by Saul Bellow
But I do not think anyone will fly in today from Boise, Idaho, eagerly seeking in New York other writers whose love of poetry is pure or who are waiting on the steps of the public library like Athenians to discuss Existence or Justice. The publicity intellectuals have little interest in such matters. They read little, and they don’t gather to talk about literature. Cultural New York founds its prosperity on the former presence of these great things and keeps up the illusion that they are still present. New York is a great marketer of echoes. The past is profitably translated into Village rentals and real estate values, into meal prices and hotel rates. New York seems to thrive also on a sense of national deficiency, on the feelings of many who think themselves sunk hopelessly in the American void where there is no color, no theater, no vivid contemporaneousness, where people are unable to speak authoritatively, globally, about life.
We have no holy places in America, so we make do with the profane. Inquire in Rockford, Illinois, what is happening there. The commonest answer will be: “Nothing. The action is all in San Francisco, Las Vegas, and New York.” When you return to Chicago from a trip to New York, you are asked: “What did you see? Of course you went to the theater.” But what can one see in the New York theater now? People’s sexual organs. The aim is perhaps to celebrate one’s emancipation from puritanism and to mark our redemption from sexual bondage. But Oh! Calcutta! is really a play within a play, for New York itself is the theater of the nation, showing strange things. Outsiders—the rest of the country—do not tire of watching.
The Day they Signed the Treaty
(1979)
Newsday, 1 April 1979.
The gray skies opened as the historic hour approached, the wind blew the clouds out, the sun shone on the great crowd of guests and journalists who had come to watch the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty on the North Lawn of the White House.
Despite the sunshine the wind was stiff; the thermometer stood at 45 degrees, a nipping and an eager air. On their platforms the TV technicians worked with great-snouted, funnel-eyed cameras, and private camera buffs by the hundreds stood on folding chairs to photograph the scene: Prime Minister Begin, Presidents Carter and Sadat, their wives. They were perhaps hoping that their lenses might capture things their own eyes weren’t seeing. The Marine band played jazzy, military quick-step music. From Lafayette Park came the amplified screams of demonstrating Palestinians and their sympathizers, kept at a distance by hundreds of riot police. Saint John’s Church rang its bells to celebrate the occasion and perhaps also to send ecclesiastical blessings over the noise of protest Secret Service agents checked the papers of invited guests; on the roof of the White House were men with binoculars. From an upper window, the White House chef in his tall white hat was looking down.
Beside me, an elderly couple had gotten up on their chairs. The lady said to me with an Eastern European accent, “But I am so small—I can’t see.” Her husband, in his old-fashioned, voluminous, fur-collared coat, was not much taller. He would, forty years ago, have been well dressed in his conservative pinstripes and homburg. I identified them as Americanized refugees. Greatly stirred, they seemed hardly to hear the indignation of the working press behind the ropes, telling them to step down. Nor did they care much about the eminent persons who went about recognizing one another: Henry Kissinger, Senator Moynihan soaring pleasantly above everyone—the privilege of importance or great height.
Abraham Beame of New York City did not enjoy the same advantage but was unmistakably a “notable”—that is what cops in Chicago call people whose pictures appear in the papers. Hizzoner carries his own sharp little aura. I mistook him for Judge Charles E. Wyzanski of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and had to be corrected by a New Yorker. Arthur Goldberg was present too. About him someone asked, “Why did he let himself be wheedled out of a lifetime job? Some sweet-talker, that Lyndon Johnson.”
The many celebrities embraced enthusiastically, grappling affectionately, kissing one another. There were wonderful personages to look at: gowned Coptic and Greek Orthodox priests, generals with campaign ribbons, faces familiar to us on the television screen advancing in the flesh; behind us, masses of cameramen; before us, the alert formations of the Secret Service and flags flapping over the historic table on which the treaty was to be signed.
Until the last moment Sadat and Begin had bickered over wording, Sadat insisting on the Gulf of Aqaba, Begin holding out for the Gulf of Eilat and also, I was informed, for Judea and Samaria. But here they were, differences for the moment composed, ready to sign their names.
