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THE SOCCER WAR

Dispatches From a Secret Continent

Ryszard Kapuscinski is celebrated for two books on the third world, “The Emperor,” which described the last days of the court of the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, and “Shah of Shahs,” about the downfall of the Pahlevi regime in Iran. “The Soccer War” is part of the raw material from which his earlier books were made, a collection of essays and notes based on his 22 years as a reporter working for the Polish Press Agency.

In “The Soccer War,” as translated by William Brand, Mr. Kapuscinski has lost none of his ability to produce a startling fact. In a bar in Accra, Nigeria, he met a whore, a Nankani girl from the north of Ghana, whose face was tattooed. “The custom,” he writes, “dates from when the southern tribes conquered the northern ones and sold them to the whites as slaves, and so the northerners disfigured their foreheads, cheeks and noses to make themselves unsalable goods. In the Nankani language the words for ugly and free mean the same thing.” Among many explanations for the African custom of facial scarification I have never come across this one before, but the symbolism is memorable, and if it is not true it clearly should be.

A question about “The Emperor” asked by some of those who had covered the same story at the same time was, “Is this reportage or is it fiction?” The answer suggested by writers as distinguished as John Updike and Salman Rushdie was “Does it matter?” The writing was so vivid, the anecdotes so rich, that “The Emperor” seemed to establish a sort of third truth of its own somewhere between fact and fiction. In Mr. Kapuscin ski’s writing Ethiopia became a magical country, and readers had the impression that something essential about Ethiopian society had been revealed, something that helped to explain what more pedantic accounts could never have begun to suggest.

The problem with this approach is that one cannot begin to judge the merits of a story until one knows whether it was observed or invented. Different criteria apply. The reader is lost until he knows which ones to use. The highly imaginative use of facts is a legitimate craft but it demands a strict discipline. Pure invention has no place in it. Mr. Kapuscinski tends not to violate the truth but to transpose it, while continuing to present it as factual. “The Soccer War” contains an anecdote from the Ogaden region of Somalia: “In earlier days the most ingenious forms of torture included stripping a white person naked and leaving him alone with the sun.” Again a powerful symbol of African resistance to white incursion, but – the question must be asked – when were these “earlier days”? Who was carrying out this torture, and against which white people? The Ogaden has never been a heavily colonized region. And the torture would of course be equally effective in a desert if carried out on a black man. Now and again Mr. Kapuscinski has the story so much to himself that he seems to be describing a secret continent, almost another planet – legitimate ground for the writer of fiction but not for the reporter.

Perhaps Mr. Kapuscinski’s tendency to rework facts stems from the tensions he experienced when reporting for an Eastern European news agency during the years of the cold war. His daily dispatches were routinely censored before publication. He describes one incident when he ran into trouble with a functionary at the Polish Foreign Ministry and was consequently suspended for contradicting the party line on future developments in the Congo. What right had he to do that? He had merely spent months in the place. But most of the time his choice of the third world was a good one because the party line was the line he wanted to follow anyway – anticolonial and pro-third world. He was generally free to write truthfully and be published.

However, his background in Communist Eastern Europe may not have provided him with the best understanding of colonialism and, as this book shows, his analysis was sometimes dated and clumsy. One of the major pieces in this book is “Algeria Hides Its Face,” about the overthrow of President Ahmed Ben Bella by the army commander Col. Houari Boumedienne in 1965. When Mr. Kapuscinski is describing the excitable chatter of Ben Bella or the moment when the President is awakened in the middle of the night to find his most trusted lieutenant looking at him down the barrel of a gun, he is on form. His picture of Boumedienne attending a reception shortly after the coup is revealing: “After receiving the guests he sat in a chair against the wall and stared silently at an empty corner of the room. I do not know if he exchanged a single sentence with anyone.”

But when he gives us a background summary of the political divisions in Algeria he is less convincing. He overrates the support enjoyed by Algerian opposition to the liberation movement. Unfortunately, “The Soccer War” contains quite a lot of this unperceptive analysis of African and Latin American politics.

The best parts of the book are the author’s memories of being arrested by undisciplined troops in the Congo in 1961 and the book’s title piece, an account of the famous occasion in 1970 when El Salvador and Honduras went to war in the wake of a World Cup football clash. This is a wonderful story, and Mr. Kapus cinski makes the most of its farcical Lilliputian side: “Advancing Salvadoran tanks had already penetrated deep into Honduran territory. The Salvadorans were moving to order; push through to the Atlantic, then to Europe and then the world!” In that war Mr. Kapuscin ski was the only person reporting from the Honduran side for two days. He may even have conjured it into existence as his agency reports from the central post office in Tegucigalpa seeped through the world information network, and a border clash turned into an event that left 6,000 dead and 50,000 refugees in only 100 hours.

