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الرسالة: [QUOTE="ElectericCurrent, post: 3728303, member: 68479"] [COLOR="Black"][FONT="Traditional Arabic"][SIZE="5"]At Home With: Boutros Boutros-Ghali; Seeking Peace In a Private Oasis By BARBARA CROSSETTE BEING Secretary General of the United Nations is a pretty thankless job. Not only does Boutros Boutros-Ghali have to lead a nearly bankrupt organization, which is now gamely preparing for its 50th birthday. On top of this, he has to put up with boorish American talk-show hosts who make fun of his name. But now and then, life in New York reminds him of home and happier times. On a recent Saturday afternoon, he stopped by the sunny window of his Sutton Place residence. "I have a view of the river here," the Secretary General said. "In Cairo, my penthouse is on the Nile, so you have the same atmosphere. The sun comes from this side here, and the sun comes up there exactly the same." For four years, he has been watching New York sunrises as he, the world's top diplomat, struggles to balance the interests of 185 countries and about as many leaders determined to safeguard their national interests while looking for jobs for compatriots and relatives. A shroud of despondency hangs over the United Nations, where the largest gathering of world leaders in history takes place this weekend. Home has to be an oasis, now more than ever. Leia Boutros-Ghali, the Secretary General's wife and his partner in intellectual and diplomatic life, says, however, that serious "business" entertaining goes on all year, from crisis to crisis. The backdrop is a home no decorator alone could design, a house shaped by their possessions and personalities. There are Ottoman, Coptic, North African Muslim and Asian artworks on shelves and tables and walls. At every turn there are birds of all sizes in silver, brass and bronze -- familiar treasures they collected before 1977, "when I was a happy scholar," the Secretary General said, recalling his years as a writer and professor of international law and international relations at Cairo University. "I was traveling then and had time. In Cairo, my wife was going twice a week to the souk." In 1977, Mr. Boutros-Ghali, who is now 72, became Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in Egypt and began a second career in diplomacy. The Secretary General's residence, at 3 Sutton Place, built in the 1920's for Anne Morgan, the daughter of the financier J. P. Morgan, is one of an unusual cluster of private houses with a shared garden along the East River between 57th and 58th Streets constructed in a burst of post-World War I gentrification. It was donated to the United Nations in 1972, when the United States turned it down as a residence for its permanent representative to the United Nations, preferring to rent an apartment at the Waldorf-Astoria. "It is a beautiful house," Mrs. Boutros-Ghali said affectionately as she led a visitor through dark-wood-paneled halls into the largest and most cheerful of three formal parlors. Once, when Madeleine Albright, the American representative at the United Nations, visited, Mrs. Boutros-Ghali recalled, she could not resist exclaiming, "This could be mine!" The Secretary General, a formal, elegant and introspective man with a quirky sense of humor, has a repertory of stories about relations with his tall self-possessed wife. She was raised in an Egyptian Jewish family in Alexandria and converted to Roman Catholicism as a young woman. Mr. Boutros-Ghali is a Coptic Christian. He grew up in Cairo. He claims he once told the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, that he was too afraid of his wife to ask her to cook macaroni, even though he loves it. She banters back. On a recent afternoon, he launched into a sort of Arabic limerick and searched for a forgotten line. "Are you going to translate that when you have finished?" she asked. "No," he replied. "Then keep it to yourself," she said. Both are multilingual. When asked what language they speak at home, he said: "When I have tense relations with my wife, we speak in Arabic. When we talk business, then we speak English. When our relationship is better, then we talk French." Through all three floors, including formal parlors, the home is cosseted in warmth and intimacy. Walking a visitor through the objects important to the couple, the Secretary General joked that if the jobs ran out he could always go into the antiquities business. At home in Cairo, he has a trove of Pharaonic art from ancient Egypt, but Egyptian law prohibits taking those pieces out of the country. So he takes solace in his peacocks, game birds and other stylized fowl from Persia, East Asia and