Overview
Nazih Al-Danaf was born on 29 February 1992 into a Druze family in Baalchmay, some 15 miles east of Beirut; reincarnation is an important Druze teaching. From about eighteen months he told his mother he was not small but big, that he carried two pistols and four hand grenades, that he was a ‘qabadai’, a brave and strong man, and that he wanted to see his young children.1
His statements led his family to the house of Fuad Assad Khaddage in Qaberchamoun, about 17 kilometres away. Fuad, who managed the Druze religious centre in Beirut, had been shot dead there by unidentified gunmen in July 1982. His widow and brother tested the boy before both accepted him as Fuad reborn.1
Nazih's statements
His mother, Naaim, did not encourage him. Nazih told her, and most of his sisters, that his wife was prettier than they were. He spoke of many weapons, the deeds to a house and ‘my friend the mute’, who could ready a gun with one hand. He said armed men had shot at them, that he fired back and killed one, and that in the ambulance he was given an injection in the arm. He also wanted to collect money he had lent, and he asked for cigarettes and whisky.1
His mother first said he had given the name Fuad before the families met, but a year later said it came up only afterwards; his sister Sabrine was sure she had heard it earlier. Only his father remembered him naming Qaberchamoun beforehand.1
Finding the family
Pressed by Nazih, his parents drove him to Qaberchamoun, probably in early 1998, when he was six. Near Ainab he had them stop at a dirt road that he said led to a cave, and at the town’s six-way junction he directed his father down to the left and up a steep side road. While he ran off to look for the house, his mother and sisters told a young man washing his car about a man who had been shot, had carried handguns and grenades and owned a red car. The young man, Kamal Khaddage, recognized his father and called his mother, Najdiyah.1
Tests by the widow and brother
Najdiyah wanted to be sure. Asked who had built the foundation of the gate, Nazih named a man from the Faraj family. Indoors he showed which side of a cupboard had held the pistols and which the other weapons, and asked where they were; they had been stolen. He correctly described how she had slipped on plastic while gathering pine cones at Ainab and dislocated her shoulder, and how their daughter Fairuz had been poisoned by swallowing his pills. He reminded her of a night she locked him out when he came home drunk, and picked out a garden barrel he had once used to teach her to shoot.1
Soon afterwards, in Kfermatta, a village he had never visited, he greeted Fuad’s younger brother, Sheikh Adeeb, by name and said he was Fuad. As proof he said he had given Adeeb a pistol, a ‘Checki 16’; Fuad had given him that uncommon Czech gun in about 1980, and Adeeb thought only his wife might have known. Nazih pointed out his father’s house and Fuad’s first house next door, called Fuad’s first wife ‘Im Nazih’ after her eldest son, and named the three brothers in a photograph. Later, shown another pistol, he said correctly that it was not the one he had given.1
The previous life
Fuad Khaddage was born in Kfermatta in 1925 and worked for about 30 years at Dar El Taifeh, the Druze centre in Beirut, latterly as its manager and a bodyguard to the community’s spiritual head. In the civil war he carried two pistols and grenades whenever he went out, and relatives called him brave and fond of showing off his weapons. He had eight children by his first wife and five by Najdiyah. Adeeb confirmed that he had a mute friend, Aref Ghallab, but knew of nothing wrong with his hand.1
In July 1982 three gunmen forced their way into Dar El Taifeh, shot two guards and Fuad, and escaped; no one was ever identified. A post-mortem report recorded gunshot wounds to the head and neck, one fired from less than half a metre, which killed him quickly.1
Investigation
Erlendur Haraldsson heard of the case during a study of 30 Druze children in Lebanon. With Majd Abu-Izzeddin, his interpreter, who had earlier assisted Ian Stevenson, he visited Nazih’s family seven times in 2000 and 2001, about two years after the families met. Nine witnesses, Nazih’s parents and siblings, were interviewed separately, most more than once. The investigators also interviewed Fuad’s widow, son, brother and cousin.1
The witnesses recalled 23 statements made before the families met. Haraldsson and Abu-Izzeddin judged 17 correct, five uncheckable and one probably wrong: the injection, since Fuad seems to have died almost at once. Whether he fired back could not be settled, as there was no official inquiry in wartime. There was indeed a cave a few minutes’ walk from the family’s earlier house at Ainab. Of 31 statements in all, 26 could be checked and all but one were correct.1
Assessment and later life
The authors saw the lack of any written record before the families met as the main weakness, offset by the number of witnesses and their consistency over months. Many men killed in the civil war carried guns, they noted, but few would also have had a mute friend, a cave near the house and a Checki 16 given to a brother. In some 90 cases of his own, Haraldsson had not met so many recognitions attested by more than one witness, though he granted they are hard to judge afterwards.1
The families had been strangers, and the authors saw nothing for Nazih’s family to gain from the poor Khaddages; the number of consistent witnesses made fraud or shared fantasy unlikely. They allowed that Druze belief may make families readier to accept such claims, but noted that Najdiyah and Adeeb tested the boy first. By 2000 Nazih spoke of the past life only when asked, and the two families still visited each other.1