Mr. Kapuscinski was soon in the front line (not for the first time; he is evidently a recklessly brave man), his face pressed into the boots of a Honduran soldier as they crawled together through the undergrowth hoping to avoid any contact with the enemy. The soldier was delighted to meet a Polish journalist carrying a piece of paper from the Honduran high command that ordered all subordinates to assist the bearer. “We will go [ to the rear ] together, senor ,” the soldier said. " Senor will say that he has commanded me to accompany him." And they did go, but there was a death scene on the way. Mr. Kapuscinski is a specialist in death scenes. This one lasts a page and a half; an anonymous soldier’s end is described in pathetic detail. One does not finish reading the passage with the sense that either the dead man’s life or one’s own has been greatly dignified, but one does believe that is how it was.

The of a Salvadoran guerrilla in the football stadium in San Miguel. At Victoriano Gomez’s execution, which was a national event, the television reporters shouted at him to walk back to the middle of the stadium so they could get a better picture. His mother was present to watch him die. Mr. Kapuscinski’s account is powerful and touching: “The government decided to promote his death. . . . before a standing-room-only crowd, in close-up. Let the whole nation watch. Let them watch, and let them think.” Then he simply repeats those words: “Let them watch. Let them think.”

The book contains some careless statements, such as: “The only chance small countries from the Third World have of evoking a lively international interest is when they decide to shed blood. This is a sad truth, but so it is.” Yet in “The Emperor” Mr. Kapuscinski argued that a dynasty was overthrown because of international interest aroused by a famine. “The Soccer War” is not as impressive as “The Emperor,” but it is recognizably from the same pen. Perhaps its main interest is that it tells us as much about the author and his writing as his first book revealed about Haile Selassie. A TROPICAL DEPRESSION

Here are two friends sitting at the bar for several hours, drinking beer. Through the windows they can see the waves of the Atlantic, palms, girls on the beach. None of it means anything to them. They are sunk in depression; they have wall eyes, pained spirits, atrophied bodies. . . . Suddenly one of them picks up his mug and slams the other one across the head. Screams, blood and the thump of a body hitting the floor. What was it? Exactly nothing. Or rather, the following occurred: the depression torments you and you try to free yourself of it. But the requisite strength is not born in a moment. It takes time to accumulate it in sufficient quantity to overcome the depression. You drink beer and wait. . . . And there is a further pathological deviation evoked by the action of the tropics. Namely, in the period leading up to the blessed moment in which you will be able to overcome the depression calmly and with dignity, a surplus of strength arises in you – no one knows from where – a surplus that blows up and assaults the brain in a wave of blood, and in order to vent that surplus you have to crack your innocent friend across the skull. This is the depressive explosion – a phenomenon known to all habitues of the tropics. If you are the witness of such a scene, you need not step in – there is no further reason to do so: that one blow frees a person of the surplus and he is now a normal, conscious individual, free of the depression. – From “The Soccer War.”

Patrick Marnham

New York Times, 14-4-1991

SHAH OF SHAHS

THE GREAT INJUSTICE AND THE GREAT HUMILIATION

ON Dec. 31, 1979, Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish journalist in Teheran, Iran, walked over to the United States Embassy then held by militant students. As he describes it, ‘‘In the background, among the trees, stood the lighted building where the hostages were held. But much as I scrutinized the windows, I saw no one, neither figure nor shadow. I looked at my watch. It was midnight, at least in Teheran, and the New Year was beginning. Somewhere in the world clocks were striking, champagne was bubbling, elaborate f^etes were going on amid joy and elation in glittering, colorful halls.’’

Text:

While Mr. Kapuscinski stood shivering with cold outside that lighted building, inside, three of us, held hostage, were drinking in the New Year with tumblers of cold water. Angry and full of fear, we were pondering - and following our release, some of us would continue to ponder - the underlying reason for our captivity. Why predict and avoid this logical consequence of the Iranian revolution? Later on, along with many of our fellow citizens, we were to wonder why our Government continues to misjudge the impact of Islamic fundamentalism - why, for example, not one but two embassy buidings and a Marine encampment in Beirut, Lebanon, were such easy targets for the same elements that took over our embassy in Teheran.

Some of us have tried to bring home to the American people the significance of these developments for them. But without personal experience of revolution, how can Americans be led to understand - from such a great distance and with such a different historical perspective - what a religious revolution is all about?

‘‘Shah of Shahs’’ is a readable, timely and valuable contribution to the understanding of the revolutionary forces at work in Iran, vividly translated by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand. The author does not tell the reader about these forces but instead makes theater of them, so the reader almost becomes a participant. Equally effectively, he uses verbal snapshots - indeed, a section of the book is called ‘‘Daguerreotypes’’ - to provide a glimpse of Iran’s history. We see the original Shiite Moslems, more than 1,000 years ago, defeated and beleaguered, finding welcome in an Iran itself subjugated by Arabs. Ultimately we see the Shiites’ revolutionary faith prevail to become Iran’s official religion, generating strains between secular and religious authority and finally erupting in the revolution of 1978. The reader senses the pain many Iranians felt when Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh fell in the early 1950’s.

