Arab leader

A good Arab leader is a dead one?
An old joke in my part of the world surfed after President Nasser prompt death more than 30 years ago and after 18 years of firm grip on power. It goes like this.

A man screamed after he heard the sad news
“President Nasser died, I can’t believe it.
Common guy….. What can’t you believe…
the prophet Mohamed died! Answer another.The prophet died… wow, nobody had told me… answered the man with a crack of a smile.
After a long suffering with illness and political setbacks, finally the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat died on the hospital bed in Paris. Frenzied flow of Palestinians mourners poured over the internal courtyard, trampling the red carpet, trying to touch the coffin of Mr. Arafat and his entourage back home; “Wails and chants of "We will sacrifice our blood and souls to redeem you Yasir. They shouted, "I loved the rais," using the Arabic word for president. "He is like a father to me, and to me he did not die. He is in my heart, and I will never forget this day in all of my life." Said a young Mourner.

This Arabic wailing for their dead has a deep rooted tradition in their psychic, however the first televised one started more than 30 years ago with the Egyptian when president Nasser died a few years after the debacle of the six-year war, more than two millions Egyptians Mourners crushed their way to Tahreer Square in Cairo to take a glimpse of their dead leader coffin, I testify to that I was one of them as a young Mourner. Why Arab masses idolizing their corrupt leaders once they died. Other world leaders just die in peace or wither away in the abyss of history writing their memoirs. So what is about Arab leader’s death that resurrects them to Idols status? They don’t get this reverence when they are actually alive. Although their death is usually the only agent of political change, their people express their disbelief or relief by turning them to Idols, not so much by building pyramids to bury them as the Egyptians did thousand of years ago, but buy building pyramid of myth and despair. Arafat was the symbol of the Palestinian cause, they explained he put the Palestinian on the international map, which map? This map has been shrinking for the last 50 years, and the Palestinians still in chronicle misery. So why Arab masses idolize their corrupt leaders after their death, the same way American masses idealize their Rock stars after they die of drug overdose or shot wounds. I asked my Arab guru Mazher Al-Zoby a graduate student at the university Minnesota, he thoughtfully explained to me while setting in coffee shop; “the west define Arab countries by their leaders; Nasser, Arafat, Saddam, Ghdafi, Asad, then lunch a crusade against them, the Arab masses resist by coming to the side of their leaders dead or alive, they don’t necessarily support their leaders democratic or political wisdom but in a sense telling the west, look, the symbol of our country never dies. As the waitress interrupted our conversation asking us what kind of coffee… dark please, I mourned

Ahmed
Hosts, the Arab American TV show Belahdan 11/16/04