JEDDAH, 6 November 2004 — No one knows when the dreaded “Big D” word would be pronounced for Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, who has been fighting for his life at a French military hospital since last week. But the use of politically correct terms, such as “irreversible coma”, “clinically incapacitated”, and “under life support” by his doctors and aides, is paving the way for the moment when the “Big D” is given its inescapable due.

Arafat is not the only political leader to take a long time to take his leave.

Emperor Augustus, having reigned for 70 years, claimed a full year in which to die. Queen Victoria kept her subjects, in all five continents, biting their nails for four months before crossing the Styx. More recently, Josef Stalin, alias “The Red Czar”, kept everyone guessing in his vast empire for 11 weeks before his minion, a certain Gregori Malenkov, could give the signal for the proletarians of the world to unite in weeping.

Gen. Fransisco Franco, the Spanish dictator, wanted four months in which to die, delaying his nation’s march toward democracy by a season. His sibling in despotism, Dr. Salazar, the Portuguese dictator, had been equally slow in dying a year earlier.

In the 1980s, Kremlinologists had great fun guessing when each of a series of Soviet chiefs would pass away. Leonid Brezhnev spent five full years dying, although many believe that he had been born dead. His successor Constantin Chernenko was almost dead when he took over the captaincy of the sinking Soviet ship. His entire tenure of two years amounted to a long goodbye. His successor Yuri Andropov took three years, including 18 months spent connected to a kidney machine.

The great Persian poet Nasser Khosrow asserted that man’s fear of death is cured only by faith. The equally great Latin poet Lucretius, however, would not agree. He insisted that since we know nothing about death we had better ignore it altogether. Epicurus, the father of hedonism, advised the mastering of the gentle art of dying.

Dying seems to be a slower process in closed societies.

The Chinese despot Mao Zedong and his reformist successor Deng Xiaoping were reported dead on more than a dozen occasions, spread over years. Even today no one is quite sure when exactly they died or, as some Chinese believe, whether they are not still around somewhere, presumably with Elvis Presley. News of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian theocrat, was kept a secret for almost 76 hours, giving the ruling mullas time to agree on a successor.

In open societies, however, keeping the death of a leader secret is both impossible and unnecessary. It is impossible because someone will always leak the news, knowing that, by doing so, he would not risk being sent to the Gulag or the gallows. It is unnecessary because in an open society no individual leader, no matter how great, is indispensable. Such societies also have established and tested rules for succession.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in the middle of the most dangerous war the United States had ever experienced. And yet his passing was on the airwaves within minutes, thanks to the great radio journalist Ed Murrow. President John F. Kennedy’s violent death was watched by his people on live television.

Last week the passing of the United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed ibn Sultan Al-Nahayan was announced within minutes, and his successor named in 24 hours. It showed that Zayed had succeeded in creating a system in which no one was indispensable.

Slow-diers may dominate the headlines for weeks and months. But, with few notable exceptions, most are quickly consigned to oblivion. For example have you heard of Mikhail Sverdlev? No? He was the first president of the USSR, and a slow-dier. Another slow-dier you may have heard of was Francois Duvallier, alias Papa-Doc, the sinister voodoo master and president of Haiti, whose rule represented a mixture of black magic and Mafia-style politics.

For all we know Arafat may not have been a slow-dier at all. It is possible that his aides are dragging things out to give themselves a chance to agree on a successor, and to position forces needed to keep order in the West Bank and Gaza.

That this may have been the case is signaled by the fact that France was chosen as Arafat’s final destination. The ailing leader also had an offer from the British. But he and his entourage knew that keeping a secret is easier in a French military hospital than a British National Health Service facility were the tabloids run espionage networks.

One thing is certain: Death is, perhaps, the only event of existence that cannot be kept secret forever. Crafty ladies may keep news of embarrassing births hidden. And unscrupulous gentlemen can keep their marriage a secret. Death, however, announces its every pick-up with Charon’s dog barking, according to Hesiod, or, in our age of the media, with television cameras pointed at a French military hospital.