Mr. Kapuscinski presents the Iranian revolutionthrough the eyes of witnesses such as Mahmud Azari, who after many years abroad returned in 1977 to a Teheran he hardly recognized. There he met three writers. One had done well, particularly with his poems in praise of Mohammed Riza Pahlevi, the Shah of Iran (‘‘Let the Shah stop somewhere and stand / And a broad river flows across the land’’), for which he received a Pahlevi Foundation fellowship and enjoyed a villa with a swimming pool. Another poet, an old friend who had been jailed and tortured because of his opposition to the Shah, did not recognize Mahmud. He could only murmur, ‘‘Take the rats away.’’ But a third poet, a sycophant like the first, boasted of his courage in publishing the line ‘‘Now is the time of sorrow, of darkest night.’’ Mahmud concluded that when such opportunists dare to reflect national unrest in the face of official optimism and thus trim their sails in anticipation of a gathering storm, then revolution is a certainty.

Mr. Kapuscinski briefly and clearly illustrates other basic themes - the pathological cruelty not limited to the Shah’s regime but endemic to Iranian society, the perils of too rapid Westernization (not only waste and corruption but the inferiority complex that results from setting up foreigners as role models). The Shah’s much vaunted ‘‘Great Civilization,’’ he says, became the Great Injustice and the Great Humiliation.

Mr. Kapuscinski’s reliance on dramatic effects has its drawbacks, notably the occasional uncritical repetition of amusing rumors. Was it really true that, because of Islam’s prohibition of alcohol, ‘‘Iran’s remaining alcoholics are dying: Unable to purchase vodka, wine, or beer, they gulp one of a variety of chemical solvents, which finishes them off’’? In fact, from my personal observation, Iranians could get all the liquor they wanted through an efficient, if costly, bootlegging operation run by the Revolutionary Guards. But on essentials, the author is dead accurate.

Mr. Kapuscinski might have paid more attention to the Iranians’ belief that their revolution would someday spur revolution throughout the world. We see that belief in Lebanon today. But he has limited himself to 152 pages, and they are insightful and important.

Moorhead Kennedy

New York Times, 7-4-1985

. ‘‘A NATION trampled by despotism,’’ writes Ryszard Kapuscinski in ‘‘Shah of Shahs,’’ ‘‘seeks a place where it can dig itself in, wall itself off, be itself. But a whole nation cannot emigrate, so it undertakes a migration in time rather than in space. In the face of the encircling afflictions and threats of reality, it goes back to a past that seems a lost paradise.’’

Text:

This will hardly justify to foreigners the extremes of Iran’s recent Islamic revolution, which made its leadership, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his mullah brethren, symbols of almost lunatic fanaticism in Western eyes. But it amounts, at the very least, to a pebble on a badly out-of-balance scale.

There are other pebbles in this highly original report on modern Iran by a Polish foreign correspondent whose much admired previous book was ‘‘The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat,’’ about the fall of Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie. Among them one might cite Mr. Kapuscinski’s vivid account of the corruption that attended Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi’s attempts to buy a modern civilization for Iran. Or his description of the Shah’s secret-police organization, Savak, whose torture of one man prompted him to cry out, ‘‘God, why have you chastised me with such a terrible deformity as thinking?’’ These items may not come as fresh revelations exactly. But in Mr. Kapuscinski’s hands, they help to give Iran’s revolution a fresh and more objective perspective.

Not that balance is his primary aim. Instead, I would guess, Mr. Kapuscinski set out to lend the overthrow of the Shah the quality of legend, or even fable, so as to give it universal meaning. For he goes about his narrative in an odd and disarming way. At first he prowls around the Teheran hotel where he was staying in 1980, searching for clues to what was going on. But lacking an understanding of the Farsi language, he retreats to his room. There, amid a mess he has purposely created to make himself feel more at home, he begins to describe the research material he has collected during his stay.

At first he seems whimsical. ‘‘Here’s the oldest picture I’ve managed to obtain,’’ he writes. ‘‘A soldier, holding a chain in his right hand, and a man, at the end of the chain.’’ The caption identifies the soldier as the grandfather of the last Shah. His prisoner is the assassin of Shah Nasir ad-Din, who had reigned for almost 49 years when he was killed in 1896. ‘‘They have been trudging down the desert road in scorching heat and stifling air,’’ Mr. Kapuscinski continues, ‘’the soldier at the rear and the gaunt killer before him on his chain, like a member of an old-time circus troupe and his trained bear working their way from village to village, earning food for themselves.’’

But soon, as the author comes to pictures of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and of a crowd of people standing sullenly at a bus stop, we understand that these are cues in a sort of slide-show. Mr. Kapuscinski is establishing an ironic distance from his subject. He is recounting the modern history of Iran, but for him it is almost routine business, ‘’the twenty-seventh revolution I have seen in the Third World.’’ He has no particular ax to grind. He is collecting images.

Sometimes the images are grim. In a film he sees of an anti-Shah demonstration, a crowd disperses under a hail of soldiers’ bullets, leaving a legless invalid in a wheelchair, whose stuck wheel causes him to spin helplessly until the shooting stills him. At other times, Mr. Kapuscinski evokes a theater of the absurd - for example, when he recounts an interview with a man whose main occupation was pulling down monuments to the Shah. (Question: ‘‘Am I to understand you had special hawsers for the job?’’ Answer: ‘‘Yes indeed! We hid our stout sisal rope with a ropeseller at the bazaar.’’)

