The Ambassadors

Last October, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, at an exhibition dedicated to paintings from the era of Elizabeth I - my attention was drawn to a portrait by an unknown author depicting the Moroccan ambassador at the court of this English queen. Abd elOuahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun (42 years old in the portrait) was part of a delegation of 17 men sent by the Moroccan Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur in 1600. He spent six months negotiating joint operations against the Spaniards at the court of Elizabeth I. With his appearance, he attracted considerable attention from courtiers, and contemporaries say that Abd el-Ouahed inspired William Shakespeare for the character of Othello in the play of the same name.

At the beginning of May, in the National Gallery in London, I saw the painting “The Ambassadors” by the famous Hans Holbein the Younger, another masterpiece dedicated to diplomats. This time the artist immortalized two French diplomats in London - Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve, both living in the first half of the 16th century. Then I remembered a photo portraying the ambassador of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Pavle Beljanski, in Rome in 1937. The famous diplomat and collector poses in the parade uniform worn by ambassadors at the time.

Who are our ambassadors in the world today, how do they look and act, and how do foreign ambassadors in Serbia appear and behave? A friend once jokingly reproached me that our magazines are to blame for the fact that people in Serbia, in the absence of authentic domestic nobility, often view foreign ambassadors in Belgrade as equivalents to aristocrats and their residences as palaces, so to receive an invitation to a reception there is considered a special honour. I once joked that I knew summer was coming in Serbia because a lot of people started asking me for tickets to “Exit” (although my company is not the organizer of the mentioned festival) and an invitation to the reception at the US Ambassador’s Residence on the occasion of Independence Day on July 4 (which is seldom on that date but a few days earlier). Before Ambassador Kyle Scott, receptions for Independence Day were held at noon, in the hottest part of the day, with a “black tie” dress code. That, however, was not a problem for most of the guests because they were overjoyed to be among the “chosen” few hundred.

I have met most of the ambassadors who have been in Belgrade in the past 30 years. I remained friends with many of them, so we started the “Postcard” section so that the readers of this magazine could somehow stay in contact with foreign diplomats even after their service in our country. Many of these people were great intellectuals interested in local history and contemporary occurrences. The others were just officials who represented their country for a salary without the desire to delve into the essence of social processes in Serbia and realistically observe the political actors of the local scene.

In the “Diplomat” series on Netflix, we can see what it’s like to be the US ambassador in London. When the US ambassador in Ljubljana told me four years ago that she had five children, I was amazed at how she managed it with a diplomatic career. She smilingly answered: “Oh, no, this is my first diplomatic appointment. My husband is a good friend of Donald Trump and one of his campaign donors!”

In “Succession” season 4, episode 6, one of the Roy brothers, who was running for president, is offered to step down in exchange for an appointment as US ambassador to Mogadishu, Somalia. When he refused indignantly, they offered Oman, Slovakia, or Slovenia. When asked by his advisor if South Korea would be considered, he received a negative answer - “No! Too serious a country! In the top 10 by GDP!”

Local politicians and the general public often forget that ambassadors on duty in our country are mere peoplewith virtues and flaws. Whether any of them will inspire a local writer for the character of “21st-century Othello” remains to be seen.

Robert Čoban

Interview with the President of Montenegro for Diplomacy&Commerce