With Hitch in Lebanon

One afternoon a couple of years ago Christopher Hitchens, Michael Totten and I had gone for a walk along Hamra street in West Beirut when Hitch spotted a signpost put up by a local fascist group called the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. The SSNP is a Hezbollah ally that does a lot of the Assad regime’s dirty work in Lebanon. Totten was in the middle of telling us about the SSNP’s reputation for for brutality and its skill at making bombs when Hitch took out his pen and started to deface the sign. It was an action that typified Hitch’s commitment to his political convictions — the same dauntless commitment that enabled him to risk excommunication by lifelong comrades on the left — and also the schoolboyish delight in making mischief that was part of that intoxicating mix of qualities that made him the best company in the world.