On the second day of
our free time from office, I and my colleagues went to Bastille and other parts
of Le Marais. We thought we would see the historical Bastille prison raided
during the French revolution on July 14, 1789, but there is such prison there. The
prison has been demolished and in place instead a column symbolizing peace was
erected on the site and still stands there today. The name of the Column is Colonne de Juillet,
the July Column. It measures 47 meters in height and comprises 21 cast bronze
drums that sits on a white marble base with ornamented bas reliefs, designed by
the architect Jean-Antoine Alavoine under the orders of King Louis Philippe.
The square is now
known as the Place de la Bastille and is an official historical monument of France.
On the south side of the place there is a large curved and reflective building,
it is the Opéra Bastille. It was built by the architect Carlo Ott, and was
unveiled by President Mitterrand for the 200th Anniversary of the French
Revolution on the eve of July 14th 1989, The Bastille Day.
Over the years this
district became one of the most famous places in Paris. The night-life here is
well-known, there are many bars and nightclubs laid between the Rue de Lappe,
the Rue de la Roquette and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
Walking on the left
side of Boulevard Beaumarchias, going away from the Place de la Bastille, at the
second street we came to Rue du Pas de la Mule. After a left turn, in a few steps we noticed
the red-bricked buildings that make up the Place des Vosges. This mansion,
built in the early 1600s, is a square composed of 36 houses with an arcade that
runs the perimeter of the square. The park in the center of the Place des
Vosges is called Square Louis XIII. Often, the grassy areas are available for
use here.
Walking down an arcade
with columns and a vaulted ceiling of the Place des Vosges, it felt as if we
had just entered the 17th century. Directly ahead, past the fine cafés and art
galleries, at the corner of this arcade, is the house addressed 6 Place des
Vosges, Maison de Victor Hugo, the house once lived in by Victor Hugo. It is
now a museum, opens every day, except Mondays and holidays.
That day Oriana came out of her room wearing a violet
pantsuit, greeted me and sat on a chair in front of a window, resting one of
her foot over the thigh of the other. In her right hand she held a Virginia
Slims cigarette and smoked continuously. Although she is tiny, perhaps five
feet one and around 90 pounds, her posture gave the impression of a confident,
self-assured, and assertive woman. Her interviews with famous leaders of the
world confirmed it all. This is the woman who dares to ask political leaders “brutal
questions” in her interviews. This is the woman who dared to remove her veil
while interviewing Khomeini, dared to ask Nguyen Van Thieu “How corrupt are
you?”, and dared to accuse to Yasir Arafat “You don’t at all want the peace
that everyone is hoping for.”
Her most popular book “Interview with History” compiled interviews
with 14 political leaders, with a cover inserting Rolling Stone magazine quotation
“the greatest political interviewer of modern times.” During my student time I
read a few of her interviews that made her famous, with Henry Kissinger,
Khomeini, Yasir Arafat and I was fascinated. Only recently I found this book
and was even more fascinated by interviews with the less popular Shah Iran,
King Hussein, General Giap and even a rather “not well known” Alexandros
Panagoulis. Before reading them, I had no idea how interesting the interviews were,
they gave fresh views and opened up windows to the personality of these
politicians.
So, I came to her apartment in Florence through the famous
Ponte Vecchio and sat with this vivacious woman to talk about this book. She
answered the questions with a husky voice, Italian accented, and with a lot of
arm movements. Despite her temperamental reputation she seemed to me a caring and sweet person.
Then I shot the first question:
“Generally speaking, journalism emphasizes on objectivity in
the writings in order to portray issues and events in a neutral and unbiased
manner, regardless of the journalist opinion or personal beliefs.
While you are internationally renowned for your impassioned,
confrontational approach. You became a celebrity because of your interrogative
interviews, the imposing questions that made Shah Iran shared his religious
view, made General Giap to disclose his military game plan for defeating the
Americans in Vietnam, and made Nguyen Van Thieu sometimes had tears in his
eyes. “
Oriana:
“I do not feel myself to be, nor will I ever succeed in
feeling like, a cold recorder of what I see and hear. On every professional
experience I leave shreds of my heart and soul: and I participate in what I see
or hear as though the matter concerned me personally and were one on in which I
ought to take a stand.
So I did not go to these fourteen people with the detachment
of the anatomist or the imperturbable reporter. I went with a thousand feelings
of rage, a thousand questions that assailing them were assailing me, and with
the hope of understanding in what way, by being in power or opposing it, those
people determine our destiny.”
