Patriarch in spring twilight

On Nov. 11 this year, the Palestinians marked the first anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death. About seven months before his death, I had the chance to be in his company twice in April 2004. And, yes, in hindsight, I did sense his slow dying but it did not occur to me then it would be soon.

RAMALLAH – Contrary to expectations of tardiness, Old Man Arafat came ambling towards our delegation of more than 500 scarcely five minutes after our arrival. In his wake -- reality aping CNN -- several huge men carrying huge guns.

We came in eight busloads, several cars – and did not have enough time to grab plastic seats in the hall in Arafat's "prison", er, the Palestinian Authority Headquarters known here as the Moqtaba.

Danny Rubenstein's description of him in a 1995 bio-book as a charming and gracious host held true through the rough times: "a small man, gentle, delicate and extraordinarily warm."

It was twenty-one days after the assassination of militant Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Two days before the attack and death of Yassin's successor, Abdel Azziz Rantissi (by Rantissi's own choice of means, “by Apache") and a week before Sharon announces Arafat could be the next target.

Arafat soon began shaking the hands of the male Christian religious leaders, including several bishops and kissed the hands of other women church leaders who were on the front-row seats.

And when he came near the edge of the first row, he even extended his gesture of greeting to those among us who were standing by the corner.

Arafat then went up the dais and sat among his leaders-in-waiting -- three Cabinet Ministers, the president of Birzeit University – all to his right; right next to him, Rowan Williams, the retired Bishop of Canterbury, and to his left, supposedly to serve as his translator, the legislator Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, who would later steal the limelight from him with her impassioned anti-Bush, anti-American government speech before a mostly American audience.

Farthest to Arafat’s right was Naim Ateek, who served as master of ceremonies.

Up close and briefly, Arafat looked much better than six days ago, on Black Saturday. Then, his face was ruddier, the wrinkled skin like a piece of cloth badly needing to be smoothed out and he looked very tired, his eyes were weepy and puffy, as described by Tony Walker (Arafat, A Biography, 2003), "his voice was weakening, his lips trembled, his hands shook."

As on last Black Saturday, he wore his de rigueur brown military outfit with pins and medals and the omnipresent keffiyeh or kuffiya, the Arabic headdress. Somehow, because of the headdress, MNLF’s Nur Misuari came to mind, although later, apparently Misuari is the more eloquent speaker, and the personal judgment had nothing much to do with Arafat’s imperfect English.

At twilight, he was in high spirits buoyed by the presence perhaps of these friendly forces, more than 500 progressive, but peace-building Christians, more than half of whom are American citizens, all participants of the weeklong Fifth Sabeel Conference with the theme: “Challenging Christian Zionism: Theology, Politics and the Israel-Palestine Conflict”.

It was Friday, not the 13th, just two days in April after Israel President Ariel Sharon unveiled his "Disengagement Plan" in Washington D.C., right at a press conference with President George Bush at the White House.

In the Israeli-Occupied Palestine Territories, or as Israel would call it, the Disputed Palestine Territories, Christians are a vanishing species, down to a meager nine percent of a population of 3.7 million, or about 370,000 (200,000 less than the population of Cagayan de Oro). (And that’s why, at the Catholic Notre Dame Cathedral in East Jerusalem, the Pinoys lord it over at the Sunday choir).

Most of the Palestinians who had remained are Muslims, and most of them are caged in refugee camps, 1.2 million in the Gaza Strip. Correspondingly, those who are in the Palestinian Diaspora are mostly Christians.

Here, Arafat has an uneasy alliance with the Christians who are not blind to the charges of corruption leveled against him and his Christian wife Suha Tawil (luxury cars, showy villas, lavish parties, secret bank accounts –hello, so, not only in Jose Pidal’s Country, no?). Or of the way the Arafat police -- like the Israeli Defense Force, if not more vicious -- violated the human rights of dissenters among his people as well as those of the press people critical of his administration.

But Arafat, a ‘retired’ revolutionary and moderate Muslim, and the Palestinian Christians who believe in a secular Palestinian state-to-be needed each other these days, as Islamic fundamentalism is spreading among the grassroots, winning the hearts and minds of Palestinians.

Strange that despite the huge crowd, there were not many soldiers, no inspections of bags, and unlike last Black Saturday, cameras and cell phones were permitted inside the compound.

We were even allowed to take photographs, unlike last Black Saturday when he met a group of women leaders from 14 countries who were guests of the Young Women's Christian Association of Palestine under tight security.

Of course, only later would we understand why suddenly the strict security measures were suspended for the moment. We came beyond media deadlines at half past 5 p.m., daylight saving time, and the ubiquitous array of video cameras on tripods and camera-toting journalists were nowhere.

So even if the meeting would not make it to the television newscasts that night or the next day, these 500 camera-toting religious leaders would surely bring home at least a roll of film or a 32-megabyte of flashcard/memory stick space on their digicams for show-and-tell to their families, friends and congregations back home.

Talk of appropriate low-tech, olive-tree-based (as Thomas Friedman would describe) alternative media in the age of the Lexus.

We were ushered not to the second-story conference room but to the ground floor hall. It had the same backdrop as the conference room: a blown-up colored photograph of the golden dome, the Haram al-Sharif.

But for the facts of a different day, a different audience, a different setting, we were treated to the same show. Except for the first-time listeners, it was the same thing all over again. The same speech, the same photographs to show and pass around. One could even predict when and what the refrains were going to be:

"Can you imagine this? Can you believe that? …Day by night and night by day…the peace of the brave…"

He showed around the same photographs of the Nativity Church under siege in 2002, a Coptic church demolished, the Aboud chapel leveled to make way for the Separation Wall.

"Can you imagine this? Can you believe that? …Day by night and night by day…”

All the while his Cabinet men twiddled their fingers, yawned the yawn of the bored, wrote doodles, gazed at the ceiling.

"Can you imagine this? Can you believe that? …Day by night and night by day…”

It would be two weeks before the rash of Israeli assaults on several members of Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin, Nablus, Gaza and Bethlehem which killed more than 20 leaders and several bystanders, a month before the Israeli Defense Force places Rafah under siege and provokes the deadliest bloodbath since the second intifada.

Several days from now, Hanan Ashrawi, the always-eloquent one (as described by Hebrew University Prof. Gadi Wolfsfeld), the one Arafat had called sharmotah (the whore) several times before this day, the one who wears pants and smokes, would tell Reuters, " We have many leaders but we lack leadership."

It was a week before Terje Roed-Larsen, UN envoy for the peace process, would describe Arafat as “in near paralysis”.

It was a week before Mahdi Abdul Hadi of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs would urge Arafat not to be content with just the photograph of the Haram Al-Sharif in his Moqtaba, and instead he should go to the real one in Jerusalem. “Time for him to do a Benigno Aquino.”

Hadi would challenge Arafat and co-Palestinians to do “a people-power (march).” And never mind if Arafat gets killed in doing so, the Palestinians can then have a real hero, or at least the Palestinians can elect a new leader.

It still would be two weeks before the Old Man as the martyr-in-waiting, circling his desk in this near-summer that could have felt like winter to his tired and trembling bones, still would taunt Sharon, saying with defiance, “The mountain does not bow to the wind.”