But collectively the images serve to place the revolution at a distance from reality, to give it a fabulous cast and thereby make way for what may be a higher reality. As Mr. Ferdousi the carpet seller is apt to put it whenever the author pays a call to cheer himself up: ‘‘What have we given the world? We have given poetry, the miniature, and carpets. As you can see, these are all useless things from the productive viewpoint. But it is through such things that we have expressed our true selves. We have given the world this miraculous, unique uselessness.’’

‘‘To use a carpet, for example, is a vital necessity,’’ Mr. Ferdousi continues. ‘‘You spread a carpet on a wretched, parched desert, lie down on it, and feel you are lying in a green meadow. Yes, our carpets remind us of meadows in flower. You see before you flowers, you see a garden, a pool, a fountain. Peacocks are sauntering among the shrubs. And carpets are things that last - a good carpet will retain its color for centuries. In this way, living in a bare, monotonous desert, you seem to be living in an eternal garden from which neither color nor freshness ever fades. Then you can continue imagining the fragrance of the garden, you can listen to the murmur of the stream and the song of the birds. And then you feel whole, you feel eminent, you are near paradise, you are a poet.’’

In a grim sort of way, Mr. Kapuscinski has woven us a carpet.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

New York Times, 1-4-1985

THE EMPEROR

THE DICTATOR’S DOWNFALL

SILLY me. I set out to review a book about Haile Selassie called ‘‘The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat,’’ foolishly thinking it would be all about … well, Haile Selassie and Ethiopia. Deeper research (ringing up the publisher and asking, ‘‘Who is this guy Kapuscinski?’’) revealed that in Poland in 1981 the book had ‘‘spawned at least a score of stage adaptations.’’ Funny. I hadn’t known that Addis Ababa was profoundly embedded in the consciousness of Warsaw, let alone Gdansk. Idiot! In East Europe, allegory is the name of the political correspondent’s game.

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So for Emperor Haile Selassie read Edward Gierek, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party (the Communists) from 1970 till his removal in disgrace in 1980. ‘‘The Emperor’’ is an allegory penned with prescience, for it was published in Poland in 1978, two full years before the Autocrat (Polish version) did fall down.Ryszard Kapuscinski, who covered the upheaval in Ethiopia, is still in Poland, but the country’s former top foreign correspondent is no longer working.

The book, agreeably slim, is divided into three parts: ‘‘The Throne,’’ a description of how Haile Selassie retained his perch on it; ‘‘It’s student unrest thereafter and the remorseless inevitability of revolution; and ‘‘The Collapse,’’ the tragicomic removal of the Emperor from power in 1974 without his ever quite realizing (or wanting to realize) what was happening, until there was no one left with him in his palace save one ancient personal retainer.

On the real-life Ethiopian level, this is a strangely absorbing piece of investigation. The problem is that one is never quite sure whether one is in the world of Ethiopian fact or Polish political fable. Mr.Kapuscinski, we are told, befriended an Ethiopian official, now dead, whose job under Haile Selassie was to look after foreign journalists. Thanks to him, Mr. Kapuscinski was able to interview a score of officials who were not grand enough to be put to death or behind bars by the revolutionaries who took over in 1974, but who were close enough to the Emperor to convey, vividly from the inside, how the system had worked and how, in the end, it

I suspect it is all a shade hyped up, a little too cleverly processed from stumbling interview to sleek literary parable. Yet it is often the most fantastic absurdity, the quirkiest anecdote, that turns out to be true. In morbid detail these lowly acolytes, the deep throats of royal Addis Ababa, tell Mr. Kapuscinski how it was. Among them are the Emperor’s ‘‘cuckoo,’’ whose sole task was to bow as a signal that an hour had passed; the man whose job was to slide a pillow under the tiny Emperor’s feet so that they should not dangle ridiculously when he sat down on the throne; the man appointed to wipe with satin cloth the souvenirs left by the Emperor’s chihuahua on the feet of visiting dignitaries.

FOR all the corruption, vanity and government paralysis that prevailed during the last decade of his reign, Haile Selassie’s achievements were, in fact, remarkable. With no better claim to the throne than those of some others, he managed to rule a huge medieval empire for nigh on 50 years and succeeded, if not in bringing it into the 20th century, then at least into the late 19th. Reforms that may seem to be almost macabre in their tardiness - the abolition of slavery, for instance - were bold acts of defiance against great landlords and provincial princes whose loyalty Haile Selassie needed. Even the decision to set up a university along European lines was a daring act of modernization bound to breed a generation of Ethiopians hostile to the old autocracy. And so it turned out.

It was only during the last decade that atrophy overwhelmed the Emperor and his entourage to the point where they can become the butt of Polish allegory. And what, by the way, came after them? A secretive, military junta, dogmatically pro-Soviet and quite as bloody as the regime of its predecessors. In a few months of 1977-78, around 20,000 Ethiopians, mostly left-wing students, were killed in an officially sanctioned ‘‘Red Terror.’’ In a nutshell, Haile Selassie was a more considerable historical figure than Gierek.

