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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 Nov. - 1 Dec. 1999 Issue No. 457 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 Nov. - 1 Dec. 1999 Issue No. 457
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters 'He died twice'
Nadia Abou El-MagdOmayma Mahmoud Fahmi, wife of co-pilot Gamil El-Batouti, screamed and collapsed when she heard of the US allegations that he had committed suicide by deliberately crashing EgyptAir flight 990 on 31 October. Family members asked for police protection from the throngs of journalists who converged on their residence.
"The pain today is worse than the day he died," Omayma told Al-Ahram Weekly, her eyes swollen and her voice hoarse from crying. Omayma, 50, surrounded by her children and other family members at her elegant apartment in Heliopolis, continued: "I'm shocked, but I'm sure he didn't commit suicide. I'm ready to face the whole world with the insistence that neither he nor anybody else in EgyptAir could do anything like that."
On 16 November, the family was informed that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had reported that El-Batouti, 59, had said a prayer before taking the plane into a fatal dive. With the women dressed in black, the family gathered in the reception room around the TV set and tuned in to Cable News Network (CNN). El-Batouti's children, Sally, 29, Mohamed, 22, and Karim, 21, were all in a state of shock. Aya, 10, the youngest daughter, entered the room at one point, looking shy and with eyes red from crying, before going inside again. Aya, who is suffering from lupus, an immunity disorder, looked swollen and different from her pictures hanging around the room.
One can guess that El-Batouti was fond of pictures because his, and those of his family, hang in every corner of the apartment in frames he had bought during his trips all over the world. He also must have liked white. The door of the apartment is white and so are the marble floors, the walls and the dining room. "He didn't like black, but I think I'll wear it for the rest of my life," said Omayma, with tears streaming down her face.
She was asked what she thought had happened. She stared at the ceiling and responded: "I don't know. God knows."
"There were 33 Egyptian army officers on board," pointed out Sherif El-Batouti, a cousin of the dead co-pilot. Family members consider El-Batouti a "martyr."
He was born in 1941 to a well-to-do family in Kafr El-Dabousi in the Nile Delta province of Daqahliya. His father was the village mayor. He was well-built and very fond of flying. After finishing secondary school, he joined the Flying Institute and with a distinguished record he was chosen to teach at the Air Force Academy. He helped rebuild the Egyptian air force following the 1967 defeat and, in his hometown, he is considered one of the heroes of the 1973 war. After the war, he went back to his post as instructor at the Air Force Academy, moving to EgyptAir in 1987. He had flown Boeing 767s along the New York-Cairo route for 10 years before he died.
His family insisted that he had no reason to commit suicide. On the contrary, he had everything to live for. "We are happily married; he has the best children, whom he worshipped, and the best cars; he had everything," his wife said. Walid El-Batouti, a nephew of the co-pilot, interrupted to say: "He wouldn't have done it. If he were going to do such a thing, he would have taken his family along with him in order to spare them what they are going through now."
El-Batouti used to comfort his worrying wife by saying: "Driving a car is more dangerous than flying a plane." He was to retire early next year because he was turning 60, but, according to his family, he looked forward to his retirement in order to spend more time with them and take care of a private business he ran with a childhood friend -- a plant nursery. El-Batouti had told his wife and friends that he planned to spend more time in a villa he bought recently in 10th of Ramadan City, one of the satellite towns of Cairo.
El-Batouti used to spend 22 days on his twice-monthly trips away from his family and country. He called his family for the last time two days before the crash. He told his son Mohamed, a police officer, that he could not find the black jacket he wanted and suggested to buy him a grey one instead. "He also asked me to pick him up at the airport because he was bringing two car tyres for my car, and said jokingly: 'It's enough I carried them for you all the way from the States'," Mohamed said.
Omayma told El-Batouti that the family needed $300 to pay the telephone bill. He told Aya: "I'm bringing a beautiful gift for you." His wife said that he was planning to take Aya with him on the following trip for her biannual routine check-up in the US.
The family insisted on showing reporters the telephone bill -- to counter accusations that he sent them cash as part of a goodbye -- as well as the other two car tyres he had bought on a previous trip and a videotape showing him dancing to celebrate the graduation of his son Mohamed from the Police Academy four months earlier. His wife also insisted that "he was a religious man, prayed regularly and performed the pilgrimage twice, the second time in April."
She also emphasised that he did not have any health problems. "Gamil used to joke that his friends envied his good health and that he didn't wear eye-glasses nor have grey hair," said Omayma, pointing at a recent photo of her husband hanging on the wall.
Omayma, with tears running down her cheeks again, said that he had invited the whole family to celebrate his 35th wedding anniversary at the villa on New Year's Eve. She pointed to a gold necklace she was wearing with a turquoise beetle centre-piece, the Pharaonic beetle that is believed to keep away the evil eye. "He gave me this as a gift for our last anniversary," she said. "He used to tell me: 'this house is a garden and you are the most beautiful flower in it.'"
Last Friday, after four days of intensive media attention, the family issued what they called a final statement in which they expressed their "outrage" at the "irresponsible speculation carried by the media in an attempt to undermine the integrity and faith of EgyptAir pilots." The family expressed its confidence in the investigations carried out by Egyptian and US officials. The family appealed to the media "to stop speculating, to respect the privacy of each and every member of El-Batouti's family and to leave them to their own grief and sorrow." They concluded the statement with the Qur'anic verse: "To God we belong and to God we shall return."
A day later, however, the family organised a trip for media and press representatives to El-Batouti's villa, in another attempt to prove that the man did not have financial problems.
"He is very dear to us; we want to know what happened. We've been humiliated; our wound is deeper now. Nothing that they'll say later will restore our dignity. For Gamil didn't die once, but twice," said his nephew Walid.
