MY OTHER LIFE
Fouad Rathle
Scope of LIFE A financial executive brings things into focus by sharp shooting. Text by Tonya Stoneman Photography by Olivier Minaire
F
ouad Rathle’s favourite gun is his Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum. It’s not a hard gun to like if you like guns--Clint Eastwood made the revolver famous when his character Dirty Harry found himself alone in a standoff with an armed gang. “We’re not just gonna let you walk out of here,” he says to the leader. “Who’s we, sukka?” the man retorts, with a menacing chuckle. “Smith and Wesson and me,” answers Eastwood before drawing his pistol and blowing the place to pieces. Apart from the firearm’s notorious reputation, it is genuinely a fabulous machine. Rathle owns 15 guns, and, in his opinion, this one outshines them all. “It handles, well, it fits well into my hand, it’s accurate, aesthetically pleasing and powerful,” he says. Rathle grew up in Egypt where people were not permitted to have more than one gun, but he’s been handling firearms all his life. To fulfil his national service duty, he served in the Egyptian Army as a corporal 1st class--the experience is something he will never forget. After he left the military, he continued to hone his shooting skills and began collecting guns. In 1995, he joined a gun club in Luxembourg and applied for a licence. The Grand Duchy has strict gun laws. In clubs, members shoot at specific targets from a prescribed distance according to a security protocol with a fire master present. Gun owners must be fully licensed and keep their guns in a secure room and locked in a certified gun safe. They are only permitted to take the weapons out in order to go to the club. After shooting, they must return directly to their home and stow the guns accordingly. Despite the commotion that surrounds the sport, shooting is really a harmless pursuit, Rathle says, if the security restrictions are followed. In his heyday, Rathle went to the club a couple of times a month to work on his shoot-
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Fouad Rathle Photographed at home with his 7 shot Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum
ing technique. Like anything, marksmanship requires a great deal of practice. To become an accomplished sniper, for example, you would have to practice two hours a day. But more than anything, “I am a collector,” he says. “If you like guns and if the legal envi ronment allows, you update your collections.” The oldest gun in his lot is a Webley Scott .32 mm revolver from World War I. He doesn’t buy guns with fancy marble inlay or carvings or gold platings or visual “bling”, per se. There are two reasons Rathle buys a gun: to help him master his technique and to sate his curiosity. “I’ll buy a special weapon that captures my imagination,” he says. “Like my .357 revolver that has a seven bullet chamber. That’s unu sual for a revolver. The standard is six. Also, if you wish to master a technique in a field, you must observe certain things--a 9 mm not 45 mm. They require different handling.” “When you shoot, there’s a surge of adrenaline seldom duplicated by anything else,” he says. “It forces you to concentrate. It’s one moment of total concentration. You forget everything completely.” At this stage in Rathle’s life, as manager of the Turkish bank Garanti’s branch in the Grand Duchy and a member on several Luxembourg boards of directors, what he loves most about shooting is less about bravado and more closely aligned with the present day Eastwood, who said: “Hollywood, as everyone knows, glamorises physical courage. If I had to define courage myself, I wouldn’t say [it’s] about shoot ing people. I’d say it’s the quality that stimulates people, that enables them to move ahead and look beyond themselves.”.
FEBRUARY 2014
13/01/14 17:18