Paris: A Love Story (14 page)

Next stop: Hell. Angola if you prefer. The capital, Luanda, is a city where nothing works inside a collapsed country. The roads are muddy rivers (after a moderate rainfall), garbage mountains nobody notices line the streets—and, the saddest sight of all—gangs of small children roam the city, orphans of the awful war there between two men who hold Angola hostage to their blood feud: Jona Savimbi, the guerilla leader who lost the election but still has an army, vs. Pres. Eduardo Dos Santos. Though they have wrecked their country, neither is willing to call off the feud. I meet with a mesmerizing man: Raphael Marques, recently jailed and tortured for writing about this insane war. He is painfully skinny (lost 20 lbs. in custody) and smiles serenely. I am so moved by his crazy courage I have to turn away. Come with me, I say to him, at the end of our meeting. I want others in our delegation to see him. I decide to risk upsetting protocol
and fly across the miserable town to where Richard is meeting the heads of all the U.N. agencies in Angola. Richard is not at all perturbed—he leaves the meeting and talks to my new friend and promised to raise his case (about to go to trial) with President Dos Santos. The American Ambassador, Joe Sullivan, also commits to attending his trial. Raphael is pleased with this sudden high-level attention.

The afternoon is more difficult. We drive on rutted roads to a refugee camp (Angolans fleeing Savimbi). There are hundreds of people living in tents—so densely packed they must hear their neighbors breathing at night. Yet they’ve tried to make homes out of them: pots neatly piled in corners, the dirt floor swept—nothing out of place—a strange dignity in despair. Some of the kids have prepared a little show for us. They sing about peace and, with smiles, ask, in song, “Why so many summits, and never any change?”

I am relieved to leave this battered country. We arrive in Namibia on Friday, December 3. It’s dark when we land but the air feels clean and the mountains still visible. The roads are smooth and free of garbage. In the morning, we are surrounded by breathtaking scenery—marred by an overwhelming fact. AIDS is killing this paradise—and much of the continent. We have a secret meeting with women who are H.I.V. +; they can’t talk about it openly or they’ll lose their jobs and families. AIDS is still a huge stigma, which means people aren’t
getting tested, which means it is spreading unchecked, crushing the so-called African Renaissance.

Dec. 5—Praetoria, South Africa—small, quite pretty, crime infested (like so much of post-apartheid S.A.). We drive to Nelson Mandela’s home in Jo’burg—1 hour away. He is tall, erect, elegant in a silk print shirt and in total command of himself and the situation. He wears a hearing aid in each ear but is razor sharp. “I have until noon,” he tells us at 10 a.m. The time flies. Talk of Angola, the Congo, Burundi (he wants to play mediator wherever possible), the Middle East, East Timor, his respect for Clinton. He says he will never forget George Bush for being the first to call him when he was freed. His new wife Graca Machel is in her own country (Mozambique) on this day, but he lights up at the mention of her. “I’m a pensioner now,” he says several times, when we try to tell him what being with him means to us. He clearly likes women and flirts with me! There is no nostalgia or regret in him—rare after giving up power. He knows his moral position is secure and global. We have pictures taken together (“to match the one of you and my daughter,” I tell him). I know I am in the presence of the greatest man of our time and for the third time on our trip I am moved to tears.

Monday, Dec. 6—Harare, Zimbabwe: small, tidy, provincial, familiar. I was here 21 years ago to cover the final days of Ian Smith’s racist regime. I feel very old suddenly—the memory of my younger self (pregnant
at the time with Lizzie) keeps intruding. It just doesn’t seem possible—so many years’ passage—when I’m still on a journey of discovery. We stay where I once did: the Meikles, an old British colonial relic where you can easily pretend you are still in Dorset. While Richard meets President Robert Mugabe I meet a recently tortured journalist, Ray Choto. (There is a symmetry to this trip: Richard talks to the torturers, I talk to the tortured.) Like the Angolan, Rafael Marques, Ray is calm and ready to die for his convictions. The big issue here is Zimbabwe’s involvement in the seven-country war raging in the Congo, killing Zimbabwe’s economy, and many of its youth.

