I CLOSE-UP
•
Keeper
of the Flame
Eight years after her husband's assassination, Behan
Sadat still guards his memory and his vision, still
believes in the attainability of peace in the Middle East.
ARTHUR J. MAGIDA
Special to The Jewish News
1
t is late afternoon during
Ramadan, the Moslem month
of fasting, and Jehan Sadat
has not had a bite to eat or
even a drop of water since
sunrise. She is almost finished
coping with two hours that
might tax someone with a full
stomach or a moist palate —
an hour-long lecture to facul-
ty and students at the University of
Maryland, followed by an interview with
a journalist — and neither her energy nor
her graciousness are flagging.
Perhaps Mrs. Sadat's energy comes
from her sense of mission: She sees
herself as the guardian of the memory of
her husband, Anwar Sadat, the man who
died eight years ago in a fusillade of
bullets after making peace between his
nation and its Israeli neighbors to the
east.
Perhaps her stamina comes from her
sense of fate, from some force that has set
her on this course. Asked whether she has
ever feared for her own life, she said im-
mediately, "No, otherwise it would be
better to stay at home without doing
anything in life. I believe in fate, as my
husband did."
Or perhaps her energy comes from the
religious experience of Ramadan, the nin-
th month of the Moslem calendar that
marks the first revelation of the Koran.
But this last bit of speculation has little
credence since Mrs. Sadat has a well-
deserved reputation for being gracious,
18 FRIDAY, JULY 21, 1989
regardless of the month in the Moslem
calendar.
Probably what most propels Jehan
Sadat is her vision, a vision of a Middle
East quiet and peaceful. This vision, of
course, she shared with her husband. But
since his death, she is its guardian, the
quiet proselytizer of its merits.
That a peacemaker should die by
violence seems one of the great and in-
surmountable paradoxes of our world.
But his widow seems to hold no
grievances — not even to Yassir Arafat,
the man who, she says, "cru-
elly, cruelly" criticized her husband for
traveling to Jerusalem in 1977 to tell
Israel, "and the whole world," as he put
it, "that we accept to live with you in
permanent peace based on justice."
After Sadat was killed, the ever-
quotable Arafat commended the killers.
"We shake the hand that pulled the
trigger," smirked Arafat. And yet, the
widow of the former president of Egypt
now asks Israelis to trust Arafat, this
head of an organization that, she recalls,
has blown up Israeli schools and hijacked
airplanes.
Arafat, she says, has been "sincere" in
his recent renunciations of terrorism and
his recognition of Israel. "I wish," she
says, "the Israeli people would accept his
words. He is trying his best. He should be
encouraged. And I am the one who says
this, I, whose husband was threatened
and killed by the Palestinians."
"But," she continued, "I hate to speak
in the past. We are living today and to-
morrow. Let the Palestinians have the
opportunity to explain themselves now.
The Palestinian people are the victims.
They have to have a homeland because
we cannot live in peace while they are in
[refugee] camps. That's not possible. I
assure you, that after losing all these
years, the Palestinians know that the
most opportunity for them was to have
shared in what Sadat did. In the seven
and a half years since Sadat passed away,
did the Palestinians get anything? No.
Then let them shake hands with the
murderers..."
Clearly, Mrs. Sadat is saying that if
she, with her loss, can be forgiving of
Arafat and his PLO followers, so, too, can
the Israelis, with their losses.
But there lingers, she well knows, the
problem of trust. Her husband, who star-
tled the world by flying to Israel six years
after he made war on it, "was a person
who everyone trusted, even the people
who hated him. He was very straightfor-
ward. He was to the point, very open,
very sincere, very honest." The problem
now, she said, referring to the recent
flurry of peace overtures for the Middle
East, "is with Israel. After all that
happened, they have to trust Arafat. Let
Shamir give him a chance. We have to
forget about the past and start a new era
with an open heart and an open mind. If
we don't do this, we will never reach
peace."
To many, for Israel to trust Arafat is