What Suha Told Yasser
David Lange
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Ha’aretz reports on Suha Arafat’s conversations with her husband on his deathbed.
When Yasser Arafat was on his deathbed, his wife Suha read him passages from the Koran and urged him to trounce the prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon.
“When he lost consciousness for 15 days, the doctors told me to talk to him about things he liked to hear or things he hated to hear,” she told a Saudi women’s weekly ahead of the fifth anniversary this week of the Palestinian leader’s death.
“And so, when I was with him in his room in the intensive care unit, I read him passages from the Koran and prayers.”
Using his nom de guerre, Suha Arafat said in a rare interview: “I would say to him, ‘Get up Abu Amar, don’t you want to see your [daughter] Zahwa? Get up so you can defeat your enemy [Ariel] Sharon.”
Suha was honored to be Yasser Arafat’s second love, after Palestine, she said.
“When I married him, I knew what I was in for,” she said. “I knew that his first love was always Palestine and its capital, Jerusalem. But it was an honor for me to be the second love, after Palestine.”
When Suha first met Yasser, she was frightened, she told the paper.
“At the beginning I was attracted to the leader of the revolution, then to the courage and masculinity and intelligence, and then also to the romance there was in him,” she said.
“I hope he went to paradise.”
Which brings me to…
The Top 5 Things Suha Arafat Did Not Say to A Comatose Yasser Arafat
5. “The young boys send their regards.”
4. “If you wake up, I promise to cut down on my spending.”
3. “I miss your soft skin.”
2. “This must be the longest you have gone without washing.”
1. “How I wish we could play “tiger” again.”
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David Lange