Wednesday, Dec. 8—Lusaka, Zambia. I hold a rather depressing meeting for journalists. Zambia is poor and AIDS ravaged and averting its gaze from its own crisis. The national denial includes reporters who tell me AIDS is “over-covered” and yet talk about the African potato as a possible cure.

We spend the afternoon in a makeshift shelter (former bus depot) for AIDS orphans. Again, they put on a show for us: they sing and dance with terrific flare—the obvious result of hard work. But the scene is one of despair. Most of them are barefoot, homeless and often prostitute themselves for a living. We give them soccer balls and school supplies—they present me a homemade basket I will always treasure. The weather is so warm and sultry and their faces are so spirited and hopeful and I feel completely awful for them.

Thursday, Dec. 9—We fly to Kigali, Rwanda. On the way to town our motorcade stops at the genocide memorial. Richard lays a wreath. An elegant tall woman speaks of the million Tutsis killed in the 1994 genocide. Plain wooden crosses fill the hillside. We stay at the Hotel de Milles Collins, scene of some butchery. It feels wrong to enjoy the spectacular view of the “milles collines” or do anything else but remember.

But the local journalists here amaze me. They seem very open, eager to get on with life—not focused on the terrible past. They are such a contrast to the groups I usually meet in the Balkans. I tell them this (in French) and they are pleased. They write down their names in my notebook. Stay in touch, they ask. I hope I do not disappoint them.

Friday, Dec. 10—Kampala, Uganda. I am really exhausted. I long to stay in one place, to unpack. I look like hell, but address a large gathering of prominent print, radio, TV reporters. They give me an earful about Pres. Museveni’s use of colonial sedition laws to jail reporters. I am running out of encouraging words—and steam. Uganda at least is open and honest about its AIDS problem and is slowly turning it around.

Saturday, Dec 11—We land in the Heart of Darkness. The real point of this exhausting odyssey: the Congo. Kinshasa bristles with security, uniforms, weapons. We catch a few remnants of the long Belgian rule in the villas we pass in our high-speed motorcade. We are led by
a truckload of soldiers brandishing AK-47s. We follow the ritual: Richard and his team go off to the Palace to meet with Pres. Kabila. I meet with a large group of unhappy reporters. They can’t report on much while their country is at war. Their wages are pathetic—which leaves them open to officials’ bribes. I keep looking out over their heads at the meandering Congo River. How many horrors it has witnessed: the local slave traders, the Belgians, Mobutu, now Kabila. The richer the country—and the Congo is one of the richest—the tougher the road. Can we take off? Our motorcade tears through Kinshasa. Wheels up! Richard and I have bought champagne and smoked salmon for the weary team. Ties are loosed and shoes kicked off for the first time. We land in Niger at midnight to refuel. Another welcoming ceremony. Another beautifully robed president. We are too tired to admire.

I love you all.

K. / Mom

P.S. As Voltaire once said (to whom?), “I apologize, but I did not have time to write a shorter letter.”

Following this eye-opening journey, Richard vowed to put AIDS on the UN Security Council’s agenda, which he managed to do despite resistance from even the secretary-general, our friend Kofi Annan. It was the first time a health issue has ever been thus treated. The Security Council (the body made up of
five permanent members—the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom—as well as ten short-term, rotating members) executes UN decisions and normally deals only with issues deemed to be urgent for international security. Richard persuaded the council that the spread of AIDS left unchecked was such an issue. It was a remarkable feat and dramatically altered the way the disease has been treated ever since.

He also brought the UN’s most notorious critic, right-wing North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, into the Security Council, and converted him from foe to friend. This was all part of Richard’s quest to get the United States to pay over $900 million in back dues to the world body. We knew he had succeeded when Senator Helms wore a blue UN baseball cap to the party we hosted for him.

It was an exhilarating time for us. For the first time in my life, everything seemed aligned and balanced—the personal and the professional, the external and the internal, harmonizing as never before. We felt like two kids suddenly granted their fondest wishes in a fairy tale, as we assembled an art collection that included Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Richard Tuttle, Maya Lin, several Rauschenbergs, and a Winslow Homer, from American collections made available for the UN ambassador’s residence. In waging dinner table diplomacy, we made maximum use of our new official home. We entertained constantly, and always with a purpose.

