by Laura Bush
Throughout the funeral service, the skies threatened rain. Then, at the precise moment when John Paul's plain pine casket with a simple inlaid cross was lifted high to be seen one final time by the mourners before it was carried into the Basilica of St. Peter's, a ray of sun broke through the clouds and shone bright upon the casket.
I thought of John Paul again the very next month as my motorcade raced along the flat desert highway leading from Jordan's main airport to the capital city of Amman, where stacked dwellings rose up the mountainsides and the colors were muted desert browns and beige. I had arrived in the region where the world's three major faiths converge, moving from Jordan to Israel to Egypt.
In Amman I ate dinner at the private residence of King Abdullah and Queen Rania, whom we had hosted a number of times in the United States, including for a weekend at Camp David. We ate at a long, rectangular wooden table, and during dinner Queen Rania excused herself to tend to her fourth child, a four-month-old baby, whose mews and cries drifted downstairs.
I was in Jordan to speak at the World Economic Forum, which was meeting at the edge of the Dead Sea. I would be addressing a large group of delegates before heading off to a smaller roundtable. As UNESCO's honorary ambassador for its Decade of Literacy, I spoke about education and literacy, and while I did, a desert fly buzzed around my face, attracted to the bright spotlight of the speaker's podium. My speech proved to be a different kind of irritant to some of the attendees. The message about education and opportunity for all citizens, including women, coming from the wife of a conservative American president, was too much for some of the men. "In my country," I said, "women didn't secure the right to vote until more than a century after our nation's founding. But now we know that a nation can only achieve its best future and its brightest potential when all of its citizens, men and women, participate in the government and in decision making." I continued, "I'm reminded of what V'clav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, once told me, 'Laura, you know, democracy is hard because it requires the participation of all the people.'"
Below me, in the audience, there was a rustling, then a murmur, and then a delegation of white-robed men in red-checked head coverings walked out. They were from Saudi Arabia, where women cannot vote and cannot drive. They are not permitted to travel freely, and many have no chance for anything beyond the most rudimentary education, if that. I spoke of how, across the broader Middle East and North Africa, more than 75 million women and 45 million men are illiterate. Then I spoke about freedom. "As freedom becomes a fact of life for rising generations in the Middle East, young people need to grow up with a full understanding of freedom's rights and responsibilities: the right to discuss any issue in the public sphere, and the responsibility to respect other people and their opinions." I added, "Freedom, especially freedom for women, is more than the absence of oppression. It's the right to speak and vote and worship freely. Human rights require the rights of women. And human rights are empty promises without human liberty."
No one in the press reported the walkout--probably better for the delicate balancing acts of global diplomacy--but it was a clear reminder of how long the journey is for women to become men's equals in the wider world.
Afterward, I spent time with Jordan's king and queen at a roundtable with Arab youth, where we discussed education and economic improvement. Both King Abdullah and Queen Rania have charitable foundations devoted to improving lives in Jordan. I went on to nearby Mount Nebo, the last place where Moses stopped. Wearily, he ascended the mountain and glimpsed the Promised Land he would never reach. It was here that Moses died, leaving the Israelites to complete their journey alone. On clear days, from the rise, the scene is breathtaking; it is possible to see as far as Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
During the drive we passed encampments of nomadic Bedouins, their camels kneeling on the hot sands and their tents billowing in the desert winds. The heat was so searing and Mount Nebo so steep that my limousine broke down on the journey up the winding roads. My staff and I piled into the reserve vehicle to finish the climb. Waiting for me afterward in an old stone restaurant at the base of the mountain were a group of Jordanian women leaders. Before I left, I visited a girls' school and then the Jordan River Foundation, a special project of Queen Rania's to support women through microenterprise.
As we returned along the same flat desert highway to the airport, everything was routine. Then, a second later, it was not. The vehicles in my convoy swerved, evaded, and then accelerated. Something was very wrong. A rogue car had broken into my motorcade. In the seconds that followed, we did not know if it was a confused driver who had merely pulled out onto the road or if the people inside the vehicle knew that this was my convoy and that, in one of these vehicles, they would find me. Immediately an entire Secret Service tactical team shouldered their guns and swarmed along the windows and back hatch of an accompanying Chevy Suburban, aiming their weapons and leaning out into the rushing air. Every cell phone signal was shut down. The fear was that a phone signal could be used to detonate a remotely controlled bomb or IED hidden inside the unknown car or preplanted along the roads. The car was intercepted, and we continued on, racing to the airport at breakneck speed. I never knew from where or how, or why, that vehicle came. It was a stark reminder of the daily threats that hover over nearly everyone's lives in this part of the world.
A brief flight ferried me across the border and into Israel, to Tel Aviv. Hugging the coast of the Mediterranean, Tel Aviv is a city of glittering, modern buildings and some well-preserved old quarters, where it is still possible to imagine what life must have been like when this was a sleepy trading port centuries ago. From the air the lands of Jordan and Israel are a contrast of tightly massed towns and cities and vaster open spaces. We traveled the quick distance to Jerusalem, passing road signs for Bethlehem and Jericho. I was invited for tea with Gila Katsav, wife of the president of Israel. Israel is a beacon of democracy for the region and has had, since its founding out of the ashes of the Holocaust, a special relationship with the United States. It is one of America's staunchest allies, and the United States is in turn committed to Israel's survival.
