Friedman, the world is flatter than I thought
Every week when my regular Saturday column is published, I start thinking of the next topic I want to write about for the next week. But last week was full of events and I wasn’t sure what to write about. So, what was unique for me last Saturday?
Last Saturday, April 13, was my daughter’s birthday. So I said to myself, let me see what was the most significant event that happened on any April 13 and I will write about it.
The Lebanese civil war was the most significant event that happened in the world. It started on April 13, 1975 and lasted 15 years. A very interesting book was written about the Lebanese civil war and that book was what inspired me to write. And what is more special about this April is that I finally met the man who wrote the book.
At that time of the Lebanese civil war, there was no Internet or live satellite television coverage and it was a war that I couldn’t understand. I didn’t know who was with whom or who was against whom or even what they were fighting for. Lebanon is a country the size of the American state of Rhode Island (4,000 sq. miles). And with the absence of the modern-day communications, I followed the news about Lebanon through the regular news reports at the time. Two of these news media I followed were the UPI and the NY Times and this is how I came across the name, Thomas Friedman.
There were other reporters, but I remembered the name Thomas Friedman because years later he wrote a book titled “From Beirut to Jerusalem).” I was in Saudi Arabia and at that time there was no Amazon.com to buy the book. So in 1989, an American friend brought me the book from the United States. It turned out that the book was a brief history of the Middle East.
When I read the first page of the book, I knew I would not be able to put it down until I finished reading it. The book simply made me understand the war and how it started.
But most importantly, the book reflected what went through my mind about the Lebanese civil war and the whole situation in the Middle East. During and after this civil war, the Lebanese blamed everybody for the war but themselves.
After reading the book, I asked myself two questions: One was why the book wasn’t written by a Lebanese who is born and raised in Lebanon rather than by a young reporter who was born in St. Louis park, Minnesota. And the other question was would my path one day cross with Thomas Friedman’s? For the second question, I doubted very much that I would ever see or meet Thomas Friedman because my path is totally different from his. But after reading the book I decided one day I will take the path of journalism and write about my own opinions.
Twenty-one years later, on May 11, 2010, I wrote my first English article in the leading Saudi English newspaper, Arab News, and later on I wrote my first Arabic article in a Saudi newspaper, Alyaum. My first article in Arab News was titled “Saudi Aramco at 77, a street with no name.” And the Alyaum newspaper’s first article was about Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah. But the question again was would my path cross with this American Pulitzer Prize winner? I still doubted it even though Thomas Friedman wrote a book titled “The World is Flat,” which was published in 2005. But later on I found out that the world is flatter than I thought.
At the beginning of last October I used the calendar to choose my article topic for the Oct. 6, 2012 and it was clear that the most significant event that happened in the world on Oct. 6 was the 1973 war. And I wrote an article in Arab News about what happened on that day. When the article was published, I expected no more than five comments in the opinion section. But hours after the article was published I was so surprised to receive an e-mail from someone I never met, but I heard of. The e-mail was from Thomas Friedman. And as if he knew about my doubt about who is sending the e-mail, he started the e-mail by saying: “Dear Abdulateef, I am Thomas Friedman, the Foreign Affairs columnist for the New York Times. Yes, it is really me.” So I had two options to respond to him. The first option was, yes, I know who you are Thomas Friedman. Or I could have said yeah sure. If you are Tom Friedman, then I must be Tom Cruise. Well, I answered by saying, “Yes, I know who you are.”
Later on, I found out that my Arab News article was the most read, most commented, translated to about 10 languages and republished across the globe in many newspapers and websites. Later on I was interviewed three times by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) (English, Arabic and on Facebook). Weeks later, I was in a 45-minute interview with a Canadian radio talk program.
So after about 30 years of the first time I heard about this American journalist, our paths crossed. After a short time, I had another surprise. This time I saw two pages about me and my articles on pages number (592-593) in his expanded edition of his 1989 book “From Beirut to Jerusalem.” Amazingly, it was the book that inspired me to write. Later on and at 10 a.m. on Tuesday April 2, 2013, I finally met Thomas Friedman at his NY Times office in the American capital, Washington D.C. We had a lengthy talk and it was all about world peace. And after I left his office, I said to myself… Thomas Friedman, may be you should write a book titled “From St. Louis Park, Minnesota, to Al-Olaya street, Riyadh.”
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