Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar by Matt McAllester

Author:Matt McAllester
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2012-01-22T16:00:00+00:00

At an interview in his Jerusalem residence shortly before his final stroke, Sharon showed himself once more to be conscious of his physique. It took me an hour to get through the security check at the Balfour Street residence in Rehavia, a neighborhood that passes for “leafy” in most journalistic descriptions, though the trees sporting those leaves are parched if you pause to examine the roots. It wasn’t my fault it took so long to get in; Time magazine had flown in a photographer, Gillian Laub, who takes portraits with deep chiaroscuro effects and who travels with almost as much lighting equipment as U2 on tour. Each bulb had to be checked, it seemed, so that it couldn’t be used to threaten the prime minister.

Once inside the modest official residence of the Israeli prime minister, we sat at a long dark-wood dining table. Gillian attempted to coax Sharon into a portrait shot sitting in front of the table.

“No, I want to stay behind the table,” he muttered, hiding his bulky frame—as an aide later confirmed—beneath the tabletop.

While Gillian’s shutter clicked, I spoke at length with Sharon, making a considerable effort to focus on his right eye, the one that didn’t zip out of control up toward the top of its socket at random moments.

Only when Gillian had finished with her shoot did we move through the small sitting room and into the prime minister’s inner sanctum. Alone, except for me and his chief press aide, Sharon relaxed behind his small desk and let his tall black leather office chair rock backward. In the center of the desk, the house staff had placed a plate of small round halva cookies. Israelis offer these with coffee.

When the coffee arrived, Sharon slid the as-yet-untouched plate across the surface of the desk so that it sat in front of him. As we talked, he munched his way through the entire plate of sesame-flavored cookies, which have the texture of a very soft shortbread. The crumbs gathered on his navy blue tie, collecting in a butter-yellow strip on the ledge formed by the protrusion of his belly. He brushed at the crumbs around his mouth, which landed on his lapels.

By this time it was past nine o’clock at night. Apparently Sharon’s self-control diminished when he wasn’t watched by photographers with the power to record an unflattering image and, like many of us, his tiredness at the end of a demanding day urged an injection of sugar. Quite a lot of sugar. There had been more than a dozen cookies on the plate Sharon emptied.

After I left him that night, I thought about Sharon’s gorging. It couldn’t truly be called Rabelaisian, because in person—regardless of his bullish political persona—he was the last man one would accuse of impoliteness or gross behavior. In fact, he was rather outlandishly gentlemanly for an Israeli, compared to the uncouth bluntness cultivated by many of his compatriots as an antidote to the manners of the European society that had persecuted them.

I

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