CAIRO: I worked hard all last spring, putting together an orphanage in Namibia, arming insurgents in Somalia and arranging arrests in Cairo. It was a work of love and it paid off. You should hear what the critics said about my Santa Fe fashion collection. “The combat gear evokes rugged sensuality while the business casual wardrobe is a blend of the garrulous and the refined. We’re talking Falluja on the Seine, said Mark Guggenheim of PointBlank. “Prodotti all’avanguardia, attenta al design piu moderno, declared Giovanna Celentano of Il Diario. Things were going just the way I wanted. Then suddenly my luck turned south.
My Pentagon friends are under investigation for keeping inmates in the antique reproduction trunks I’ve sent them last Xmas. The trunks are compact, padded with linen in Arabesque motifs and they come with false bottoms for classified filing. They weren’t meant for human storage. The human storage ones are more art deco, say Colombian Cigars on the side, and have soft padding for long haul. I don’t know how the two got mixed up. Mario swears he explained everything in plain Italian. But then again that’s what he said last year about the Cambodian consignment. Did I tell you about the dimpled shawls, in burlap with silk coating? Well, they were dyed in pinkish lime instead of steel to aqua. I almost died when I saw them. The clients liked them, but that’s not the point. The point is that Mario should pay more attention. Everyone should.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but we’re in the middle of war in this country. We’re fighting a rearguard battle against misguided free speech. Don’t get me wrong. I am all for free speech. What I am against is speaking without thinking ahead, without considering the consequences. I’ll tell you about my work in Africa, just to give you an idea of what I mean by free and useful speech. I’ve been traveling a lot to Somalia lately to check on the chieftains. Usually we meet up in a tent, sip tea, listen a little to the shelling until everyone is relaxed, and then I take out my palm communicator. When I speak, it’s all facts and figures.
“For a two day offensive against 600 to 700 defenders, let me think. You’ll need 40 to 50 Toyota trucks mounted with guns, gear for let’s say 1,000 men, the usual ammo. We’re talking 500 boxes of bottled water, 250 boxes of biscuits, half chocolate coated, as you mentioned, Guleed. And yes, two crates of RPGs. I speak and they listen. I speak clearly and they listen with respect. That’s what it’s all about, clarity and respect.
Now compare this to what happened in Cairo last week. My friend the parliamentarian Hesham Khalil came up with a law criminalizing rumors. Do you have any idea how long it takes one to put a law together? We sat with legal advisers for weeks, trimming here and adding there. And I had a chance to read out quotations from one of my favorite books, Free Speech. Listen to what Idi Amin had to say in 2002, a year before he died in exile. “Democracy is a gradual process, tender and given to jitters. It is a line you walk between trust and doubt. At each step of the way, your opponents will try to undermine you through falsehood and half-truths. The book is not published yet, unfortunately. I’ve asked the EU to finance it from their pro-democracy fund, but the paperwork is a headache.
Now we’re pariahs, Khalil and I. We’ve been called McCarthyists and fascists, all just because we wanted to stop the flood of irresponsible hearsay. Each time stocks fluctuate one of our friends is blamed. Each time we grab a few activists someone says we molested them. And we cannot even pass a law to make people shut up. So I am dropping the anti-rumor law for now. Instead, I am offering something more stylish and hi-tech: Truth Hats.
A Swiss firm has developed for me an electro-magnetic hat that can gauge the sincerity of one’s thoughts. It is a headpiece lie-detector, totally fool-proof. Parliamentarian friends, Khalil included, have promised me to wear the hats in legislative sessions from now on. As for journalists, you’ll love that. Journalists will be asked to wear hats fitted with a USB chord (blue tooth optional) connected to the computer. When typing, the hat would register any untrue thoughts and emit a coded message to a central device monitoring all media computers. From then on, it’s a simple police procedure.
The Truth Hat will be available in a variety of styles to suit all tastes. I recommend the French berets for leftists, especially those with a drinking problem. For the Policies Committee, I recommend the dress felt hats, especially for overseas travel. Baseball hats might appeal to the new generation of politicians. I also have fezzes for the nostalgic, buffoon hats for the merry, cowboy hats for farmers, straw hats for ladies and even turbans for the religiously-minded. Retail price: LE 299 plus VAT.
