Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 17, 1993 TAG: 9310170223
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MIMI MANN The Associated Press
DATELINE: CAIRO, EGYPT LENGTH: Long
Jehan Sadat says she didn't know when the assassin's bullet would strike, but she knew her husband would die for daring to make peace in the turbulent Middle East.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was a visionary, she says, and the penalty for visionaries in this part of the world often is death.
"Sadat was an exception, not an ordinary man," Mrs. Sadat says. "I think it was his nature, growing up so poor, his love of country that made him so special. He sacrificed a lot for his country. In the end he gave it all."
For more than an hour, in the house they shared in the Cairo suburb of Giza, Egypt's former first lady disclosed much about Anwar Sadat, her husband of 32 years. A man of war, then of peace, he was gunned down in 1981 by Muslim fundamentalists opposed to Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.
Sadat spoke of their life together, Sadat's legacy for their four children and 10 grandchildren, her new life in a Virginia suburb as a university lecturer - mowing her own lawn on weekends, shopping at a supermarket and a toy store.
She spoke of the burning issues that motivate her - women's rights, illiteracy, democracy.
But it was talk of the new steps toward Middle East peace that consumed much of the interview.
Sadat nurtured a dream of peace, she says, a vision of a brighter future for coming generations in lands seething with hatred and suspicion. Now, after wasted years, money and lives, other Arabs are following Sadat's lead, seeking peace with Israel.
"Peace takes a lot of patience," sighs Mrs. Sadat.
"Let us hope they reach it, because I believe there is no other alternative" but to "put aside small things" in the name of peace, she says.
"I believe this is the last chance."
A few days after the interview, after a torrent of diplomatic activity that stirred the world, Jehan Sadat sat on the White House lawn, an invited guest for the signing of the first-ever peace accord between Isreal and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
She watched PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, who once called Sadat a traitor for making peace, shake hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The table on which Sadat and Rabin's predecessor, Menachem Begin, signed in 1979 the only treaty between an Arab country and Israel was brought out of storage for this, the next momentous step in the Middle East peace process.
"Arafat should be applauded for what he's doing, but he's no Sadat," Jehan Sadat says. "Sadat went to Jerusalem."
On Nov. 9, 1977, a war-weary Egyptian president stunned his parliament and the world with the revelation he was willing to go anywhere if he could find peace with Israel, even "to their house, to the Knesset itself."
Ten days later Israeli and Egyptian flags flew side by side as Sadat landed in Israel.
From the moment her husband announced he sought peace, Jehan Sadat was plagued by migraine headaches.
"I knew he would be killed," she says. "We both knew."
In the month before Sadat's assassination he told her three times his life was nearing an end. "He told the children once," she says. "I think he wanted to prepare us.
"Sadat was a great leader. Few in our generation embody such courage. And Sadat was so nice. Believe me, he was such a good husband, such a good father. Sometimes I have to remember: He was only human."
Mrs. Sadat displays all the symptoms of a doting grandmother. "I think my greatest achievement," she says, "is that all my children and grandchildren love each other."
During much of the conversation two granddaughters were by her side: Nour, 6, and Jasmine, 13, daughters of the Sadats' only son, Gamal. Jasmine was 2 1/2 when her grandfather was assassinated.
One of Mrs. Sadat's prized mementos is a photograph of Sadat and Jasmine in their garden. The photographer asked Mrs. Sadat to pose as well, but she said no, tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow was Oct. 6, 1981, and both Sadat and the photographer were gunned down during a military parade honoring Egypt's performance in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
Since 1985 Mrs. Sadat has shuttled between Egypt and the United States, where she's lectured at universities in South Carolina, Virginia and Maryland.
America gives her freedom she can't enjoy in Egypt, she says. She attracts the ire of militant Muslims intolerant of her strong stands on women's rights.
"In America I pick my own tomatoes at Safeway," she says. "I can lead a normal life."
This month she inaugurates the $1.5 million Anwar Sadat Chair for Development, Population and Peace at the University of Maryland. The program fosters dialogue among students of diverse backgrounds.
Jehan Sadat grew up a happy child on an island at the fringe of Cairo, the offspring of a British mother and an Egyptian father. A devout Muslim, and passionate about politics even in her early teens, she gave allowance money to help the banned Muslim Brotherhood in its militant campaign to drive the British from Egypt.
She faced two choices when she enrolled in secondary school: courses to prepare her for higher education, or more traditional girls' subjects as preparation for marriage. She chose the latter but regretted it later.
Thus, as a young mother, she returned to the classroom, was graduated and went on to earn a master's degree. Finally, in 1986, Mrs. Sadat took a doctorate in literary criticism from Cairo University.
She was 15 when she first saw Anwar Sadat, a revolutionary jailed by the British, 15 years her senior, a man who said he was "unfulfilled" in a first marriage. She was awe-struck.
"At that age," she says, "I'd say I should have fallen in love with a blond, driving a big car like an Opel. Not a man who was not that attractive, not rich, no job, really nothing except loving his country.
"That was something we shared. And that started our love."
The revolutionary and the schoolgirl were married on May 29, 1949, after Sadat promised her father he would "never engage in politics." They spent their first morning of marriage walking at the pyramids and Sphinx.
Politics was what made the marriage strong. Ironically, she credits her mother's stories about British bravery during World II as the source of her fervent patriotism.
"She instilled in me a love of country," Mrs. Sadat says. "And that sacrifice was necessary."
by CNB