Mrs. Katsav and Sheila Kurtzer, wife of the American ambassador, accompanied me to the Western Wall, one of the holiest places in Judaism, where the faithful come to pray. It is considered the sole remnant of the Holy Temple that was destroyed by the Romans, and religious and secular Jews make pilgrimages to this site. The original structures are attributed to King David; sections of the wall have stood on this spot since nineteen years before the birth of Christ, and their stones remain today. As is custom, I covered my head in a shawl and placed a tiny note in a narrow crevice in the limestone. On it was written a prayer for peace.
When I had arrived at the wall, there was a small group protesting for the release of Jonathan Pollard, the American civilian naval intelligence officer who pleaded guilty in 1986 to the charge of spying for Israel and was sentenced to life in prison. There were more confrontations to come.
On the hill above the Western Wall sit the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock, a shrine built by the Muslim conquerors of Jerusalem in 692. Its shiny gold-leaf dome reaches to the sky, and its ornate walkway of columns and mosaic art envelop the worn contours of an ancient, holy stone where the prophet Mohammed is believed to have ascended to Heaven and where the Jewish patriarch Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. It is one of the most revered sites in the Islamic world. A visit to the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon, when he was a candidate for Israeli prime minister in 2000, triggered a call for mass riots by the Palestinians' Hamas and Fatah organizations and formed the pretext for the Second Intifada or Palestinian uprising. Israeli police and officials, and even officials from the Palestinian Authority, are no longer permitted on the site; few non-Muslims routinely enter.
Both the dome and the Western Wall are holy places and always crowded with pilgrims. It had been decided that I would make the brief walk from the entrance to the Temple Mou
nt to the dome itself, although in the crowds, people were pushing to get a glimpse of me. A few were worshipers who did not want me at the site, but the vast majority were paparazzi and members of the foreign press who wanted to call out questions and shoot photos. I had my Secret Service detail, but, seeing the mounting media frenzy, the Israeli security forces formed a ring around us. The security personnel brushed away anyone who came too close. Though the Israelis were not welcome beyond the gate leading to the dome, they would not allow me to enter without additional protection. I was not afraid, my Arab hosts were not afraid, but Suzanne Malveaux of CNN, who was accompanying me on the trip, was totally unnerved. In her televised report, a sixty-second walk looked like a major confrontation. The next morning she asked me if the president had been alarmed when he saw what happened. "Yes, Suzanne," I replied, "but only after he saw your report, on television."
I toured the beautiful holy site, which is managed by a special Muslim trust, and then drove to the ancient city of Jericho, upon whose walls Joshua's trumpets blew. Inside this Arab city, a sadly desolate place compared to the bustle of Jerusalem, I met with a group of Palestinian women. Afterward, I stopped to see one of the treasures of the Judean desert: Hisham's Palace, built in 724 by the Caliph Hisham, who ruled an empire that stretched from India to the Pyrenees. Although the palace had been damaged by an earthquake, the floor of the reception hall remained untouched. It is inlaid with the beautiful Tree of Life mosaic, depicting a pomegranate tree under which are gathered lions and gazelles. The gazelles are the visitors, coming to pay their respects and show their good wishes to the kingdom. But on the right is one gazelle that wishes the ruler harm, and so is savaged by a lion determined to protect his domain and take revenge. It was no accident that the mosaic graced a formal state receiving room. Perhaps diplomacy has changed little in thirteen centuries.
At day's end we traveled back to Jerusalem, to Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial to the Holocaust. I had visited the memorial before, in 1998, when Barbara was spending a semester abroad in Rome. George, Jenna, and I had spent Thanksgiving with her, and then George and I had gone on to visit Israel with a group of American Jews and Christians. One was a man named David Flaum, the child of Holocaust survivors who had come to the United States. His older brother and sister, born in Europe, had perished at the hands of the Nazis. Worn by years of suffering, David's mother had died when he was still young. As we entered the area that commemorates the children killed in the Holocaust, David broke down. Together George, David, and I gazed upon the lights of thousands of tiny candles, each one reflecting its image into a mirror until the reflections stretch out toward infinity. Every light represents a child lost, a living, breathing child who is no more, like the brother and the sister whom David had never known.
For a first lady, there are moments of maximum political controversy, and they often strike without warning. Mine was to come the next morning, just after we visited the Church of the Resurrection in Abu Ghosh, an Arab-Israeli town. The nuns and monks sang Psalm 150 in Hebrew, a beautiful display of voice and faith. Indeed, here in this peaceful spot, it seemed that all faiths might exist together in peace. A couple of hours later, I arrived at the Ittihadiyya Palace on the outskirts of Cairo to call on Suzanne Mubarak, first lady of Egypt. Suzanne is close to my mother-in-law. In one of my albums, I have the official vice presidential photo of Bar showing Suzanne Jenna and Barbara's first real baby pictures, taken just a few weeks after they were born.
