Portraits and Paradoxes.ByTarek Heggy(1) Our first encounter took place twenty years ago. In the course of the two decades since, I spent hundreds of hours with him both in the city and at his desert retreat. Our conversations covered a wide range of subjects. We spoke of the Wafd Party as it once was and of what it became following the departure of Makram Ebeid. We spoke of his relationship with Makram Ebeid and with the Wafdist Kotla Party he founded. As we shared a common love and a wide knowledge of Arabic poetry, we spent countless hours discussing poetry in general and his own in particular. We discussed theological issues, the history of Christianity in Egypt, the patriarchate of Alexandria and the ecumenical councils that ended with the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. We walked for miles in the desert of Wadi El Natrun, through cultivated fields and along the shores of lakes where fish are farmed. Not many people know the meaning of ‘Wadi el Natrun’, which is ‘valley of salt’, while fewer still know that its original name was ‘beryet sheheet’, which in the Coptic language descended from ancient Egyptian means ‘scales of the heart’. I thought of him often in the last few weeks and felt the pain he must have been feeling. He is Egyptian through and through but at the same time he is the spiritual leader of ten million Egyptians who are exposed to a mounting wave of discrimination. The situation, which has been deteriorating over the last sixty years, is symptomatic of the retreat of civil society before the advance of Islamism. Copts are the original inhabitants of this nation and yet they are required to fight for their citizenship rights. The word ‘Copt’ is the origin of the word ‘Egypt’ in all languages except Arabic and Turkish, where it is known as ‘Misr’, and Hebrew, where it goes by the name ‘Misrayim’. The discrimination suffered by his people is a heavy burden on the shoulders of a man intent on striking the right balance between his Egyptian and Coptic identities in face of a barbaric onslaught by the forces of obscurantism and the medieval values they are preaching. To make matters worse, he has to contend with the amazing apathy of officials who, denying the evidence of their own eyes, continue to proclaim that the problem is a minor one. The man I am talking about is my great friend Pope Shenouda Ill, one of the towering figures in the ancient land of Egypt. (2) I was in the Jordanian capital Amman and set off to keep my appointment with Princess Basma bint Talal, sister of late King Hussein and daughter of the former king Talal bin Abdullah. When the lift door opened, I found a young slim woman with a pleasant smile waiting for me. She welcomed me warmly and led me to a reception area adjoining the office of Princess Basma. We sat down and, thinking she was the secretary, I asked her if the princess was busy. “I am Basma,” she replied. I was stunned at the modesty and lack of pretension of this royal princess, attributes that are sorely lacking in our ruling elites, royal and otherwise. (3) At a luncheon in Cairo on February 22, 2006, I was seated to the right of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Our conversation began on a light note when I teased her about a remark Ariel Sharon had made about her legs. She was surprised that I knew what Sharon had said as well as by the fact that I knew she was the daughter of a preacher. I for my part was astonished to discover that she believed the tribute Sharon had paid to her legs, proving herself as susceptible to flattery as any other woman. Confirming that she had taken his remark seriously, she confided that today she was wearing loose trousers because in the evening she would be flying to Riyadh for a meeting with King Abdullah. Leaning over, she whispered that her outfit had been chosen with a view to avoiding a repeat performance of an embarrassing incident involving an Arab prince some years back! (4) The number of Arab writers who would dare tell their readers that they met with the president of Israel can be counted on the fingers of one hand. For our discourse lies more in the realm of fantasy than reality, our slogans harken to a tribal desert culture rooted in the past, while double standards have become all too prevalent in our part of the world. This is reflected in the discrepancy between words and deeds on the one hand and between public rhetoric and what is said behind closed doors on the other. However, I am one Arab writer who has absolutely no reservations about recounting a long meeting I had with the former Israeli president Azer Weizmann. But first I would like to mention a couple of incidents that exemplify the double standards phenomenon I spoke of earlier. Both took place in the Swiss resort of Davos just over a year ago. The first involves the Secretary General of the Arab League who called on Shimon Peres in his hotel suite and told him: “Rest