Foreword

Biographies are sometimes referred to in English as “a life”. We thus speak of Boswell’s unique “life of Johnson”, or Sandburg’s singular “life of Lincoln”. But for some subjects this word just doesn’t fit. Whether such subjects achieved great fame or instead followed a path of quieter but unconventional variety, it would be incongruously reductionist to speak of their life in the singular, because they have refused to follow a single path and therefore experienced a world without fences.

This modest but affecting volume comprises some highlights of the seemingly several lives of Fathi Kemicha, a man of more than a single culture, and more than a single path in life. Artist, lawyer, farmer, author of a thousand-page doctoral thesis at the university of Paris, visiting scholar at Yale … son and father. Tunisian and French, to be sure, but also importantly engaged in many other environments, from Bahrain in the east to Washington in the west – never limited by boundaries and therefore at home in the both private and public sectors … and ready when the time came, without manifesting any sense of a final port of call, to “cultiver son Jardin”. His is, above all, the story of a man and his relations with those whom he encountered on his path, friends to be enjoyed, all others to be given a chance…. and maybe become friends.

This preface will not anticipate the author’s own account of his journey and his discoveries. It will however make an observation which is absent there. While he mentions his role as an advocate before the World Court in The Hague in the remarkable case of Qatar v Bahrain, those who observed him there will remember his presentation of Bahrain’s arguments on the possible relevance of the doctrine of Uti Possidetis, of fundamental importance to lawyers in the post-colonial world, which did not fail to capture the attention of learned commentators, such as that of Professor Emmanuel Decaux in ”Affaire de la délimitation maritime et des questions territoriales entre Qatar et Bahraïn, Fond(arrêt du 16mars 2001”,: 2001 Annuaire Français de Droit International 177.