Thursday, July 20, 2006

Coffee with Farook During the Israeli/Lebanese War

Note: this is not a comment about the war, but merely a report on what happened when I invited Farook for coffee.

Farook agreed to join me for coffee, but called at the scheduled time to say he had to go to hospital. He’d had a cyst removed and needed to have the dressing changed. He called about an hour later and invited me to come to his office for a visit, so I went. When I arrived, he had his secretary give me tea.

An Egyptian and a Syrian dropped by, and the Syrian wanted to know if he could buy a freehold villa for less than €200,000 (short answer, ‘No.’) After the very brief discussion about buying a villa, the conversation apparently turned to the war. I say ‘apparently,’ because neither the Egyptian nor the Syrian displayed any ability to speak English (I’m never sure about Farook), so the conversations were entirely in Arabic. After awhile, though, Farook turned to me:

‘What you think about war in Lebanon.’

‘I think it’s terrible,’ I replied.

‘He hates Bush,’ Farook said for the benefit of the Egyptian and Syrian, or maybe it was for my benefit, so I’d know what he had just told them in Arabic.

‘Who you think winning?’ he asked me.

I gave Farook as non-committal a response as I could.

‘You wrong. Israel losing. Hezbolla so bad off, they have nothing to lose. They have nothing, so Israel cannot take anything, but this war cost Israel too much. It destroy Israel. Then Israel bring America down with it.’

Farook repeated this for the other two, and I think the Syrian disagreed: ‘No, America give them more weapons and money faster than they use.’

I caught bits and pieces as Farook spoke in Arabic about the Romans, then Genghis Khan, then the Ottomans, then the British rising and falling, with the implication that America’s rise is over and decline is imminent, after which the Arabs will again have the world’s largest empire, as they did in 732 A.D. (or 100 A.H.).

‘When America falls, it should be the Chinese who are on top, if they don’t repeat 1422 when they decided all technology and trade was against the wishes of their gods,’ was my response.

Farook went on: ‘If you have big mouse in bedroom, you sleep OK?’

Of course there is no such thing as a ‘big mouse,’ but Farook didn’t know the English word ‘rat.’

I answered, ‘If I saw a “big mouse” in my home, I would go to the hypermarket and get a trap, and the “big mouse” would be dead very quickly.’

‘Right!’ answered Farook. ‘Hezbollah set trap. Quickly trap Israel, then America.’

Then the Egyptian and the Syrian must have said that they had to go, because, after saying whatever it was (in Arabic), they both left.

Then I left.