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.
I and a few colleagues used our free day after a business meeting in
Paris to go Le Marais district. Coming out from the Hotel de Ville metro
station, we were struck by the huge Hotel de Ville directly in front of the
metro station. I was wondering how
expensive it would be to stay in such a grand Hotel. But actually, it is not a
hotel, it is a Municipal Building. After some googling I found that in French ‘hotel’
could mean home, building, residence, so it does not always mean hotel as the
place to rent rooms to stay for tourists. Nowadays, in addition to its city administrative
function, Hotel de Ville is also a place of art and culture. There are many
interesting exhibitions inside the building and the at the square in front of
the building.
Hotel de Ville, the largest Municipal Building in Europe, is located on the
banks of the Seine river and the edge of Le Marais district. The streets lead
us to the fashionable district, full of lovely shops, cafes and art galleries. Today,
Le Marais is one of the best districts in Paris, a mix of medieval architecture,
trendy shops, cultural sights and lifestyle that is unique. A district of
narrow streets on the right bank of the Seine river, where you can enjoy this
historic place, the aesthetic buildings and the French culinary.
Eight hundred years ago, Le Marais was a swamp. The French word ‘marais’
literally translates to ‘swamp’ in English, thus this place was called Le
Marais because of the swampy quality of the land on the banks of the Seine. To
provide new agricultural space, the swampy areas were turned into commercial
gardening. For a long time, this area fell in and out of style due to changes
in the fertility of the land and the difficulty of building on the swampy area.
In the 16th century, king Henry IV dried Le Marais and the place became
the favourite area to build prestigious mansions, where most of the greatest
aristocratic French families lived. The golden age of Le Marais continued till
the 17th century, making
it a center of artistic and cultural life. The nobles built their
mansions (in French: ‘hotel particulier’) such as Hotel de Sens, Hotel de
Sully, Hotel de Beauvais, Hotel Carnavalet, Hotel de Guénégaud and Hotel de
Soubise. The mansions were decorated magnificently, with refined furniture and
some luxury items from this golden period.
Following the up and down of the Bourbon monarchy, the economic
depression, the French revolution, the restoration of Paris, Le Marais also
went up and down. It was raised in the 16th century, destroyed
during revolution and wars, reserved by André Malraux in 1962, then renewed by
the municipal council in 1969.
Strolling through Le Marais today we can appreciate the aesthetics of
the area as it became a popular commercial area, and hosting one of Paris’ main
Jewish communities. It also became a fashionable district, most of the mansions
turned to museum, libraries and schools, surrounded by the best clothes and food
shops, and modern art galleries.
Bangkok is one of
those places where at the moment the day slowly progresses to the night you
still have enough to see as long as you are not tired. The scenic spots, the
palaces and temples, are best visited during the day, but at night, Bangkok takes
on a whole different face. Parties, night markets, nightclubs, street food and unique
shows come to life luring the visitors to experience the night in the city.
Street shopping by day
is exciting despite the heat of the sun in this city, but as the day cools down
in the evening, the night markets opened up like blooming night flowers
offering so much more than the day markets, clothes, shoes, handicrafts, fake
designer goods, accessories, beachwear, souvenirs and of course snack and
drink. In the narrow alleyway brightly lighted with portable neon, you can see
row upon row of stalls lining the street markets. Colorful goods are displayed
on the stalls as attractive as possible, and energic vendors raise their voices
to promote their goods. When buying, don’t forget to bargain, generally you can
get a merchandise somewhere between 25% and 50% cheaper than the first price offered
by the vendor. So don’t hesitate to bargain and bring home some memorable
souvenirs from here.
Many of busiest night
markets are located alongside the popular red-light district, such as the Silom
Night market. It is in the middle of the Patpong district, a famous red light featured
in the movie The Deer Hunter and in James Bond Goldfinger movie. Patpong is two
parallel side streets, between Silom and Surawongse Roads, occupied with shady strip
bars offering adult shows and pole dancing. As the evening turns into night
those bars come alive with the start of loud dancing music. You can see through
the open doors the girls started gyrating at the poles and dancing, under
violet neon lights. The loud voices of the street vendors are replaced with the
whispering touts offering everything from “ping pong show” to “massage”.
Undoubtedly the face
of this Patpong contributes to the name of Bangkok as the Sin City. Prostitution
may take place in many places in Bangkok, massage parlours, restaurants,
saunas, karaoke, go-go bars or beer bars. The names to the bars are so bold,
such as Pussy Collection, Super Pussy, Pink Pussy… hard to miss. The original “discreet”
or “underground” nightlife in Patpong doesn’t seem to exists anymore. The go-go
bars at the backdrop of the night market even became a tourist attraction.
So what happened to
the face of Bangkok which name means City of Angels, where orange robed monks
wander the streets in the early mornings with a bowl in their
hands, where mothers since more
than 2,500 years ago have been cooking meals to give to the monks, where there are thousands of temples inside the
city, and there are altars in every crowded corner of the city to placate the
spirits….?
Does Thai Buddhism tolerate
such widely spread prostitution by not correcting the attitudes toward women
whom are regarded as inferior and even dangerous to men, or does the religion
contribute to the view that women are viewed as inherently impure and therefore
not eligible for enlightenment, and are thus locked into degraded positions
ranging from sex trade laborers to nuns as a means to generate merit for
themselves and their family?
Although Buddhism has
played a significant role in shaping law, cultural frameworks and social life
in the kingdom of Thailand, I think many factors contribute to the wide spread
prostitution, let’s say the World War 2, the Vietnam War, the poverty in the
country where prostitutes can get 10 times more than the minimum wage, and not
to mention the corruptions, the lack of law enforcement, and the Mafia that is also involved in the political parties.
Despite the wide
spread prostitution here, it is actually prohibited under Thai law. But karaoke
bars, go-go bars and massage parlours can be registered as normal, legal
businesses. Police usually treat the prostitution at such premises as an
exchange between the prostitute and the client, an exchange to which the owner
of the business was not a party. So in
practice it is tolerated, sometimes because local officials have financial
interests in the prostitution. Some corrupt Thai authorities may turn a blind
eye on this USD 6 billion industry, involving some 2 million women in Thailand.
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