And we’re back to Polish allegory. This is a tale of palace spies, of banquets where beggars pick up the bones, of an autocrat who prefers for the sake of security to acquire all information by word of mouth. It is a system obsessed with rank and title, with ‘‘aristocrats,’’ ‘‘bureaucrats’’ and humble, fiercely loyal ‘‘personal people’’ plucked out of nowhere. The King of Kings actually ‘‘prefers bad ministers.’’ It is a world of make-believe, where sneak visits to remote provinces require that special palaces be kept in readiness for the Emperor at all times, even in the Ogaden desert (I found that one hard to believe). No one is trusted; even the Crown Prince’s loyalty is found wanting. Then comes a mania for ‘‘development’’ (viz., Gierek’s feverish zest for never-digested Western technology bought for billions of never-repaid dollars). If projects go awry, scapegoats are found. (Or sometimes scape-lions; after the 1960 coup attempt, the Emperor’s favorite palace roarers were apparently shot for letting the traitors in.)

THE ‘‘development’’ was, in any case, something of a hoax: 40 times as much was spent on the army and police as on agriculture. Eventually a famine, whose hideous reality had been hidden from the party boss

• sorry, Emperor -who never wanted to hear bad news anyway, set off a chain of unrest leading to the collapse. Meanwhile, in the Emperor’s court/ Communist party, various factions - described as Jailers, Talkers and Floaters -continued to wrestle each other to a standstill.

The mentality of a dictator on the way out is beautifully evoked. He cannot believe it. He congratulates the soldiers on what they are doing, so long as they continue to bow to the Unparalleled Excellence, the Indefatigable, the Exalted King of Kings - even as they take him to prison. It is only the type of car - a battered Volkswagen rather than the more usual Rolls-Royce - that offends. ‘‘The Emperor lived among shadows of himself, for what was the Emperor’s suite if not a multiplication of the Emperor’s shadow?’’ Even after the merciless revolutionary, Major Mengistu, jails the entire crown council and cabinet (most of whom are later shot), the Emperor manages to believe he is still ideologically acceptable: ‘‘If the revolution is for the good of the people, I am for the revolution.’’

‘‘The Emperor’’ is an intriguing parable. It lacks the brilliant simplicity of ‘‘Animal Farm’’; the people and places do not always fit the puzzle. But Mr. Kapuscinski has pulled off a clever coup, more for the admiration of Polish buffs than for Ethiopian ones. I can’t help wondering what his ‘‘straight’’ reports for the official Communist Polish news agencies were like all those years.

Xan Smiley

New York Times, 29-5-1983

Reading a book in 1983 about the nearly 50-year reign of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia - who was deposed by Army officers in 1974 and died a year later - at first glance seems like reading about the forgotten ancient desert king of kings, Ozymandias, in Shelley’s sonnet.

Text:

‘‘The Emperor’’ was written by Ryszard Kapuscinski, a foreign correspondent for the Polish press agency who risked his neck to gather the facts about the absolute monarch. The book was published in the Warsaw of 1978, when reform was in the air. According to the jacket, the book spawned stage adaptations in the Poland of 1981, appealing to audiences there even though the Emperor had ruled over a faraway dictatorship. As the details accumulate, this nonfiction story falls into place as a modern parable. One can almost hear the sound of sirens whining and the Solidarity workers scattering before the clubs of martial law in Poland.

The author returned to Addis Ababa after the Emperor’s downfall and conducted a series of secret interviews. The subjects, identified only by initials, provided details that ring true and are startling to read in our partially civilized 20th century. The book’s aim was modest: to piece together an account of how the Emperor governed and why he fell from power. The facts change the once-held international impression of Haile Selassie as a benevolent Lion of Judah who introduced some reforms and stood up for his regime in the League of Nations, to that of a benighted oppressor.

This isn’t a full-scale biography of Haile Selassie but, rather, an impressionistic mosaic of his reign, the uprisings that led to his dethronement and takeover by a military junta and his final days of palace imprisonment. For those who came in late, the American edition of ‘‘The Emperor’’ might well have added a chronology of his life, including some of his efforts toward modernization, to help readers unfamiliar with the Haile Selassie years.

As the evidence unfolds - the network of palace spies, the bootlicking, the need to keep people in fear and in their place - the story has significance beyond Ethiopia and the third-world countries of Africa and Latin America. To this reader, it begins to resemble the familiar tales of the denial of human rights in the most loathsome military-run states today.

The voices in these clearly translated interviews are solemn, sometimes even literary, describing the Emperor’s daily routine while he sat on the throne: ‘‘His Distinguished Highness appears on the Palace steps in the morning and sets out for his early walk. He enters the park. This is when Solomon Kedir, the head of the Palace spies, approaches and gives his report. The Emperor walks along the avenue and Kedir stays a step behind him, talking all the while. Who met whom, where, and what they talked about. Against whom they are forming alliances. Whether or not one could call it a conspiracy. Kedir also reports on the work of the cryptography department. This department decodes the comunications that pass among the divisions - it’s good to be sure that no subversive thoughts are hatching there.’’

