It was reported that Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, has signed an agreement with a western publisher to write her memoirs on the events she witnessed in Egypt as its first lady for 30 years — the duration of her husband’s tenure in office. The news met with mixed reactions in the Egyptian media. Layla Ali (or Layla Tarabulsi), the wife of former Tunisian president Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali, published her account of events in Tunis and what happened in the political life of her country during her husband’s rule for 23 years, in a book now available in Arabic. Both women, Suzanne and Layla, and some other Arab women, have played a role in the political events of their respective countries in recent Arab history.
One can refer as well to Soha Arafat, the wife of the legendary Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. She too will give an account of her husband’s time. Layla’s book, titled Matter of Fact, was kind of a bestseller. The copy I have is the second edition of the book. Although she apparently wrote the book to defend herself and her immediate family from many accusations, she seems to have almost admitted to the accusations against her. It is quite astonishing that in her book, she admits that even a few hours before her departure with her husband and a few of her family members, on January 14, 2011, she did not consider leaving the country. In fact, on her way to the airport that day, she wanted to bid goodbye to her husband, the president, and it was only later on that the entourage convinced Bin Ali to accompany the family to Saudi Arabia for a few days. He was also told that he and his family would be able to return to Tunis once the crisis had blown over. Layla writes: “We knew that we were passing through a crisis, but it never crossed our minds, even just a few hours before we left, that we were going to leave Tunis.” This is typical of almost all dictators. They do not read the events around them correctly and always think that it is like a “summer cloud” and will go away without any rain! The Bin Ali family left Tunis without their passports, luggage and even any food, Layla wrote.
Wishful thinking
What Layla says is similar to the scenario described by Farah Diba, wife of the late Shah of Iran, who wrote in her book My Life with the Shah. She too had thought she was going out for just a few days and would be back once things calmed down.
It was wishful thinking.
Layla says what happened in Tunisia was a military coup — no more, no less. In fact, she accuses General Ali Seryati, who was in charge of the president’s security, of being behind the plot, although we know that the man was arrested by the revolutionaries and later imprisoned.
Both Layla and the Tunisian president were divorcees. The president had children from his previous marriage, while Layla had an extended family and through her book she admitted that some members of her family where receiving favours and courtesies from ministers, bank managers and financial institutions. She claimed that all that was “beyond her knowledge or approval”. But this nepotism was known to almost everybody in Tunisia. Layla herself was notorious for her greed. There is a story of one Tunisia airlines stewardess who met with sudden death during one of Layla’s tours. The incident happened in Maldives, when Layla was there only for a few days. There is a rumour that Layla was jealous of this woman and had her killed. Layla came up with a very vague explanation of the incident in her book. With Bin Ali in power, the death could have been investigated thoroughly, though that never happened and the entire episode was hushed up.
Now in exile, Layla is convinced that she and her husband were victims of a grand conspiracy, orchestrated by the people who were around the president and had shown unquestioned loyalty to him and the regime. Layla also holds foreign powers responsible for the crisis — especially those in Europe — and she eludes a number of times to secret agencies in Paris.
Layla admitted towards the end of the book that if she knew what was coming to Tunisia and the presidency, she would have changed her behaviour and attitude towards a number of things, especially her role in the political life of her country. She said she accepted “bad advice from people she should not have trusted”. Unfortunately, the realisation dawned upon her very late.
The only conclusion we can draw from her book is that power in non-democratic societies is blind. It sees nothing but immediate selfish interests. And those in charge of running the affairs of the country want to do only one thing — please, rightly or wrongly, the man at the top and his family. More so, if that man happens to have a greedy wife who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
Mohammed Alrumaihi is a professor of Political Sociology at Kuwait University. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@rumaihi42