Diplomacy and Diamonds

by Joanne King Herring

  Although I couldn’t easily understand her, the princess was trying to tell me something. I later realized that she was indicating that the décor was so richly colored to make up for the fact that the rooms contained no real flowers. Only when she took me by the hand and led me into a lovely courtyard did I understand.

  With the other princesses following her like little ducklings, we stepped into a green world. Cool water bubbled in a marble fountain. Birds flew from tree to tree and occasionally landed on the rich grass. A servant appeared, dressed in white and holding a brass tray about the size of a small table. It was full of dates, tarts, a curious paste, and a variety of breads. I partook of them all on a golden plate, closing my eyes and tasting almond, rose, and sesame seed. The rose tea was served in lavishly cut crystal nestled in silver-and gold-filigree holders.

  Three maids appeared carrying a new curiosity, a three-foot-high silver stove that was smoking, emitting a terrible stench. While they set it on the priceless rug, I tried to restrain a gasp.

  “Aah,” the princesses trilled. Inexplicably, the main princess grabbed my skirt and pulled it above my thighs, guiding me toward the stove.

  “Aah,” said the other princesses in unison.

  “Ooh,” I replied. In all of the minilessons I was getting, no one had mentioned how to conduct myself when a princess hikes up your dress over a steaming silver stove.

  The stove smelled of the luscious scents of a Neiman Marcus perfume counter, mixed with the unmistakable fragrance of an entire rugby team’s mildewed athletic socks.

  But the smell didn’t seem to put a damper on the princess. She lifted her own skirt and placed it over the stove, and the other princesses did likewise. Their skirts billowed out with the warm air; then they danced around the room. It seemed that I was expected to dance too. So… I danced.

  As I watched them dance and laugh, I knew I’d never be able to sit and have conversations with the lead princess about her life and ideas. It made me sad, so I simply enjoyed the moment in time, watching this young woman swirl and twirl around the lavish room, oblivious to the constraints of the world around her.

  Suddenly, a clear voice rang out. It was prayer time—a deeply sacred moment. A servant appeared with carpets of silk so exquisite, I gasped when I saw them. Then a nervous dread washed over me as she placed the rugs on the floor and I realized what was about to happen.

  One, two, three, four, five…

  They expected me to pray too. The princess grabbed me and pulled me down with so much force (probably hoping to ensure my proper place in Paradise) that I hit my nose.

  “Oh, Lord,” I prayed, “please don’t let my nose bleed on this carpet. That’s probably worse than adultery, and they stone you for that.”

  I attended a Presbyterian church in Houston and we preferred a more… well, vertical form of prayer.

  But I made it through, and the afternoon came to an end, like a brightly colored dream. Hours later I stumbled into my hotel suite to find Bob sitting on the couch. My skirt was crumpled, my makeup smeared from the steaming oven, my hair uncoiffed, and my nose red and feeling slightly askew.

  “How was the beauty shop?” Bob asked, looking me over with a bemused smile. “You look lovely.” Really, Bob was too much. I looked shot. Well, I sort of had been.

  That night, I drifted to sleep with visions of princesses, palaces, and jewels dancing in my head. Even the memory of the silver stove’s unusual smell couldn’t ruin the fairy-tale world I’d seen. I awakened with a start the next morning when I heard a knock on our hotel suite door, my day at the Sahara Palace now a memory.

  Bob opened it to find a servant attired in trailing robes and a snow-white turban.

  “From Her Royal Highness,” he said, holding out a heavy, intricately carved box.

  “I assume this is for you, Joanne,” Bob said, taking the big box from the messenger and setting it on the floor.

  “What on earth?” I gasped.

  “For remembrance,” the servant said, waiting for me to open the gift. “Her Highness will live in purdah in total seclusion. She will never again receive an American,” he added in broken English.

  I carefully opened the heavy lid, tears stinging my eyes.

  “For remembrance,” the servant repeated.