And while his subjects are starving - and, the author reports, foreign aid is diverted and sold by palace favorites - the Emperor amuses himself by feeding the royal animals: ‘‘His Distinguished Highness sometimes stops before the lions’ cage to throw them a leg of veal that a servant has handed him. He watches the lions’ rapacity and smiles. Then he approaches the leopards, which are chained, and gives them ribs of beef. His Majesty has to be careful as he approaches the unpredictable beasts of prey.’’ Another voice reports to the author that, later, Haile Selassie had some of his lions killed ‘‘because instead of defending the palace they had admitted the traitors.’’

One of the palace favorites around ‘‘His Munificent Highness’’ expresses surprise that outsiders care about the famine that has turned Ethiopians into walking skeletons: ‘‘First of all, death from hunger had existed in our Empire for hundreds of years, an everyday, natural thing, and it never occurred to anyone to make any noise about it. Drought would come and the earth would dry up, the cattle would drop dead, the peasants would starve. Ordinary, in accordance with the laws of nature and the eternal order of things. Consider also, my dear friend, that - between you and me - it is not bad for national order and a sense of national humility that the subjects be rendered skinnier, thinned down a bit.’’

When the Emperor was finally removed, only his gaudy uniforms and private fleet of 27 automobiles remained: ‘‘He prized the Rolls-Royces for their dignified lines, but for a change he would also use the Mercedes-Benzes and the Lincoln Continentals.’’ At the end of this fascinating book, the imperial Lion of Judah is left with a shattered reputation boundless and bare in the sands.

HERBERT MITGANG

New York Times, 30-7-1983

derStandard.at

“In jedem Fremden wohnt ein Gott”

Ryszard Kapuscinski, polnischer Essayist und seit Montag neuer Bruno-Kreisky-Preisträger im STANDARD-Interview

Ryszard Kapuscinski, der große polnische Essayist (“König der Könige”) und Zeitgeschichtsschreiber (“Der Fußballkrieg”) wurde am Montag in Wien mit dem Bruno-Kreisky-Preis ausgezeichnet. Cornelia Niedermeier sprach mit ihm.

STANDARD:In Ihrer Rede bei der Verleihung des Kreisky-Preises am Montag sagten Sie, das wichtigste Problem der Menschheit im Moment sei nicht, wie manche behaupten, der Kampf gegen den Terrorismus, sondern die ungleich schwerere Aufgabe, möglichst vielen Menschen ein menschenwürdiges Leben zu ermöglichen.

Ryszard Kapuscinski: Wenn man behauptet, die wichtigste Aufgabe heute sei der Kampf gegen Terrorismus, dann ist das Manipulation. Eine Manipulation insofern, als es die Aufmerksamkeit ablenkt von dem wirklich wichtigsten Problem, mit dem wir uns heute konfrontiert sehen. Milliarden von Menschen fühlen sich durch den Terrorismus überhaupt nicht bedroht. Sie wissen überhaupt nicht, was Terrorismus ist. Aber sie wachen morgens auf und wissen nicht, was sie an diesem Tag essen sollen. Diese Menschen werden aber ausgeblendet. Man will sich nicht mit ihnen befassen . . .

STANDARD:. . . und ihre Probleme nicht lösen.

Kapuscinski: Die reiche Welt möchte die Frage der ungerechten Verteilung des Reichtums nicht lösen. Daher redet sie lieber über Terrorismus. Und die Manipulation wirkt. Die Menschen fragen heute ständig: “Was passiert im Irak?” Der Irak aber ist ein verhältnismäßig kleines Land. Und der Rest der Welt? Das interessiert momentan überhaupt niemanden. Unser Problem ist, dass 263 Menschen einen Reichtum besitzen, der ungefähr 43 Prozent des gesamten Vermögens der Welt ausmacht. Das sind die Verhältnisse, über die wir eigentlich reden sollten. Der Terrorismus ist hier ein Ablenkungsmanöver.

STANDARD:Worauf, denken Sie, sollte man den Fokus der Weltöffentlichkeit richten - jenseits von Irak und Nahem Osten?

Kapuscinski: Kein seriöser Kommentator kann Vermutungen darüber äußern, wie die Welt in zwanzig Jahren aussehen wird. Wir können nur beobachten, was heute passiert, und das analysieren. Doch es ist klar, dass eine der größten Veränderungen der gegenwärtigen Situation der Weltpolitik in dem Moment eintreten wird, wenn China sein Schweigen beendet.

Momentan schweigt China zum Terrorismus ebenso wie zum Irak. Es widmet sich seiner mit Höchstgeschwindigkeit vollzogenen Entwicklung. Doch in dem Moment, wo die Führer Chinas beschließen, offen Stellung zu beziehen, ist das eine Stimme, die auch die USA sehr, sehr ernst nehmen müssen. Das wird die Situation der internationalen Politik stark verändern. Bis dahin werden sich die Gewichtungen nur unerheblich verschieben. Konflikte, aber nichts substanziell neues.

