When my son was studying languages at Oxford University, his course included studying Arabic in an Arab country over a full academic year. My son chose Damascus, and I and the head of Al-Hayat's bureau there, colleague Ibrahim Hamidi, found a flat that was suitably close to the faculty, owned by a veiled elderly Syrian woman who wore black clothes, whom we called Hajjeh [Pilgrim]. But when we would agree with her on something, she would soon ask for something else, or place more conditions; then Ibrahim said to me: Do you now see why the Jews left Syria poorer? Jews of Syrian origin are the most successful in America, to the extent that real estate prices in their neighborhood in Brooklyn are many times higher than prices in any other adjacent Jewish neighborhood, and they prefer to deal only with one another. Perhaps the readers also heard about a financial scandal involving some of their rabbis two years ago, which ended up in court. When the race for the Republican nomination for the U.S. presidential elections next year began, the name of Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana, was proposed, owing to his efficient management of his state's economy - and Daniels is in fact of Syrian origin. However, he soon declined to enter the race for family-related reasons (he and his wife had divorced, and she went to California where she remarried, before going back together with her husband and her daughters, and I think it's quite possible that he did not want see his family's past dug up during the campaign). In the past two weeks, while all the Arabs were focused on the developments in Libya that culminated in the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, and the ongoing bloody confrontations in Syria, the most important economic news story throughout the whole world was Steve Jobs's resignation as Apple's CEO. In brief, Jobs was born on 24/2/1955. He along with two other partners founded Apple Computer in 1977, when he was 22 years old. He quit under pressure from Apple's board and started the company Next, which Apple bought in 1986 for 429 million dollars. He returned as Apple's CEO in 1997, and Apple sold Pixar which Jobs has acquired in 1986 for 7.4 billion dollars to Disney. Last week, he resigned as Apple's CEO for health reasons: In 2004, he underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer, and in 2009, he had a liver transplant. It seems that his cancer has relapsed, and in truth, he had been on sick leave for many months before he resigned. Why do I write about Steve Jobs today? Because he is Syrian, or is of Syrian origin. Steve was born to two college students, the Syrian Abdulfattah Jandali, who is also a millionaire, and Joanne Schieble. Joanne's father refused for the couple to get married, so they gave up their son for adoption. In the end, Paul Jobs, a factory worker, adopted Steve, along with his wife Clara. His biological parents married at a later time, giving birth to a daughter who is the novelist Mona Simpson (and who is on good terms with her brother). Steve also had a daughter with painter Chris-Ann Brennan, whom he refused to recognize in the beginning as his daughter. However, a blood test soon established his paternity, and so he started supporting her. He has been married since 1991 to an attractive blonde called Lauren Powell, and they have three children. Steve Jobs increased Apple's share price after his return by 9000%, and now Apple's name is associated to some of the most successful innovations of our time such as the iPod, iPhone, iPad 1 and iPad 2. His resignation was the most important news story in the global business and finance world, and I read articles comparing him to historical personalities such as Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, Andrew Carnegie, who was the king of iron and steel, and John Rockefeller, the oil tycoon in the twentieth century. However, experts in the end put Steve Jobs ahead of them. According to them, while Edison was a great inventor, he did not achieve great financial success, while Carnegie and Rockefeller did achieve this, but without any innovation. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, has combined innovation and financial genius, making Apple the most ‘valuable' company in the world, and giving him a personal fortune of five billion dollars. From the Syrian-American Jews to Mitch Daniels and Steve Jobs, we know that the Syrians are the most skilled merchants in the Middle East. I also insist that ‘Damascene' women are the most beautiful in the region, and then I ask myself: What would the Syrians have achieved if their country had enjoyed stability and a politically, economically, and socially favorable climate? I believe they would have taken over the whole world without one shot fired. [email protected]
