Walid A. Al Hajjar

Born in Damascus 1932.

Studied piano at a very early age with Tzarist Russian Baron Belling.     

Studied engineering at ROBERT COLLEGE in Istanbul, but left it, half way through, in order to study MUSIC and PAINTING, more academically in Paris!

Later, studied painting, at the Beaux Arts, in Paris, and musical composition with Mme. Honnegger and Edmond Marc, at the Paris Conservatoire, in Paris.

He is currently a Novelist, Artist painter, and Classical composer.
He lives in Damascus suburbs, in his own Bavarian style villa.

So much can be abbreviated about the basic milestones of his life...However, it was during those long, and extravagant sprees of the newly evolving Existenciallism, in the Latin Quarter of Paris after the war, that W. Al-Hajjar, first mingled, then fully plunged into the realms of all classes of society! First, the Bohemian and artistic, then the worldly, and intellectual one!
He spent fifteen years in Paris, later he moved to Rome, where he lived for another fifteen years alternating residences between Villa Borghese, and Via Marghutta, after that, back home, then Spain, where he spent thirteen years, most of which, on the island of IBIZA!
It was in the early Parisian period of his life that he met, and befriended such paragons of wit and intellect as, Jean Cocteau, Jean Genet, Marcel L'Herbier, and Emile Ajar!! Later on, he was very closely associated with the remaining members of the ROMANOFF imperial family (whom he mentioned in his novels, long before they passed away!), and, whom introduced him to Gourdjief's mysticism, to Zen, and later on, to Krishnamurthy’s” none teachings!" philosophy!!
It was this latter great thinker whom eventually, deeply engrained in him his total apathy towards all values, and encouraged him to " attempt" an approach to a life fueled mainly by spontaneous nonchalance, and complete inner calm and contentment .!