STANDARD: “Kleinere” Veränderungen - wie nun die Erweiterung der Europäischen Union, die, geht es nach dem Wiener Kardinal Schönborn, vorerst eine christliche bleiben soll.

Kapuscinski: Er ist Kardinal. (lacht) Er muss das sagen, das ist sein Job. Auch ein Kardinal muss für sein Brot sorgen. Als ich letztes Jahr in Italien war, sagte dort ein anderer Kardinal, man müsse alle Muslime ausweisen. Zwei Millionen Menschen. Im Ernst: Wir leben im 21. Jahrhundert in einer Welt immenser Migrationsbewegungen, immenser demografischer Veränderungen. Da ist es unmöglich, eine einzige Identität für einen ganzen Kontinent zu schaffen.

Europa will seine Stärke erhalten. Aber seine Bevölkerung ist alt, ein Drittel der europäischen Bevölkerung ist über 60. Um eine dynamische Industrie weiterzuentwickeln, muss man also junge Arbeitskraft importieren. Und dafür gibt es momentan vor allem eine Quelle: Nordafrika. Und Nordafrika ist muslimisch. Europa muss sich also entscheiden: Entweder es ist christlich - oder es ist stark.

Die neuen Europäer werden in der Mehrzahl nichteuropäischen Ursprungs sein.

STANDARD:Im Oktober erscheint in Polen Ihr neues Buch “Reisen mit Herodot”. Eine Rückkehr zu den Anfängen der europäischen Geschichtsschreibung?

Kapuscinski: Herodot war der erste Reporter, der Erfinder der Reportage - er reiste, sprach mit den Menschen, erfuhr ihre Geschichten und schrieb sie auf. Er schrieb das erste Reportagebuch der Weltliteratur. Das war vor 2500 Jahren. Und seither hat sich das Genre nicht geändert.

In meinem Buch verschränke ich die beiden narrativen Ebenen: Passagen von mir, von meinen Reisen nach Asien und Afrika, wechseln ab mit Passagen aus dem Werk Herodots. Tatsächlich reiste ich auf meinen ersten Reisen immer mit Herodot im Gepäck. Und eine der Grundfragen, die dem Buch zugrunde liegen - ich war mir dessen im Schreiben selbst nicht bewusst -, ist die Frage nach der Existenz des Fortschritts. Und es zeigt sich, dass der Fortschritt in ethischer Hinsicht nicht existiert. Dieselbe Grausamkeit, derselbe Hass, dieselben Folterqualen wie vor 2500 Jahren.

Fortschritt ist eine Frage der Technik. Der Mensch ist noch immer derselbe wie vor tausend Jahren.

STANDARD:Und für das nächste Jahr planen Sie bereits ein weiteres Buch - über Europa.

Kapuscinski: Es soll Ein anderes Europa heißen. Ein Europa der Minderheiten, der Wildnis, jenseits der Metropolen Paris, London, Wien. Wenn Menschen heute von Europa reden, meinen sie die EU und all ihre politischen, bürokratischen Probleme.

Aber vor einiger Zeit war ich zum Beispiel in Wales, bei einem Freund. Es gab da nichts. Keine Straße, keinen Menschen. Nur eine Herde wilder Pferde. Das war wie eine asiatische Steppe, wie im Land der Skythen. Aber es war Europa. Heute.

STANDARD:In einem Ihrer Bücher steht ein Satz, den man als eine Art Urmotiv Ihres Schreibens lesen kann. “Ich bin Detektiv einer positiv verstandenen Fremdheit, mit der ich in Berührung kommen möchte, um sie zu verstehen.” - Ist das eine Gegenphilosophie zur Scheu vor dem Fremden?

Kapuscinski: 500 Jahre lang war die Welt dominiert von der europäischen Kultur, der Kultur der Kolonialherren. Nun wurden die einst kolonialisierten Länder nach und nach unabhängig. Und jetzt sind sie stolz auf ihre eigene Kultur, wollen in ihrer eigenen Identität respektiert werden. Der einzige Weg zu einer friedlichen Zukunft ist also, sich zu öffnen für die Vielzahl der fremden Kulturen. Vor allem wir Europäer müssen verstehen, dass wir nicht länger die Grundbesitzer des Planeten sind.

Denken Sie an Homers Odyssee: Wo immer Odysseus auf seinen Reisen hinkam, wurde der Fremde freundlich aufgenommen. Denn damals unterschied man noch nicht so eindeutig zwischen der Welt der Götter und der Welt der Menschen. Man konnte also nie wissen, ob der Fremde vor der Tür nicht vielleicht doch ein Gott war. Und das ist es, was vielleicht so etwas wie meine Philosophie ist: In jedem Fremden wohnt ein Gott.