Most of those present were moved. Some said they were moved against their better judgment. They hadn’t the strength to resist the great moment. “Stupendous,” said Arthur Goldberg. I spoke to other observers, however, who could not bring themselves to put aside the habit of a caveat. Well, we’ll see, they said. Or, Pourvu que ça dure. We are all filled with warm blood; the impulse to hope is very strong in us; those who have seen a great deal of life have learned, however, the wisdom of keeping a quantity of cold blood in reserve.
But even the most reserved and cautious of the Israeli, Egyptian, and American diplomats and journalists whose opinions I sought said that this was a most significant advance, a great historic occasion, peace between enemies who have repeatedly spilled each other’s blood.
Hardly a man of importance today present has escaped personal suffering. The brother of Sadat fell in the war of 1973, the son of Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman has never recovered from his wounds. Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan very early suffered the loss of an eye. The families of Begin and of many of his cabinet officers and assistants were destroyed in Hitler’s murder camps. One of Begin’s staff, Mr. Elissar, was as a boy saved from destruction by the death of another child, whose parents had emigration papers and who took young Elissar in the dead boy’s place. Elissar’s own family did not survive. Such are the people who this day affix their names to the agreement.
The AP reports from Beirut: “Much of the Arab world seethes with outrage today, the day of peace for Egypt and Israel. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat vowed to ‘chop off the hands’ of the ‘stooge Sadat, the terrorist Begin, and the imperialist Carter.’”
The ceremony of signing is followed by the speeches of the principals. Mr. Carter announces that we must begin to wage peace. Mr. Sadat, a measured, mellowed orator, says, against waves of protest from Lafayette Park, let there be no more bloodshed and suffering. Let there be no denial of rights, he adds, adroitly referring to the Palestinians. He is an accomplished statesman, the most polished of today’s speakers.
Begin, taking his turn at the microphones, is aware of his reputation as a chronic objector. “I agree but, as usual, with an amendment,” he says. He tells the crowd that this is the third-greatest day of his life, the first being the day in 1948 on which Israel achieved statehood, the second that on which East Jerusalem was taken by Israeli troops.
Thus Sadat tries to assure the Arab world that he continues to represent Arab interests, while Begin still asserts that Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. He speaks of the personal sacrifices exacted by the long treaty negotiations, says that he has been abused by the world, abused by his own people; worst of all, he has been abused by his oldest friends. But he concludes with the 126th Psalm: “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”
The ceremony ending, my wife and I return to the White House press quarters, where we find that crowds of reporters have been watching the event on color television sets. All the vending machines are empty, all the candy has been eaten, everywhere cardboard boxes are stuffed with empty cans and paper plates and cups and sandwich wrappings and cigarette butts.
A weary young woman in slacks and white sneakers is curled up in her paper’s cubicle, eating Fritos from a package. The elderly correspondent of the New Republic unlocks his confidential file, then with another key unlocks his telephone, pulls out the plug of a lock, and dials a number. Egyptian and Israeli newsmen confer in se
parate groups. One Middle Eastern journalist, a big man, limps by. The look on his face is the look of Androcles’ lion before the thorn was removed.
On a day like this, one naturally regrets not being an expert or one of those insiders who thoroughly understand. It’s hell to be an amateur. A little reflection calms your sorrow, however. The experts in their own little speedboat, the rest of us floating with the rest of mankind in a great barge—that is the picture. We must do what we can to grasp whatever it is possible to grasp of all these treaties, SAIT talks, Iranian revolutions, Russian maneuvers in Yemen, Chinese visits.
President Johnson used to say that he knew what was happening in Vietnam; he had information he couldn’t share with us and without which we had no opinions worth considering. But he, too, turned out to be just another amateur. And we non-knowers have our rights. “No annihilation without representation,” as Arnold Toynbee once put it. You dare not give up the struggle to form an opinion.