  There, in the box, was a crimson silk gown, embroidered with gold and precious stones.

  “A Saudi wedding dress,” the servant murmured.

  Was it hers? Why had she given it to me? Although I didn’t comprehend what had happened, I knew that some mysterious and wonderful union of hearts and minds had happened between me and a Saudi princess as foreign to me as this American was to her.

  I felt a deep sadness that we would never meet again, but I would never forget her. That she should want me to have this gift touched a chord that would resonate through my whole life. She gave me a bejeweled wedding dress, but most of all, she’d given me something far more precious—an unspoken piece of her heart.

  I sank to the floor, cradled the dress, and wept.

  Postscript: The princess had darker days in her future—her father would soon be assassinated. On the 1,405th birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, the king would celebrate with a reception for a visiting Kuwaiti delegation inside his opulent palace. He’d recognize a family member—a cousin whose brother had been killed by the king’s police when he launched an attack on a Saudi television station.

  The king would lean forward to allow the cousin to fulfill the custom of kissing the tip of the king’s nose. Instead, the cousin would reach under his white robe, pull out a gun, and shoot the princess’s father three times in the face. As the king was dying, the cousin would shout, “Now my brother is avenged!”

  CHAPTER 18

  They Called Me “Sir”

  To me, it’s simple. Socialism and communism promise everything, but they’re actually slavery. They sound good. They represent what I call the Robin Hood dream, where you take from the rich and give to the poor—it just never works. The rich stop giving and the poor stop working. The rich grow weary of giving handouts and the poor stop because they expect support. There is no taking from the rich to give to the deserving poor in any country that has tried communism. In fact, all communist countries have walls to keep people in, not out.

  People usually run from communism, not to it. Why doesn’t it work? Government cannot successfully make its people equal. Only markets can do that. It’s been tried for years under many countries and leaders, and it always fails. We must be free to set our own destiny. Our enemies plan to change our thinking by using problems such as racism, poverty, homelessness, and illegal immigrants to make us feel guilty about the imperfections of capitalism. Then they promise they will cure the problem by empowering government. The only government solution to any problem is to make laws that restrict our freedoms. The government believes less human freedom, fewer human mistakes. I disagree. The communist way is an impenetrable bureaucracy that only the dictators can control. Where has that ever succeeded? Russia? China? Vietnam? East Germany? North Korea? Cuba? Chile tried it, and by a U.S.-funded revolution, the people freed themselves from the tyrants. Our press hindered their freedom at every step. Ask any Chilean about life under communism—I think they’d agree.

  One look at the two Koreas shows the difference. The North Korean people are starving slaves in a dictatorship that threatens the world. South Korea, under capitalism, is rich and free and a threat to no one. And never forget the German wall, which kept the slaves in, while just across the street in West Germany, the same people became a world economic power.

  Sahabzada Yaqub Ali Khan was the Pakistan ambassador to the United States (and eventually foreign minister) and a great friend of ours. It was through him that Bob Herring was offered the position of Pakistan’s honorary consul in 1973. Bob would have been the only Pakistani consul in the United States at that time, so the offer was not to be taken lightly. Although consuls are not ambassadors and don’t represent heads of st
ate, honorary consuls provide assistance to citizens of their own country and the country they represent. They promote friendship and trade between the two countries.

  This would be a distinguished position, a full-time job, with a lot of power to promote goodwill and establish trade. Bob would be called upon to work on many different levels. He was astonished that they would ask him. “I have companies in twenty-six countries, and that is really all that I can manage,” he carefully replied. “I’m very grateful and appreciative and honored.” Then he suggested, “Why don’t you take Joanne?”

  “Joanne!” They gasped. Their eyes widened and their jaws dropped. “Joanne!” There was nothing in the world they wanted less than Joanne. What in the world would they do with a woman? They had no women in government anywhere—and certainly not a blond American Christian who wore short skirts and kept her head uncovered. I was anathema to their every government and faith tradition. The last thing they wanted was me.

