His Heart Was Full for Lebanon and U.S.

Mohamed Hammoudi admired a lot about the United States.

He lived here for 30 years. He studied its democratic system, became a citizen and took a job with the government, interviewing immigrants applying for citizenship in downtown Los Angeles.

But what Hammoudi missed most when he moved back to Lebanon two years ago were America’s libraries, where he spent hours reading about U.S. and world politics. Recently he told a friend he would be returning to Southern California for the winter because he wanted to once again visit local libraries.

But two weeks ago, as Hammoudi sat down to a meal in the hilltop house in southern Lebanon that he had inherited after his father died, an Israeli bomb struck, destroying the stone structure and killing Hammoudi.

“I’ve been crying from the first bomb landing, not only for my brother -- for my whole family, for my whole country,” said Hammoudi’s sister Mariam, a nurse in San Gabriel with whom he left a large library of books about geopolitics, the Middle East, cooking and wine.

Friends and family say Mohamed Hammoudi was the kind of person the United States needed in Lebanon -- a secular man and an ambassador for American ideas, a moderate voice in a region of extremism.

When he died, “the United States lost more than what Lebanon lost,” said Hassan Mansour, a lifelong friend who discovered Hammoudi’s body.

Hammoudi was buried Tuesday in the family’s olive orchard on a hill outside the village of Ainata, not far from the border with Israel. He was 66.

Hammoudi left Lebanon for the United States in 1975 to study political science. His family said he spent time at a couple of universities.

He never married and had no children. He spoke four languages -- Arabic, English, Spanish and French. He became an immigration officer for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, retiring in the 1990s to spend more time studying politics.

Mansour remembers visiting his friend years ago when Hammoudi lived in Eagle Rock. Hammoudi took him to the public library.

Two years ago, after his father died, Hammoudi left Los Angeles to care for the family property in Ainata.

He was among a steady flow of Lebanese returning to vacation or live, repopulating a region largely deserted during Israel’s occupation of Lebanon, which ended in 2000.

Since his return, Hammoudi had spent his time reading and tending the olive orchard. He planted tomatoes.

“He told me, ‘I’ll stay as long as we have water, electricity and it’s secure. As soon as I lose one of those elements, I’m leaving,’ ” Mansour, an electrical engineer and real estate investor who lives in Miami, said in a telephone interview from Lebanon.

Two weeks before the bombing began, Mansour arrived with his family for a vacation. He brought Hammoudi several books by authors such as Bob Woodward, former President Clinton and Noam Chomsky.

“He said, ‘Those are great meals for me for the next couple of months,’ ” Mansour said.

On July 12, Hezbollah fighters crossed into northern Israel and abducted two soldiers, sparking an Israeli bombing campaign in southern Lebanon.

In Ainata, families huddled in their homes. Mansour and Hammoudi lived on hilltops at opposite ends of the village.

The shelling soon cut the town’s electricity. With the power to Hammoudi’s cellphone waning, the two men came up with another way to communicate. Hammoudi told Mansour that he would walk each afternoon among his olive trees in a white shirt to show that he was all right.

For a few days, Mansour said, he gazed across the small valley and watched Hammoudi walk in his orchard.

Then both their houses were hit by Israeli bombs. No one saw Hammoudi after that.

After Monday’s cease-fire, Mansour and his sisters traveled across the valley to check on their friend.

“I opened the door and saw him dead,” Mansour said. “It looks like he was having breakfast or lunch, I couldn’t tell.... He was squeezed between an iron door and iron window. The table was on top of him.”

Books in Arabic were scattered across the floor, and a television was overturned. The walls of the house were splattered with shrapnel.

Two of his sisters arrived from Beirut for the burial, weeping as they walked down the hill from the family home holding Hammoudi’s photograph.

“After 30 years in the U.S., they sent you ‘smart’ bombs to get you killed,” cried his sister Haniah.

The day of Hammoudi’s funeral, seven other villagers were buried.

Most of Mansour’s extended family has lost everything. Almost every house in Ainata is damaged, and many people are homeless.

Perhaps the worst damage, Mansour said, has been to the esteem in which the Lebanese people held the United States.

“People love Americans. Everybody wants to go to the United States,” he said. “There is no need for this. You can easily have all these people on your side. I don’t know why we have to go and make them our enemies.”

Hammoudi’s family said Israel’s attacks would only bolster Hezbollah, because the group -- and not the U.S. or Israel -- is most likely to care for those displaced by the bombing of villages such as Ainata.

“Israel created Hezbollah,” said Hammoudi’s sister Mariam. “I am personally against Hezbollah. But when you have an enemy, you can create a devil to defeat the enemy.”

Meanwhile, bombs have silenced the voice of Mohamed Hammoudi.

“He believed that if you want peace, you have to make acts toward peace,” Mansour said. “This is what is killing me. We need people like that.”

Times staff writer Bruce Wallace in Lebanon contributed to this report.