Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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The worst of two evils

By Fayza Hassan

When the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke out a couple of years ago, my daughter was shattered. She removed the television from her nine-year-old son's room and forbade her older daughter to report on the latest Monica jokes she had heard at school. "How can I explain this to him?" she asked me on the phone. "He is the president, a father figure; my son will never get over it." I put down her overreaction to the fact that she had just gone through a painful divorce and that her children had found out that their father was planning to marry a young woman barely out of her teens. My grandson was bound to draw parallels.

Picking me up at the airport that summer, my daughter's first words were "please don't talk about Monica." Although slightly surprised that she could take what I considered the least of the American president's shortcomings so seriously, I gave her my word. As we drove off, however, I could not resist asking if her children were as rattled by the unjust treatment meted to the people of Iraq. "What people of Iraq?" she asked seemingly honestly puzzled. I began to explain but soon stopped, assuming that my daughter did not have a clue about US foreign policy. She neither watched the news on television nor read the newspapers, she told me proudly. "This is Florida," she said. "I live in paradise, I don't need to know what is happening in the big bad world outside."

She always voted Republican, she explained, because the Republicans upheld morality, family values and protected taxpayers' money. She had a highly paid job that allowed her to make a very comfortable living, and had no desire to see her hard-earned money go to people who sat around bars all day -- that is when they were not disturbing the peace -- and then get welfare benefits, which, she added forcefully, were in fact drawn out of her paycheck She was therefore interested in a president who would put an end to all the handouts that only encouraged people's propensity to lounge around, waiting for their next meal to fall from the sky into their laps. She stopped short -- but only just -- of mentioning ethnic minorities and the drain they represented on the budget.

My father had always taught us that people could disagree on matters of politics and religion without jumping at each other's throat. I often think that he would have fitted perfectly in the new trend of resolving conflict through negotiations. Although not one prone to compromise myself, I had learned the many advantages of remaining civil during such discussions. I therefore refrained from giving my daughter a piece of my mind regarding what I considered her very shortsighted attitude.

During my stay, I had a television in my room, and could watch the news to my heart's content behind closed doors. I thought that it was considerate of her to have catered to my obsession with the news, bearing in mind that she had not made similar allowances for my smoking habits. We had a wonderful time together and neither the president's peccadillo nor the dying Iraqi children were ever mentioned, except once in passing, when in a store the salesgirl asked me where I was from. Having been told that I came from Egypt, she recoiled in horror: wasn't that in Airak (sic), she wanted to know. Rather embarrassed -- and probably terrified of my possible reaction -- my daughter quickly dropped the shirt she was about to try on and, pulling me by the sleeve, marched out of the store. "Please don't tell them you're Egyptian," she pleaded. "I live here, you're just staying for a couple of weeks and I don't want anyone to think that I am connected to terrorists. They don't know any better, they believe that anyone coming from your part of the world is somehow anti-American." I said nothing, but reflected that my daughter was probably far better informed than she wanted to let on.

Time passed and we met again last summer. She was in the same carefree political frame of mind. The economy was good, she said, and she would be voting for Bush, of course. At least he was an upright citizen, whose life had been exemplary. She conceded that he might not be very bright, but they did not need Einstein to run the country, just someone who would enforce good old-fashioned values. "At least he will not have to concede that he smoked but did not inhale," she added sarcastically.

Last week my daughter called. She did not sound as sure of herself as she usually is. "What is happening over there?" she asked, and I could hear distress in her voice. "Why are they killing unarmed children? That boy... he was my son's age." She did not add that Bush would put an end to the violence; she actually offered no comment at all. She only wanted to know if there was going to be a war and how the Palestinians could hope to defend themselves against the sophisticated weapons they were being attacked with. I joked that she had become politically savvy overnight. "It's part of the game," she said. "You sound so informed that I feel I have to contradict you. What do you think will happen?" she added anxiously. "Probably nothing," I told her. "More of the same."

I have to call my daughter tonight. I want to find out how she feels now about a president who neither smoked nor inhaled, but imbibed without telling instead, and how she will choose between him and the other, who sanctimoniously condones the massacre of a whole innocent people.

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