  I think the only reason they decided to accept me was that they didn’t want to offend Bob. They hoped that he would drill for oil in Pakistan. At that time, Pakistan was completely dependent on imported oil. Energy independence was essential to the Pakistani economy, and the Pakistanis saw Bob as their liberator.

  Officially, I was first appointed honorary consul, in 1974, by President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s father. But then came this: “On April 4, 1979, the former Prime Minister [Bhutto] was hanged, after the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence passed by the Lahore High Court,” according to Story of Pakistan: A Multimedia Journey, a best-selling CD-ROM and website that focuses on the political history of Pakistan. “The High Court had given him the death sentence on charges of murder of the father of a dissident PPP [Pakistan Peoples Party] politician.”

  President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq came into power, and the world said that Zia ordered the execution of President Bhutto. This was totally untrue. Bhutto had a political opponent that he thought might win the (very rigged) election… so Bhutto had him killed. He then was tried by his own judges and convicted of murder.

  The Koran serves as the unofficial constitution of Pakistan. It exacts an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If you murder, you must die. The only thing that Zia did was to not commute Bhutto’s sentence. In a country whose constitution demanded capital punishment for murder, Zia could not violate the law.

  The communist press used Bhutto’s death as disinformation in an attempt to destroy Zia, who was an encumbrance to the Russians. Zia, who had studied in the United States and was very Western and capitalistic, stood staunchly against the Russians and their form of government. The rest of the world didn’t really know him or where he stood, and it didn’t care. After all, Pakistan was unimportant to the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s. Thus, as always, the Americans did not take the time to understand Pakistan’s law.

  Why don’t we ever ask if there is a good reason countries react as they do? We just judge them by our own standards and believe the destructive things that are said by those who profit from misunderstandings.

  When Zia came into power, he kept me on as honorary consul. A miracle.

  Zia invited Bob and me to Pakistan on the equivalent of a state visit. The fanfare and hoopla that accompanied such visits was trotted out, and Zia treated us like royalty.

  During our first dinner, something clicked between Zia and me. From then on, we worked together often, though I never saw him alone. His aide was always with him, or if no aide was available, his wife was in attendance.

  Zia respected my opinions and I respected his. If he had been the type of man many said he was, he would never have allowed a woman appointed by Bhutto to continue to serve as honorary consul.

  If you watched Charlie Wilson’s War, you saw how I stood up at the party I gave for President Zia in Houston and explained this publicly. Nobody could believe it. People of substance had come from England, Saudi Arabia, New York, and Washington to attend. I told them the story as I told it to you. I had thought about it a lot, and I realized I was risking everything I had… as I do quite often. But I was sick of the misunderstanding and wanted to tell the true story.

  From the movie:

  Charlie: “Want me to look it over?”

  Joanne: “It’s an introduction, Charlie. I’ll be fine.”

  Joanne at the podium: “Today we honor President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan. Before we go any further, I would like you all to know this: President Zia did not kill Bhutto.”

  Less than a decade later, Zia was killed by a bomb planted aboard his plane. Without him we could never have achieved victory against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He allowed the United States to send arms through Pakistan and held the line against the Soviet invasion. Far from being a despot, he was our greatest ally, and he desperately wanted to bring capitalism to Pakistan.

  It’s important to understand how disinformation works. A made-up story is sent to some columnist, usually at a small paper in a small town. The columnist prints it, thinking he has a scoop. He doesn’t check it in any way. Once the story is printed, it is sent to a wire service. Sometimes the service sends it out, especially if it is startling and salacious. Remember, the press thrives on sensation. “If it bleeds, it leads” is the television journalist’s motto. When the story gets on the wires, it goes everywhere (and that’s not even taking into account the modern impact of the Internet in spreading these stories). No matter how untrue, if it’s disseminated, it becomes accepted fact (something Mark Twain knew a century ago). As unimportant as I am, I have felt the bite of disinformation. Imagine how it works on an international scale for the president of a small country who was opposing a great war machine like the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

  When Zia kept me on, nobody, including me, envisioned that together we would play a part in dislodging this danger to the free world. In my newfound position I simply tried to analyze what I could do for this country. I didn’t want to merely get drunk sailors out of jail and give national-day parties, which is what the job often entails. Rather, I thought the best way for me to fight the communist encroachment on Pakistan’s border was to show how capitalism works for the poor.

