Weekend Beat: Independent Rita Ghosn is finished pretending 01/21/2006(By marie doezema, Staff Writer)

Rita Ghosn is in a "me" phase of her life, and she's making no apologies. This is nothing like the terrible twos, or even a midlife crisis. All it is, she says, is a matter of no longer pretending.

"I've done that and I was very unhappy. That's when the big me came back stronger, saying, 'OK, this is me, this is what you have to deal with. I'll try my best but I'll do it my way.'"

Juggling a new restaurant business, four children, multiple cultures and a book deal can make life a little chaotic. Add a high-profile husband to the mix, and things get even more hectic.

A cautionary note to readers might be in order: If you're hoping to get the dish on corporate superstar Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan and Renault, you'd better look elsewhere. He may enter into this tale, but his role is secondary. This is the story of a life, not a wife.

"I'm so independent and I'm so me that being judged as his wife was always irritating for me. It happens a lot, even at the restaurant, when interviewers come and ask only questions about him."

Needless to say, Ghosn quickly sends misdirected reporters on their way. Her Tokyo restaurant My Lebanon is a place you can track down many things hard to find in Tokyo--hummus, tabbouleh salad, and shisha water pipes, to name a few--but not answers to questions about car companies.

When Rita Ghosn opened her Daikanyama restaurant in the spring of 2004, it was a way of sharing herself with Japan. "I think it was my way to say thank you to Japan for what we (our family) had. It was a great experience for my family, we were treated very well, and it was a good way to leave a piece of me in Japan," she says.

It was also a way to educate customers--and in the process, herself--about her native country, Lebanon, which she left when she was 18. "I learned more about my own history, because people ask questions and you want to be able to answer. In a way, it helped me to look back and go back to my roots."

Another hope was to overcome misconceptions about what it means to be Lebanese or, more broadly, Middle Eastern. "I saw the opening of Japan somehow since we came (in 1998), and it's a lot more open to foreigners than it used to be. The acceptance of the management of my husband made a big difference and a positive impact," she says. Yet there are still deeply embedded prejudices in Japan, and around the world, about the Arab world. "You learn to live with it and accept the ignorance of people, but then you feel the need to fill those empty spots and say, 'Wait a minute, that's not true. Look at our history.'"

The first month of the restaurant found Ghosn relishing her daily falafel and doing her best to remain anonymous. Inevitably, though, the cat found its way out of the bag. "When people realized who I was, some were uncomfortable with me taking something out to their table or bringing them something," Ghosn says. "Now people are used to the truth, and me and whoever I am. But in the beginning I had that identity problem--to be me or not to be me."

Since opening My Lebanon, Ghosn has seen an increase in media attention and even requests from publishing companies for her biography. For a woman attached to her independence and devil-may-care bluntness, the attention was initially off-putting. But when she realized the spotlight could bring with it the ability to make a positive impact, she changed her mind.

Though her husband and family are now based in Paris, Ghosn makes regular visits to Japan to check on her restaurant and keep in touch with the life she established in Tokyo.

"I thought it might be the right time. Officially, my husband is not here anymore, so I don't feel the pressure of being Mrs. Ghosn. I can be me now, even being Mrs. Ghosn, and with the restaurant, the situation worldwide, the war and things happening in Lebanon now, I felt that maybe I could be helpful on that side--introducing my history, because now people are more up to listening to it."

Lebanon's history has been, and continues to be, tumultuous. But the fragility of daily life that marked Ghosn's childhood is something she credits for making her the person she is today. "Maybe it was being raised in a war, along with my personality, that has always made me think I could die tomorrow," she says. As the mother of three teenagers and an 11-year-old who fancies himself a teen, too, Ghosn says she always encourages independence. "I have to give them the tools to survive, whether I am alive or not. Maybe that's one of the consequences of war, I don't know.

"I believe in the principle that you raise your kids for others. They are your kids, you love them, they are dear to you, but they are not yours," she says.

Growing up in Lebanon, Ghosn had a hard time fitting in. "I had a lot of people telling my mom, 'Your daughter is unbearable. She says things she's not supposed to, and she'll never find a husband the way she is,'" Ghosn says. "Well, I was married at 19, so that's not bad," she adds with a laugh.

Ghosn left home with a fellowship to study pharmacology in France and the conviction that leaving was something she had to do. Today, the amalgam of cultures she's adopted is one of the most valuable parts of her life. "Really, I'm not a resident anywhere. I do things everywhere. It's like I'm a citizen of the world," she says. "I don't take being half-Japanese, half-French, half-American and half-Lebanese as a difference, I take it as an asset. I put them together, blend them, and they make me who I am. I do have my values being Lebanese, and having lived abroad I have enough view of it to be able to analyze the best of what I like about being Lebanese and keep it in me."

Days after arriving in France, Ghosn met the man who would become her husband over a game of bridge. At the time, Carlos, who was born in Brazil to Lebanese parents, was working for Michelin.

After they married and moved to Brazil, she established one important guideline for their life together--every year she would go back to Lebanon to visit her family. She would go no matter what the political situation was, and she would go alone.

"With the war, and even throughout history, what saved Lebanon is all those expats that had family living there and kept fueling their lives and needs. Everybody in Lebanon has a family member outside who is helping, and this helped them survive all those years. Even leaving, you know you have that weight on you--you have your family, your parents, your cousins. People need you and you'll go for it. It's in my genes, something I don't even plan for, that I think all Lebanese have."

For Ghosn, perspective--not arrogance--has accompanied wealth. "I think my luck is that I've had both sides of the coin. I've had it the poor way and I've had it the rich way. I try to keep that in mind all the time."

For more information call My Lebanon at 03-5459-2239.(IHT/Asahi: January 21,2006)