I said:
“In your interview with Shah Iran you indeed assailed him,
it was like boxing, you threw punches to him, he defended himself and even
threw uppercuts to you. “
Oriana:
“He is a character in which most paradoxical conflicts merge
to reward you for your pains with an enigma. He believes in prophetic dreams,
in visions, in a childish mysticism, and then goes on to discuss oil like an
expert, which he is. He governs like an absolute monarch, and then refers to
his people in the tone of one who believes in them and loves them, by leading a
White Revolution that would seem to be making effort to combat illiteracy and
the feudal system. He considers women as simply graceful ornaments incapable of
thinking like a man, and then strives to give them complete equality of rights
and duties. Indeed, in a society where women still wear the veil, he even
orders girls to perform military service.”
I said:
“Did you ask him whether he is a dictator?”
Oriana:
“He said he wouldn’t deny it, because in a certain sense he
is. Then: ‘But look, to carry through reforms, one can’t help but be authoritarian.
Especially when the reforms take place in a country like Iran, where only
twenty-five percent of the inhabitants know how to read and write. You mustn’t
forget the illiteracy is drastic here- it’ll take at least ten years to
eliminate it.
Believe me when three-quarter of a nation doesn’t know how
to read or write, you can provide reforms only by the strictest authoritarianism
- otherwise you get nowhere. If I hadn’t be harsh, I wouldn’t even been able to
carry out agrarian reform, it would have been stalemated. Once that had
happened, the extreme left would have liquidated the extreme right within a few
hours, and it’s not only the White Revolution that would have been finished. I
had to do what I did. For instance, order my troops to open fire on anyone
opposing the distribution of land.”
I said:
“You said in the book that he was cold during the interview,
stiff, his lips were as sealed as a locked door, his eyes as icy as a winter
wind, stared at you rigidly and remote.
Yet he was so different when he talked about oil. He lighted up, vibrated,
focused, he become another man.”
Oriana:
“He thought he knows everything there is to know about oil,
everything. He said: ‘It’s really my
speciality. And I tell you as a specialist that the price of oil will have to
go up. There’s no other solution. But it’s a solution you Westerners have
brought on yourselves. Or, if you like, a solution brought on by your
overcivilized industrial society. You’ve increased the price of wheat by three
hundred percent, and the same for sugar and cement. You’ve sent the price of
petrochemicals skyrocketing. You buy crude oil from us and then sell it back to
us, refined into petrochemicals, at a hundred times what you paid for it. You
make us pay more for everything, scandalously more, and it’s only fair that
from now on you should pay more for oil. Let’s say…. ten times more.’
I will never forget him curtly raising his forefinger, while
his eyes glared with hatred, to impress on me that the price of oil would go
up, up, up ten-fold. I felt nauseated before the gaze and that finger….”
I said:
“Many of the political leaders you interviewed in this book
had socialism view, Golda Meir, Willy Brandt, Indira Gandhi, Pietro Nenni to
Helder Camara. But their socialism has many different colors, from mild to
liberal. Are you a socialist Oriana?”
Oriana:
“No, I am not. Socialism as
it’s been applied until now hasn’t worked. Capitalism doesn’t work too. I
better quote what Indira Gandhi said in the interview:
‘I don’t see the world as something divided between right
and left. Even though we use them, even though I use them myself, these
expressions have lost all meanings. I’m not interested in one label or the
other--- I’m only interested in solving certain problems, in getting where I
want to go. I have certain objectives. They are the same objectives that my
father had: to give people a higher standard of living, to do away with cancer
of poverty, to eliminate the consequences of economic backwardness. I want to
succeed. And I want to succeed in the best way possible, without caring whether
people call my actions leftist or rightist.
It’s the same story as when we nationalized the banks. I’m
not for nationalization because of the rhetoric of nationalization, or because
I see in nationalization the cure-all for every injustice. I’m for
nationalization in cases where it’s necessary.
We realized that the banks had not done any good, the money still ended
up in the hands of rich industrialists or friends of the bankers. And we did
nationalize the banks, without considering it a socialist gesture or an
antisocialist gesture, just a necessary one. Anyone who nationalizes only so as
to be considered on the left to me is a fool.
The word socialism now has so
many meanings and interpretations. The Russians call themselves socialists, the
Swedes call themselves socialists. And let’s not forget that in Germany there
was also a national socialism. Socialism to me means justice. It means trying
to work in a more egalitarian society.”
I said:
“One of your remarkable interviews is with General Giap, the
North Vietnam General during the Vietnam war. He was famous for his cruelty,
the French had fallen into his traps full of poisonous bees, his pits full of
snakes, or they were blown-up by booby traps hidden corpses abandoned by the
wayside, and in 1954 he defeated French at Dien Bien Phu. He was also feared by
the Americans, for his courage Ho Chi Minh used to call him Kui or Devil.