There are moments, certainly, when you feel like Mother Goose’s pussycat who goes to London to see the queen. But at other times you refuse to concede that the keenest of professionals and specialists have the right to dismiss any considerable investment of mind, feeling, and imagination. When I supported the Israeli Peace Now Movement last summer, I, together with the other signers, was denounced as a meddler and an ignoramus who had no right to a viewpoint. “The notion—how can we criticize when we do not live in Israel—has been a remarkably powerful slogan,” writes the Chicago sociologist Morris Janowitz. From our side we might argue that Israel, for its survival, is obliged to understand certain matters of which we as Americans have some firsthand knowledge.
One need not be a professional superstar to understand the fundamentals. Israel’s Arab neighbors have until now refused to recognize its legitimacy, its right as a sovereign state, and to this day speak of it as the “Zionist entity.” Sadat, for a price, of course, has given Israel this indispensable recognition. Moreover, Israel has until now had to depend for survival entirely on its strength, but it is plain to everyone that the military effectiveness of Israel must eventually reach its limit, perhaps has already reached it.
There are those who question whether Israel won a decisive victory in 1973. They question also whether it can continue to stand the economic and social strains of preparedness, the strain of internal disputes provoked by garrison conditions, the mobilization of reservists, the anxieties and the expenses of siege life, the prospect of further wars and of greater casualties, and the last and most terrible of alternatives—namely, the “nuclear option.”
What is fundamental, therefore, and beyond argument, is the need for a political solution—a political-military solution. Israel is in no position to reject this. Begin could not of course publicly state what he assuredly knew about the increasing futility of relying on military strength alone. It would be both demoralizing and dangerous to make such statements.
But since the revolution in Iran, the facts are clear for all the world to see. A complete victory of radical extremism in the Arab world would mean the defeat of all Jewish hopes, the end of Israel. According to President Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, with whom I talked briefly after the ceremony, this would present the greatest danger also to Western Europe. What he had in mind, I take it, is what people have begun to call “the Finlandization of Europe.” He did not himself use this phrase.
I had met Mr. Brzezinski about a decade ago, at a meeting of some sort. (How many meetings of some sort there have been! You can measure your life out with them, as if they were Mr. Prufrock’s coffee spoons.) Mr. Brzezinski has a pleasing face, a narrow aristocratic Polish nose in which I, raised among Poles in Chicago, can identify a characteristic irregularity of line, the Slavic eye frame, and a whiteness of the skin more intense than that of Western Europe—not a pallor but a positive whiteness.
Mr. Brzezinski, a fluent and willing talker, necessarily guarded but not dragging his feet, said he was immensely pleased by the treaty—pleased but not exuberant. Brzezinski did not believe the Saudis would discontinue financial support to Egypt although they declared that they would follow the policies laid down in the Baghdad conference last November, and these include economic sanctions against Egypt. He opined also that the Israelis would prove flexible enough to deal with the Arab problem. He cited in evidence the liberal traditions of Judaism and, more to the point, a recent speech in the Knesset by Shimon Peres, the leader of the opposition.
Mr. Peres, in his desire to come to terms with the Palestinian Arabs, took positions his party would have rejected only a few years ago. Golda Meir refused to acknowledge that there was any such thing as a Palestinian at all. Mr. Brzezinski did not think that Peres was merely sounding off. Peres is a tough politician who expects to return to power, and a softening of his views reflects a change in opinion in the country. Mr. Brzezinski evidently believes that responsible Israeli politicians do not intend, cannot afford, to let the treaty unravel and that they understand quite well what the seizure of power by radicals in Egypt would mean for them.
Less guarded officials, off the record, tell you that Sadat was hardly oppressed by the great rage he had generated in the Arab world. Instead Sadat seems fairly lighthearted about it, all things considered. These officials tell you that Sadat has the most violent contempt for his enemies in the Arab world, that his untranslatable purple invectives belong to no minor branch of the art of metaphor. H. L. Mencken once published a dictionary of curses, of all the terrible things his detractors had to say about him. This was purely a local American product. It might be useful to do the same thing on a world scale.