other regions, and his Coptic sculptures and icons, some 1,500 years old. He delights in quizzing guests to see if they can identify dozens of lavishly decorated brass tubes with tiny pots attached, arrayed on a gleaming wooden table top. "I give you three chances to say what they are," he challenged, with a glee that approached impishness. They are pen and ink holders from the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia and the Middle East. The most important, and the only one in silver, once belonged to his grandfather and was a precious gift from his mother. To own such an object, in a country where illiteracy is still widespread, symbolized that the wearer could read and write, and was therefore a person of rank, the Secretary General said. The pen holder -- filled with feathers of various tip sizes and accompanied by the little bowl of ink mixed with sand -- was displayed on a waistband or sash. "Today, in the countries of the third world, they put the pen here outside to show they can write -- even if they don't know how," he said, pulling out a gold pen from inside his jacket and displaying it in a breast pocket. The private collections of the Boutros-Ghalis share space in the house with at least a dozen or more paintings on revolving loan from New York museums. The Boutros-Ghalis, who have no children, run the household with their three staff members: a cook from Honduras; her sister, the maid, and a Portuguese butler-steward-waiter. "The security is American," Mrs. Boutros-Ghali said. "Thank God." They decided not to bring household staff from Egypt because they felt that adjusting to life in New York could be too difficult for a Cairene. This thought leads to reminiscences about a butler named Hassan, who served them for many years under the agreement that they would have "no kids, no dogs, no cats and no birds," the Secretary General said. Mr. Boutros-Ghali, too, has established a reputation as a demanding taskmaster with a legendary capacity for work. The work goes on at home, with files or cables appearing on the hallway table about every two hours. The telephone is even more imperious, pursuing civil servants through time zones around the world. Attempts to cajole the Secretary General into an evening of entertainment are often doomed. Mrs. Boutros-Ghali recalls the evening Barbara Walters succeeded in organizing a theater party. The Secretary General lasted through one act before finding an excuse to leave. After a reasonably relaxed Saturday lunch -- mango and avocado under a dressing of fragrant herbs and a baked fish Florentine with a rich white sauce -- the Secretary General pulled some figures out of a pocket over the espresso. He wanted to talk about the United Nations' financial crisis. Long into the afternoon he complained of the daily absurdities and pressures he faced, including fending off protests from "apparachiks" whose travel or per diem allowances he has curtailed. The Secretary General, who earns $286,075 a year, noted gloomily that it was hard to hire good people because many United Nations' salaries are not competitive and the perks are down to nil. "Do you know how many people turn down jobs?" he asked rhetorically. "To work here you have to be cuckoo like me." Mr. Boutros-Ghali, facing the end of his five-year term next year with no sense of what the future will bring, recalled bitterly how Britain and the United States opposed his election in 1991, stopping short of vetoing it. Everybody wants a strong leader for the United Nations, but then criticizes him when he gets in the way of national policies. His stubborn advocacy of poorer nations and his preoccupation with "underdog conflicts" far from Europe have rankled industrial nations. There is a way out of all of this, an open door leading back to the scholarly life he misses and to the books he wants to write -- about the United Nations, the Camp David accords, in which he played a significant role. He could walk away when his term expires. Is he tempted? "On the contrary!" he said. "I'm a fighter. Supposing that things would have been better, and I would have seen the results of five years work. I could have said, 'O.K., I deserve to stop.' "On the other side, the situation is so difficult. My reaction is the reaction of a Boy Scout: 'You cannot leave the ship now.' " اقتباس يفيد بتحول زوجته السيدة ليا فى شبابها عن اليهودية ديانة اسرتها الى المسيحية الكاثوليكية [B][U][CENTER][URL="https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/07/20/reviews/ghali-home.html"]عن ال نيويورك تايمز اضغط[/URL][/CENTER][/U][/B][/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR] [/QUOTE]

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