assured, Mr. Peres, that once the Palestinian-Israeli question is resolved, the Arab League in its entirety will be directed towards full normalization (with Israel) at every level!” At the same conference, another very prominent Egyptian had a private talk with Peres in which he repeated the same message, practically word for word. How to explain this duality, not to say duplicity, in our political, public and cultural life? It was Peres himself who told me of his meetings with these two Egyptian personalities. At the risk of enraging those readers for whom meeting an Israeli is tantamount to meeting the Devil himself, I will now move on to the story of my meeting with Weizmann. A few years ago, I visited the Israeli statesman at his hotel in the capital of a European country. One of the first things I noticed was that on the desk in his suite were two photographs, one of Anwar Sadat and one of Weizmann's only son who was killed during the war of attrition with Egypt. At the start of the meeting, I told him that according to Arab sources, Egypt won the October 1973 war, while according to some European sources, Israel had ultimately triumphed on the battlefield. Which of the two versions did he agree with? He replied: “To the extent that Sadat understood the limitations of his military machine in the face of the Israeli military machine in October 1973, and in view of the objective he set himself on that basis and in light of the miraculous crossing of the Suez Canal, Sadat was victorious. But if we assume that there were other objectives for the October war that did not enter into Sadat’s calculations, perhaps the assessment would be different.” He added that Sadat was one of the greatest strategic visionaries of the twentieth century. I agreed that Sadat’s reading of the global political scene and the balance of power was extremely accurate and realistic. Had he lived, I said, he would have understood the post-Cold War world better than most Arabs, But then I expressed some reservations that shocked Weizmann. I said that on the internal front Sadat had wounded Egypt deeply. He made the same mistakes that America made with Islamic fundamentalism. In the same way America shot itself in the foot when it created Osama bin Laden, so too Sadat signed his own death warrant when he let the Islamist genie out of the bottle in a bid to counterbalance the Nasserites and leftists. His decision was taken on the advice of two men: one was Kamal Adham, former head of Saudi intelligence and brother-in-law of King Faisal, the other was the father-in-law of Sadat’s daughter, a prominent contractor who for many years was one of the strongest supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and abroad. I was also critical of Sadat’s simplistic and superficial understanding of the market economy, as illustrated in his famous words to an illiterate tycoon from Alexandria, Rashad Osman: “I am putting you in charge of Alexandria!” (5) On April 4th, 2005, I was invited by General Michel Aun for lunch at his Paris home, five weeks before he returned to Beirut. It came as no surprise to me that much of the meeting was given over to a blistering attack against Syria, Hizbullah and Amal. After all, this was the man who, during the period he was the effective ruler of Lebanon after the end of President Amin Jemayel’s term, aimed his guns against Syrian forces in a battle that epitomized his political ideology. As we sat down to lunch, he asked me how I saw the situation in Lebanon and I summarized my views in the following points: - Syria must be persuaded - or made - to recognize, both in theory and in practice, that Lebanon is a separate state. This entails the departure of all Syrian troops and intelligence organizations from Lebanon, the delineation of borders between Lebanon and Syria and the exchange of ambassadors between Damascus and Beirut. Otherwise Syria will continue to regard Lebanon as a sheep that has strayed and must be brought back to the fold. This situation is both untenable and demeaning to Lebanon’s status as a sovereign state. - The world, as represented in international legality, must find a way of merging the militia of Hizbullah into the regular Lebanese army, because Lebanon can never become a modern state unless it has a single decision-making authority and a single national army. Moreover, the state-within-a-state phenomenon must end. Thirty years ago, Palestinian forces in Lebanon acted as though they were a separate state. Today Hizbullah is doing the same thing, overstepping the limits of its status as a political party by exercising prerogatives reserved for the state. It is inconceivable, for example, that Hizbullah should be allowed to hold a military parade in the capital of a country where its forces are not bound by the directives of the central government. - It is as vital to end Iran’s grip over Lebanon as it is to end the Syrian presence in the country. - The