obituaries

By Nathaniel Bailey

Mourid Barghouti, 76, Palestinian poet and writer, died on Feb. 14, 2021. Barghouti was born in 1944 in a village near Ramallah four years before the Nakba and the establishment of Israel. Barghouti was studying in Cairo when the 1967 war broke out. It was not until the Oslo Accords that he was finally allowed to return to his homeland. He wrote about his life and 30-year exile in his 1997 book, I Saw Ramallah, which won a Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. Upon his return to Ramallah, he and his son, Tamim, also a poet, wrote a novel together, I Was Born There, I Was Born Here.

Akel Biltaji, 80, a personification of diversity and religious harmony in Jordan, died on Feb. 28, 2021. In 1997, King Hussein appointed Biltaji as Jordan’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, a position he held until 2001. King Abdullah II appointed Biltaji as the Chief Commissioner for the Region of the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority. He later served as Consul to the Royal Hashemite Court and as mayor of Amman.

Dr. Nawal El Saadawi, 89, the worldrenowned Egyptian author, a leading feminist in the Arab world died in Cairo on March 21, 2021. El Saadawi rose to prominence and lost her job as Egypt’s public health director in 1972 with her taboo-breaking book, Women and Sex, which linked violence against women’s bodies with political and economic oppression. She wrote about rape, sexual abuse, female genital mutilation and other taboo subjects while publishing more than 55 novels, plays and non-fiction books. While imprisoned by President Anwar Sadat, she wrote her memoirs on toilet paper. “Feminism was not invented by American women, as many people think,” El Saadawi told Britain’s Channel 4 News in a 2018 interview. “No, feminism is embedded in the culture, and in the struggle of all women all over the world.” Lt.Gen. Dr. Suhaila Siddiq, 71, one of the few female government leaders in Afghanistan, and the only woman in the history of that country to have held the title of lieutenant general, died on Dec. 4, 2020. Born in Kabul, likely in 1938, her exact birth year is unknown, Siddiq attended Kabul Medical University but completed her medical studies at Moscow State University in the Soviet Union. Siddiq was well respected by many Afghan feminists for her actions during the Taliban era. She and her sister Sidiqa were two of the few women who successfully refused to wear the burka. She is quoted as having said, “When the religious police came with their canes and raised their arms to hit me, I raised mine to hit them back. Then they lowered their arms and let me go.”

Luqman Slim, 58, a Lebanese publisher, political activist, and long time critic of Hezbollah died on Feb. 4, 2021, after being shot multiple times in what his friends called a political assassination. Slim was a member of a small group of political activists from the country’s Shi’a Muslim minority who openly criticized Hezbollah. “It is dangerous that there could be a return to assassinations,” said his friend, Ali al-Amine, a fellow Shi’a journalist and Hezbollah critic. The U.N. said Slim was investigating Beirut’s port explosion. Slim studied philosophy and ancient languages at the Sorbonne in Paris before returning to Lebanon in the late ’80s. Over the next decades, he launched projects aimed at documenting Lebanon’s violent history and paving the way for what he hoped would be a more peaceful future, based on secular values and respect for religious diversity.

Ilse Martha Stauffer, 86, died Feb. 8, 2021 in Washington, DC. She and her husband, economist Thomas R. Stauffer, who died in 2005, traveled extensively, spending time in Iran, Ecuador, Russia, Austria, Yemen, Oman, Germany, Norway and Turkey. Ilse followed her husband as he taught economics and Middle East studies at Harvard, the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna and Georgetown University. His article “The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion,” published in the June 2003 Washington Report is still raising hackles. The economist demonstrated that by 2002 the conflict had cost the U.S. almost four times more than the Vietnam War.

Moufida Tlatli, 78, a Tunisian film director, died on Feb. 7, 2021. Tlatli’s 1994 film, “The Silences of the Palace,” a story set in the mid-1960s before Tunisian independence from France, became the first international hit for a female filmmaker from the Arab world. Tlatli’s achievements are celebrated by women in the Arab world’s traditionally patriarchal film industry. “Silences” has a visibility that outshines the achievements of other films, according to Rasha Salti, a programmer for Arab film festivals.

Ahmed Zaki Yamani, 90, a Saudi Arabian politician who served as Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources from 1962 to 1986, and a minister in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for 25 years, died on Feb. 23, 2021 in London. Born in Mecca, Yamani held degrees from New York University School of Law, Harvard Law School, and the University of Exeter before becoming a close adviser to the Saudi government in 1958 and oil minister in 1962. Known for his calm persona and diplomatic skills, Yamani rose to global prominence with his role in assisting Saudi Arabia obtain a dominating presence in OPEC, as well as in the 1973 oil embargo. Yamani was dismissed from his positions in 1986, and went on to found the London-based consulting firm, the Center for Global Energy Studies. ■