About Jordan’s King Hussein the same free-spoken officials say that his recent behavior has been unpleasant, that he complains, beefs, and reproaches the Americans. They concede, of course, that he is a man who has been living uncomfortably close to death for many years and that, unable to pursue an independent course in the Mideast, he is intensely frustrated.
Boutros Ghali, the Egyptian foreign minister, in his large hotel suite, gave us his view of some of the disputed issues. He is a diplomat whose smooth Egyptian-French surface easily deflects unwelcome questions. There are no unmannerly rejections, only an easy, practiced turning aside of things he doesn’t intend to discuss. For these things he substitutes certain rhetorical preparations of his own. I have done much the same on some occasions, with less style, and not in a setting of Oriental rugs and cut flowers.
Egypt, he says, has a duty to represent the interests of the Palestinian Arabs since no stability in the region is possible until they receive satisfaction. So peace with Israel requires justice for the Palestinians and is the direct concern of Egypt. I suggest that Egypt might offer more definite plans to mitigate the hardships of Palestinians, especially those in the refugee camps. I am thinking of the camps in Lebanon. Ghali counters that the greatest hardship for the Palestinians is that they have no national base, no home to return to. But not that many would want to go back. A large number of Palestinians have prospered abroad. They are among the most advanced, the best educated and skilled, of the Arabs. Some are self-made millionaires, and it is unlikely that these would want to live in a Palestinian state, but it is necessary for such a state to exist. It is after all one of the effects of Zionism to sharpen Arab nationalism.
His comment on Dayan, with whom he has had extended discussions in this same hotel suite, is that Dayan is Begin’s vizier, that between them there is the Oriental connection of caliph and courtier-statesman. Ghali sees Weizman as the crown prince and heir apparent who has the traditional mistrust of the vizier and invariably fires him.
I ask Ghali what he thinks of the anti-Westernism of the Iranian Moslems and whether the revolution is evidence that Moslem orthodoxy cannot accept modernism. He answers that Islam is able and willing to accept modern conditions. I suggest that these conditions are not universally attractive and that I can readily understand why the religious are so repelled by the
m. You foreigners lack the true perspective, says Ghali. There are so many factions in Iran that only time will show which will win out. I say nothing of hands lopped off and executions ordered by revolutionary councils. My wife speaks of the woman question in the Moslem world. Mr. Ghali does not choose to discuss this.
He is interested, however, in a question about Israeli businessmen and technicians in Egypt. He puts cultural relations in the first place. These, to him, are more important than business connections. The Israelis should learn Arabic, he says. He emphasizes that he does not mean the lower-class Arabic many Jews learned from their neighbors in the old days—the sort of Arabic Dayan speaks. Oriental Jews when they emigrated to Israel should not have discarded their Arabic when they began to speak Hebrew.
Israelis would be wrong to take an attitude of superiority and assume that they would naturally be called upon to improve the backward Egyptians. They must not make the mistake the French made in Algeria of adopting the superior role. I interpret him to mean that a crowd of Israelis will be attracted to Egypt by business opportunities and by the vast sums provided by the United States for the modernization of agriculture and industry. They will not be welcome; they had better proceed with infinite tact.
Ghali speaks often of France and the French, of French intellectuals. He recommends an article by Jean-Paul Sartre on Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem. His friends call him Pierre, he tells us. Sadat calls him Pierre when he is pleased with him and when he is displeased addresses him as Boutros.
When we leave his suite we see through the open door of an adjoining room the Egyptian musclemen, the hulking guards, coatless, taking it easy, their leather holsters creaking as they move about. They are formidably armed. The American security gentleman sitting quietly in the corridor has a device for messages plugged into his ear like a hearing aid. Under his buttoned jacket he no doubt carries a magnum: a calm type you might meet at a ticket counter in the airport and exchange the usual inanities about fog on the runway with.