(DER STANDARD, Printausgabe, 26.5.2004)

derStandard.at

Detektiv des Anderen: Ryszard Kapuscinski referiert in Wien

Seine Analysen der Macht, ihrer Symbole und ihres Zerfalls - in Äthiopien wie im Iran, in der Sowjetunion wie in Angola - zählen zu den Meisterwerken der Gegenwart

30. November 2004

20:16

Wien - Ryszard Kapuscinski einen Reisejournalisten zu nennen, käme der Bemerkung gleich, sein Landsmann Karol Wojtyla sei Pfarrer in Rom.

Es ist schwer, das Phänomen Kapuscinski treffend zu charakterisieren. Immer besteht Gefahr, je nach Blickwinkel, einen wesentlichen Aspekt seines Werks zu unterschlagen. Ein Forscher der Macht, ein “Detektiv des Anderen”, “einer positiv verstandenen Fremdheit, mit der ich in Berührung kommen möchte, um sie zu verstehen”, untersuchte Kapuscinski Entstehung und Zerfall politischer Systeme, untersuchte deren Organisation und ihre Symbole, untersuchte Werte, Rhythmen, Rituale fremder Kulturen. Nie ohne tiefen Respekt vor der Würde jedes einzelnen Menschen.

Rhythmus der Sprache

1956 wurde er, 24-jährig, als Korrespondent ins eben unabhängige Indien geschickt. Nach Polen kehrte er in den kommenden Jahrzehnten nur zurück, um seine Notizen zu sichten und sie, den Rhythmus der Muttersprache im Ohr, zu Büchern zu verdichten. Werken jenseits herkömmlicher Genres, in ihrer spezifischen Verknüpfung präzisester journalistischer Recherche mit tiefer philosophischer Reflexion, von Essayismus und fiktionaler Prosa. Bücher, die auch aufgrund ihrer stilistischen Brillanz zu den Hauptwerken polnischer Literatur des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts zählen.

König der Könige. Eine Parabel der Macht, seine literarische Reportage vom Zerfall der absolutistischen Herrschaft Haile Selassies in Äthiopien (1978), wurde in New York zu einem der 150 wichtigsten Bücher des Jahrhunderts gekürt.

Fußkissenträger

Aus hunderten fiktionalisierter Berichte setzt Kapuscinski darin das Bild eines Schreckensregimes zusammen. Der jede Reise begleitende Fußkissenträger des (körperlich sehr klein gewachsenen) Königs kommt ebenso zu Wort wie jener niedere Lakai, dessen Aufgabe Jahrzehnte hindurch darin bestand, hohen Würdenträgern des Hofes die Pisse des königlichen Schoßhundes von den Schuhen zu wischen.

Wie genau Kapuscinski seine Sprache dem jeweiligen Thema anpasste, geht aus Interview-Bemerkungen zur Entstehung von König der Könige hervor, veröffentlicht in Die Erde ist ein gewaltsames Paradies (2000): “Meine Kritik der autoritären Struktur der Macht drückte sich darin aus, dass ich ihre Unzeitgemäßheit bloßlegte. Dabei ging es zugleich darum, die Überholtheit unseres autoritären Systems in Osteuropa darzustellen. Also las ich sorgfältig die alte, feudale polnische Literatur des 16., 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Ich fand wundervolle, vergessene Wörter, die plastisch und farbenreich waren, und ich entwickelte daraus ein eigenes Vokabular.”

In den Berichten von Diktaturen und Bürgerkriegen Lateinamerikas (Der Fußballkrieg, 1978) wiederum inspirierte ihn der “Rokoko-Effekt”, der barocke Reichtum der spanischen Sprache. Nach 1989 reiste er 60.000 Kilometer durch den Dauerfrost Sibiriens, durchquerte die sich auflösende Sowjetunion von Brest bis Magadan, von Workuta bis Termes. Imperium. Sowjetische Streifzüge (1993) zeigt Detailbilder, Momentaufnahmen des zerfallenden Reiches. Etwa aus Workuta jenseits des Polarkreises, einem Kohlerevier, dessen Erschließung für hunderttausende Opfer des stalinistischen Terrors den Tod bedeutete - und in dem noch heute Bergleute bei -40 Grad Kälte in monatelanger Dunkelheit wenig mehr verdienen als die tägliche Mahlzeit.

Verirrt in der nächtlichen Schneehölle Workutas hätte Ryszard Kapuscinski fast das Leben verloren. Ein Risiko, das er, Augenzeuge Dutzender Revolutionen und Bürgerkriege, wiederholt in Kauf nahm. Ebenso wie Krankheiten. Etwa Malaria oder afrikanische Tuberkulose. Seine Reisen, denen intensive Lektüre vorausgeht, heißen niemals Erholung. “Mein Reisen bedeutet Aufmerksamkeit, Geduld zur Erkundung, Wille zum Wissen, zum Sehen, zum Verstehen und zur Akkumulation des gesamten Wissens. Solches Reisen ist Hingabe und harte Arbeit.” Hingabe auf der Suche nach etwas so Ungreifbarem wie Wahrheit.

Cornelia Niedermeier

źródło: kapuscinski.info