Lebanese government must take a decision to resolve the conflict over the Sheba Farms through negotiations or arbitration, not by violent means. In terms of both size and importance, the Sheba Farms are comparable to Taba, and they cannot continue to be used as an excuse for the existence of Hizbullah as an autonomous state within the Lebanese state. - Every effort should be made to draw moderates from both the majority Sunni and minority Shiite communities into the ranks of civil society. After I had finished speaking, General Aun said these five points summed up his own views on the Lebanese question. I remembered his comment, made in the presence of the Lebanese columnist Pierre AqI, a few days ago, and could only shake my head in wonder! (6) A few weeks ago, I was one of five people dining in a tent set up in the gardens of Al Wajba Palace in the Qatari capital, Doha. My dinner companions were the ruler of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thany, his wife, Sheikha Moza, daughter of Nasser el Mosnad, Sheikh Hamad bin Jabr al-Thany, foreign minister of Qatar and Dr. Saadudin Ibrahim. The dinner, and the animated conversation that accompanied it, lasted more than four hours, during which time the only person to enter the tent was a man who came in no less than six times. I assumed he must be either the Emir’s secretary or his intelligence chief, because each time he would whisper something in the Emir’s ear, listen to the reply and leave - only to come back and repeat the same scenario. The third time he entered the tent, I asked the foreign minister whether I was right in thinking he was Sheikh Hamad’s’ secretary. When he told me I was wrong I said: “Then he must be the director of the intelligence service.” Again I had guessed wrongly: the man in question was none other than Waddah Khanfar, the director of Al Jazeera! I could only conclude that the TV channel, which costs the Emir of Qatar one billion dollars a year of his own money, is his number one priority. Moreover, the annual subsidy it receives from the Qatari treasury is equivalent to the military aid furnished by the United States to the largest Arab army. So central is Al-Jazeera in the Emir’s scheme of things that Mr. Khanfar, a Palestinian who was formerly a member of Hamas, ranks as high in the country’s hierarchical structure as the prime minister, the grand chamberlain and the head of intelligence. Perhaps even higher, judging by the way he was allowed to barge into the Emir’s tent six times in the space of four hours. I heard later that a famous Egyptian writer whom the Emir consults regularly told him he should think of closing down Qatar before thinking of closing down Al-Jazeera (!), a backhanded compliment if ever there was one. Over dinner, Sheikh Hamad told me his foreign policy is based on the following simple principles. One, Qatar is small in both area and population. Two, it is surrounded by three thugs (the closest English translation to the Arabic word abadaya that he used). He decided to seek the protection of the biggest thug in the world, the United States, and invited its forces over, at his expense, to guard his tiny sheikhdom from its covetous neighbours. I told him that while I understood what had driven him to take such a decision, I could not see where Al-Jazeera fitted into an equation based exclusively on interests. He launched into a long response the gist of which was that he enjoyed a game in which the number of heads of state who called him to complain about Al-Jazeera was far greater than those who called him for any other reason! However, I felt he was being disingenuous. I believe the calculations of the ruling Qatari triumvirate are taking into account some events that have already transpired, like the 1995 uprising, and others that are brewing under the surface but have yet to emerge in the open. However, I can guess what form these developments will take and the effects they will have. I can also bet that they will be far greater in scope than the 1995 uprising. (7) I got to know Hany Enan the year we passed our secondary school certificate exams. In the nearly forty years we have been friends, he has never wavered in his commitment to the public good or in his revulsion at the appalling way in which our society is being run. Many years ago, he believed the solution to our problems lay in socialism. But today, like myself, he believes only in science, management and, above all, in democracy. On my visits to Hany, I occasionally run into the great satirical Egyptian folk poet Ahmed Fouad Negm. I know most of his poems off by heart and only recently discovered the depth of his culture. On one of my visits to Hany's home, we asked Negm what he thought was the root cause of our predicament. He responded by reciting a verse from one of his poems that we first heard in 1968:
God protect us From the voracious glutton
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