I had arrived two days before a nationwide referendum on future presidential elections. I had known that elections were scheduled, but in weeks of staff meetings and in my National Security Council briefing for the trip, no one had mentioned that my visit would be so close to the referendum vote. Egypt is an important U.S. ally, but it also jails political opponents. I had walked, unprepared, into a potential minefield. In retrospect, it was probably one of the worst possible times for me to be in Egypt. Right away the Egyptian and American press asked me about the upcoming vote. And while I had reams of official talking points on educational programs and compliments about cultural sites, such as the pyramids and the library at Alexandria, no one had thought to include a detailed briefing paper on current political issues in the country. I answered that holding elections was a "bold step" toward democracy, but both the referendum and the actual presidential elections that followed were later criticized as insufficiently democratic for not allowing a full slate of opposition candidates to participate. Days after I left, protesters against the May referendum were beaten in the streets. And when one of Egypt's leading opposition figures, Ayman Nour, who was jailed early in 2005, strongly petitioned for a "rerun" of the presidential vote, the election commission denied his request.
I imagine that people at the NSC thought the first lady was going abroad to do cultural events and ladies' things and assumed that I would never be asked about politics. After all, I was taping an episode of Egypt's version of Sesame Street, Alam Simsim, and visiting the Egyptian Muppet version of the grocery shop, the house and carpentry workshop, the invention corner, and the garden and library. But we had selected that event in part because 85 percent of Egypt's preschoolers and 54 percent of their mothers watch Alam Simsim. An appearance there had the potential to reach more ordinary citizens than high-level summitry. Yet while I might have been better prepared, the fact is that, for all first ladies, improvisation comes with the terrain.
After the television taping, Suzanne Mubarak hosted a lunch in my honor and then we toured Abu Sir, one of Egypt's thousand "girl-friendly schools," dedicated to girls and built in 2003 in the shadow of the pyramids. From there we saw the pyramids themselves. With the press in tow, I was in the middle of a tour with Dr. Zahi Hawass, who directs the Giza pyramids excavation. He was preparing to unveil a new discovery when Jim VandeHei, then a political reporter for The Washington Post, elbowed his way to the front of the press pool, climbed onto the pyramid plateau, and began shouting out questions about the Egyptian referendum and Hosni Mubarak's political and election plans. Dr. Hawass appeared dismayed and completely taken aback to have this outburst happen in the middle of Egypt's premier historical site. It was a violation of protocol, and as far as the Egyptian antiquity experts were concerned, Jim VandeHei was part of the U.S. delegation. Sometimes members of the press forget that they are not seen as independent entities abroad. I quietly apologized, knowing that this incident would not be attributed to an individual reporter or The Washington Post; it would be blamed on me and, by extension, on George.
My first solo trip to the Middle East had been a series of land mines. The Saudi walkout during my World Economic Forum speech seemed positively mild by the time I boarded the plane to return home. But these moments were fleeting, while the region's problems were far more intractable. My meetings with Israeli and Palestinian women were vivid confirmations of the often deep distrust that exists among some on both sides. When I sat down with the Israeli women, they spoke of the horrid things said about Jews in Arab textbooks. When I sat down with Palestinian women, they lamented the security barrier that Israel was constructing along the West Bank, and how it made their lives more difficult. Each time, in their words, there was a quality of "if only." If only they would change their textbooks, if only they would take down the barrier, then we would get along. There were so many if onlys.
From my first encounter with the British tabloids, when I was dubbed a "cowgirl," I was fascinated to discover what parts of American culture struck a chord overseas and how other countries saw us. But I never imagined that one innocent speech I gave on a Saturday night in a hotel in Washington, D.C., would have such a lasting impact abroad. It was April 30, 2005, the night of the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner. The correspondents' dinner is the culmination of a Washington ritual of roasting the president. It begins with the Alfalfa Club in January and continues through the late winter and early spring with the Gridiron Club, the White House News Photographers Association, and the Ra
dio and Television Correspondents' Association, all building up to the crescendo: the correspondents' dinner, some three thousand people gathered in black tie in the basement ballroom at the Washington Hilton hotel. There, beneath a white cutout ceiling that looks as if it spent its previous life on the set of Star Trek, the president sits and listens while comedians and members of the press crack barbed jokes about him. Then the president is expected to give his own humorous speech. As George put it, "People make fun of the president and then it is the president's turn to get up and make fun of himself." The evening's purpose is to honor members of the White House Press Corps, but news organizations also try to fill their tables with celebrities, the famous and the infamous, from all walks of life, and the evening may be the closest thing Washington, D.C., has to a glitzy Hollywood party.
That night, as George began his speech, I quickly interrupted him. "Not that old joke, not again," I said. "I've been attending these dinners for years and just quietly sitting here. I've got a few things I want to say for a change.