As our first houseguests, we invited two former residents of the Waldorf apartment, George and Barbara Bush, who lived there from 1971 to 1973, when the elder Bush was Richard
Nixon’s envoy to the world body. President Bush hugged our housekeeper, Dorothy, who had served his family as well. Taking the tall, former president by the hand, the short, West Indian Dorothy led him to the room where his mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, used to stay. Richard and I stood back as President Bush peered into the small guest room and emerged with eyes moist from memories.

It was the night before the 1999 New Hampshire primary, when his son, George W. Bush, was seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency. “Are you prepared for your son to lose?” I teased President Bush over dinner. His answer astonished me. Without missing a beat, he said, “You know, Jeb would make a fine presidential candidate.” It was a revealing statement about Bush family dynamics, which I recalled often during the next eight years of George W. Bush’s White House tenure. (George W. Bush did, in fact, lose the New Hampshire primary to John McCain.)

In a letter dated February 1, 2000, President Bush wrote:

Dear Dick and Kati,

As far as Barbara and I go, you hit a home run with bases loaded last night. First we got to stay where once we lived. Many happy memories came rushing back.

Then there was that unique format which made the dinner so different and interesting . . . who says Al Gore invented connectivity? You guys did!

So the bottom line is thanks a million for reaching out across the dreadful party lines and welcoming us
into your home, giving us the key to the bedroom in the process.

Sincerely,

George Bush

P.S. I meant what I said about what you’ve been doing at the UN Security Council.

Before official dinners, Richard and I would sprawl on our bed with seating plans, moving names around a large board like a pair of generals planning a battle, even as the first guests were arriving. For Richard, seating was the key to a great party. We liked unexpected combinations: Whoopi Goldberg next to George Soros, for example. We mixed movie stars such as Robert De Niro, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Charlize Theron with UN ambassadors, senators, and congressmen from both sides of the aisle, transformed suddenly into starstruck fans.

Richard always insisted that I give the welcoming toast, which he maintained I did better than he. I approached this task with some seriousness, and tried to be both witty and topical. Barbara Walters, who had reduced me to tears in Germany many years before, when I was a young foreign correspondent, was a regular at our parties. After a dinner honoring First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barbara wrote, “What a special night, Kati! Your toast was very touching. I’ve never seen Hillary so relaxed. I bathe in your happiness and success.”

I basked under the warm glow of Richard’s gaze. Sometimes, when I rose to speak, he would touch his heart with his hand.

•   •   •

One memorable night, Teddy Kennedy spontaneously burst into “Danny Boy,” his brother Jack’s favorite Irish ballad, while Adolph Green played the piano. As we were saying good night to the senator and his wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, Richard said, “Well, you and I sure married up, Teddy.” To which Kennedy replied, “Yeah, but wasn’t it fun getting there?”

Later, Senator Kennedy wrote us: “Dear Kati and Richard, Vicki and I haven’t come down from the clouds after Sunday night. We are still floating along remembering an extraordinary roundup of old friends and new ‘Glitteries.’ . . . But most of all it was great fun because you two made it so! Your attention to detail—the seating arrangements, the entertainment, all blended into the perfect ‘soiree.’ The toast best of all. Your friend, Ted.”

By far our most memorable times were when we hosted the man we considered the greatest figure of our time, Nelson Mandela, who stayed with us at the residence a couple of times. He was always accompanied by a tall, strapping Afrikaans aide named Zelda, who watched her boss like a hawk. Zelda would whisper, “Sir, your masseur has arrived,” and Mandela would obediently rise from the table. Another time, she extracted him from a lively conversation to say, “Bob De Niro and Whoopi Goldberg are waiting to have their pictures taken with you, sir.”

One of my life’s greatest thrills was lending the tall but somewhat frail Mandela my arm to lean on, on the walk from the Waldorf to the United Nations. As we walked, he expressed mystification at our country’s obsession with President Clinton’s relationship to a White House intern. “You know, Kati,”
the South African president said, shaking his head, “in our country we like our men to be virile” (he pronounced the word
vir-isle
). One of my most treasured possessions is the memoir he dedicated to us, “To Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Kati Marton—a wonderful couple who have earned our respect and admiration.”