  I wanted to work with the very poor, and eventually change their lives, by showing them how free enterprise works for people as individuals and for countries as a whole. It could lift their country from poverty to a better life.

  America did not start rich. It took us more than one hundred years to achieve significant national wealth, and we’re still working at it more than two hundred years later. With communism on their doorstep, I wanted the Pakistanis to see the difference between capitalism and communism. Instead of working in villages communally, Pakistanis could work in their own homes better, faster, and cheaper, capitalist style. By their own industry, they could make more money—and keep it.

  Learning how to take good ideas and turn them into successful businesses takes experience. I didn’t finish college, but I learned by working, first on Bob King’s construction projects and later with Bob Herring, who showed me how corporations coordinate to achieve a specific goal. I also understood fashion design and had friends in the designer world.

  “What does this country need?” I asked myself. “It needs money. How can I show people who are hungry that by embracing capitalism, they can make their lives better?”

  I looked at what Pakistan had to offer. It had a wondrous display of artistic craftsmanship, but the designs were too exotic for Western décor. The pieces, such as an embroidered pillow or an interesting Oriental copper coffeepot, could be used as beautiful accents for the home. You might buy one, but you would not buy another. These were accent pieces, not items that would sell again and again. The Pakistanis needed to sell things to the West that would generate repeat sales.

  How could I take these brilliant artists and utilize their talents to sell on the world market? I needed to think of mass-produced items that people would continue to buy—embroidered sheets, towels, handkerchiefs,
and clothing. We would need to transform all of the designs into a more Western look.

  Both Frette and Porthault made luxurious linens and sold them for thousands. The only thing that differentiated their products from the Pakistanis’ fine sheets of equal thread count was the embroidery. Pakistan cotton was famous for its quality. I bought designer sheets as an example, sent them to Pakistan, and had them copied in new designs for a fraction of the cost.

  Hand-blocked prints on fabric were a specialty of Pakistan craftsmen and women. These, too, were much prized in Western markets. In fact, anything handcrafted was a specialty skill the Pakistanis possessed.

  However, the Pakistani Export Promotion Bureau was to become my enemy. Bureaucracies often are. They refused to rock the boat or their nice little niche that allowed them to pocket some of the bureau’s money. I referred to them as “a sick ol’ elephant.” You can imagine the effect that had when the newspapers printed it. This endeared me to nobody.

  I asked the designers I knew—Pierre Cardin, Yves St. Laurent, Givenchy, Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, and other big names in France, Italy, and the United States—to use the Pakistani hand-beaded sari fabrics in ensembles for runway shows. These generous geniuses graciously did it even though they were overwhelmed with the business of their own design houses. At that time, they were just beginning to expand the use of their names to cover everything from towels to tennis shoes.

  The fashion shows with the Pakistani fabric ensembles attracted such notables as Nelson Rockefeller, movie stars, and the society people. Even Pierre Cardin himself came to help launch them. We did shows in Houston, New York, Atlanta, Washington, Tokyo, and London. The show in Japan was so successful, they demanded that we repeat it twice. Companies wanted to buy thousands of the outfits. It would have revolutionized the life of the poor Pakistani women, who were confined to their houses by custom, tradition, and law, and who often had as many as sixteen or seventeen children. By making these clothes and using their embroidery on the wonderful silk and polyester fabrics already in production, they could actually feed their children. Through this initiative, I hoped that we could ultimately bring millions into the pockets of the poor.