When you met him, did you find him to be a frightening
person?
Oriana:
“I was astonished first of all at how short he was, less
than 5 feet, and his body was fat. His face was swollen and covered with little
blue veins that made him look purple. No, it was not an extremely likable face.
Perhaps of the purple color, perhaps because of those uncertain outlines, it
cost you some effort to keep looking at him, where the things you found were
scarcely interesting. The huge mouth full of tiny teeth, the flattened nose
enlarged by two huge nostrils, the forehead that stopped at the middle of his
skull in a mop of black hair…. “
I said:
“Did he boast about his fighting strategy?”
Oriana:
“He said that the Americans underestimated the spirit of the
people that knows how to fight for a just cause, to save its homeland from the
invader. The war in Vietnam is not a question of numbers and well-equipped
soldiers, that all doesn’t solve the problem. When a whole people rebels,
there’s nothing you can do, and there’s no wealth in the world that can
liquidate it. Their enemies aren’t good soldiers, because they don’t believe in
what they’re doing and therefore they lack any combat spirit.
Oh, this
isn’t a war that you resolve in a few years. In a war against the United States,
you need time, time….. The Americans will be defeated in time, by getting
tired. And in order to tire them, we have to go on, to last…. For a long time: ten,
fifteen, twenty, fifty years. Until we achieve total victory, as our president,
Ho Chi Minh, said. Yes! Even twenty even fifty years! We’re not in a hurry,
we’re not afraid.”
I said:
“Your interview with General Giap caught Henry Kissinger’s
attention, thus he invited you for an interview. Very rarely does he grant personal
interviews, he speaks only at press conferences arranged by the administration.
What did he say about the Giap’s interview?”
Oriana:
“He didn’t speak about General Giap, instead he asked me
about Giap, Thieu and other Vietnamese generals. He even asked me: ‘What do I
think will happen in Vietnam with the cease-fire?’ On Vietnam he could not tell
me anything much, and I am amazed that he said: that whether the war to end or
go on did not depend only on him, and he could not allow himself the luxury of
compromising everything by an unnecessary word. He said: ‘Don’t ask me that. I
have to keep to what I said publicly ten days ago… I cannot, I must not consider an
hypothesis that I do not think will happen, an hypothesis that should not
happen. I can only tell you that we are determined to have this peace, and that
in any case we will have it, in the shortest time possible after my next
meeting with Le Duc Tho.”
I said:
“Did Henry Kissinger say whether the Vietnam war was a
useless war?”
Oriana:
“He said he agreed: ‘But let’s not forget that the reason
why we entered this war was to keep the South from being gobbled up by the
North, it was to permit the South to remain the South. Of course, by that I
don’t mean that this was our only objective…. It was also something more…. But today
I am not in the position to judge whether the war in Vietnam has been just or
not, whether our getting into it was useful or useless.
After all, my role, our role, has been to reduce more and
more the degree to which America was involved in the war, so as then to the end
the war. And it must be ended in accordance with some principle.
In the final analysis, history will say who did more: those
who operated by criticizing and nothing else, or we who tried to reduce the war
and then ended it. Yes, the verdict is up to history.”
I said:
“Now, the last part of your book is an interview with
Alexandros Panagoulis, a Greek politician and poet, who actively participated
against the Greek military junta, also known as the Regime of the Colonels. He became
famous for his attempt to assassinate dictator Georgios Papadopoulos on 13
August 1968, but also for the torture to which he was subjected during his
detention.
Reading this interview, the readers couldn’t help but to
notice that you highly admired him, even an amorous way.”
Oriana:
“That day and night in Athens, just two days after a general
political amnesty had resurrected Alexandros Panagoulis from prison, I met him
for this interview and fell in love with him. “
I said:
“Panagoulis was the real thing: A hero who had been
condemned to death for attempting to assassinate a dictator. He only regretted
having failed. Do you see him as a hero?”
Oriana:
“He said:’ I'm not a hero and I don't feel like a symbol . .
. I'm so afraid of disappointing all of you who see so many things in me! Oh,
if only you could succeed in seeing in me only a man!’
I said:
“And you asked him: ’Alekos, what does it mean to be a man?”
Oriana:
“He said: ’It means to have courage, to have dignity. It
means to love without allowing love to become an anchor. It means to struggle
and to win. . . . And for you, what is a man?’
I answered him: ‘I would say that a man is what you are,
Alekos."
And so did the interview end. Arrivederci Oriana….
THE END
This is an imaginary interview
in memory of Oriana Fallaci.
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