a good life, as evidenced by a certain build. We never imagined him reporting. Wrongly. When, sporting a Saharan with pockets filled with as many cigars as notebooks, he went "on the ground", "Kir" was as perfectionist as in Paris. Testimony of Walid Joumblatt, the Lebanese Druze chief: "I will never forget how, during the siege of Beirut by the Israeli army in 1982, the correspondent of the World Jean Gueyras left every morning for the different fronts, armed with his satchel well hung on the shoulder. "
"Respect for the facts was total"
We will not forget either the day when this enthusiast of the Iranian revolution led us into the Kurdish mountain to question an old Ayatollah who, in his eyes, presented the exceptional interest of having "thought" a synthesis between Shiism and the Maoism… The adventure ended very badly, with the Land Rover in a ditch, from which it emerged unscathed only thanks to the talents of the Kurds for war medicine. "He had his convictions", he had remained the rebellious young man from the suburbs of Cairo, "But when he wrote, with a talent made of precise concision, the respect of the facts was total ", says one of his Parisian friends, Ahmad Salamatian, an endless bookseller on the Middle East.
His career did not end with his retirement in 1991. He wrote for The diplomatic world. Even more, he invented the "Wab", an online network where, every day, he scrolled for his colleagues everything that was written in English on the Middle East tumult. We will miss “Kir”, who was a reporting friend as friendly as he was knowledgeable.
(Journalist at World for twenty-five years, Jean Gueyras covered the Middle East for our newspaper with a flawless requirement. Warm and lively, he leaves those who knew him with the memory of an endearing personality. The world send his thoughts to his family and loved ones. J. Fe).
Jean Gueyras in a few dates
January 24, 1925 Birth in Cairo
1966 AFP journalist and "Le Monde" freelancer
1971 Hired in the "World"
1991 Leave "The World"
February 23, 2020 Death in Cairo
