Revolutionary widow

Suha Arafat waits while Yasser Arafat’s coffin is loaded on to a plane

When the young wife of the much-loved Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said; “I married a myth but the marriage helped him to step down from his pedestal and become a human being,” she was, in her usual candid manner, on the mark. When 64-year-old Arafat married 28 year-old Suha secretly in July 1993, he had broken the vow that he would remain betrothed only to the revolution. It was his marriage to Suha that marked his transformation from gunman to statesman and softened his trademark image of the guerilla.

Suha met Arafat when she was in her mid-twenties, while on an assignment in Amman for a French newspaper. It was love at first sight for the grizzled Arafat. He hired her as a public relations adviser and later as an economic adviser for the PLO. They married at his house in Tunis in 1990 but the wedding was kept a secret for 15 months. Knowing fully well that the marriage would trigger a backlash of conservative Palestinian public opinion against him he went ahead regardless, as he did with the new peace accord.

Suha attracted a lot of attention, and flak, right from the time she came in the public gaze. Blonde, fair-skinned and taller than Arafat, Suha was born in Jerusalem and grew up in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. A Greek Orthodox Christian, she converted to Islam before her wedding. Her Oxford-educated father was a wealthy banker and mother Raymonda Tawil, a famous Palestinian poet and “homeland” activist. Tawil founded the Palestine News Agency and was often put under house arrest by the Israeli authorities.

Fluent in English, French and Arabic, Suha is known for her penchant for Louis Ferard suits and Rolex watches. It is her upper-class origins and flamboyance of her wardrobe that was held against her. Her style symbolised what struggling activists could not identify with. As one Palestinian put it, “She is not from the camps, she is not one of us... she is rich.” That did not prevent her from being forthright about the Palestinian cause. Suha is even believed to have said had she given birth to a son, it would have been a matter of honour and pride for her to give him up for the cause.

It is a fact that Suha looks more at home in Rue St. Honore than on the dusty streets of Jericho but to her credit she learned to live a restless, security-dominated life. As she herself had said: “I live most of the year in Tunis but we never sleep twice in the same place. I am often chasing after my cases and have to hunt every night for the place where my husband is.”

The earliest memories Suha has of Arafat are when she was five years old. The Israeli police were combing the neighbourhood in the town of Nablus, looking for a man described as a terrorist. There was shooting all over and there were helicopters and they were searching for him house by house.

Educated in political science at the Sorbonne, she lived in Paris, where she spent most of her youth, since 2000, ostensibly so that Zahwa—named after Arafat’s mother who died when he was five — could receive treatment for leukemia.

Suha had accused her husband’s close aides of being responsible for corrupt dealings when she said, “Every beautiful flower ends up surrounded by weeds.” Suha certainly was the flower in Arafat’s life, and no wall flower at that. A.N.

MAKING WAVES
Teesta in full flow
Vibha Sharma

Teesta Setalvad, who along with her partner and husband Javed Anand, has been bringing out a monthly magazine Communalism Combat from Mumbai for the past more than a decade, is in the eye of a storm triggered by the shocking volte-face of Zahira Sheikh, a key witness in the Best Bakery case.

While the “good, secular human being” Teesta, as she is called by her supporters, is of late shying away from the Press and is not giving interviews since “the case is subjudice”, she continues to enjoy wide public support. Her detractors, however, prefer to remain anonymous.

Former Union Law Minister and Supreme Court lawyer Shanti Bhushan terms the allegations against her as “completely unfounded.” He says her work was annoying certain important people. “Anyone with the slightest common sense can see how scared these individuals are of getting convicted and going to jail. It was because of Teesta that the Gujarat police and the government have been put in the dock,” he adds.

Prof Arjun Dev, a former Dean of the Social Sciences, NCERT, is equally supportive of Teesta. “It is obvious what had happened. Anyone with common sense can see through the game of the Gujarat police and the Modi government. She comes from the well-to-do Setalvad family and doesn’t need to go to such extents for money.”

Teesta, he says, has also evaluated and published a report about contents of textbooks at the school level and how they were trying to create hatred among students of different communities.

“I am pained, shocked but not defeated,” is all Teesta, granddaughter of India’s first Attorney-General M.C. Setalvad, is saying for the present.

The trial was going on very well and had shaken up the state government, she said, adding that “the noose was getting tighter around somebody’s neck and I do not really have to name the person. It was a make or break situation for the Narendra Modi government. Fortunately, there are other eye witnesses who do not have any stakes involved.”

Zahira’s volte face has also put a question mark on the future of NGOs in such cases. There are going to be very many more if the apex court’s directions are followed to the letter. There are as many as 2190 more cases waiting to be reopened, out of which 228 deal with serious issues. If these are investigated properly, it could mean imprisonment of seven years or more for many, including some from the ruling party in Gujarat.

Kirit Bhatt, a social activist in Vadodara and part of organisations like the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, the Movement for Secular Democracy and Shanti Abhiyan, says Teesta has been writing on social reforms and political issues. “She is a progressive-minded socialist wedded to the cause of communal harmony.”