In a news story on the ongoing trial of a woman in London who is charged of poisoning her former lover and his fiancée by mixing poison with chicken curry, I read the following few lines: “Lakhvir Singh, 40, is charged with mixing an ancient poison known as the king of poisons, or aconite, into the curry to kill Mr Cheema, her lover for 16 years, and Miss Choough.” A story of love and revenge in London, which ended with the death of the lover and the survival of his fiancée, since she only ate a little of the poisoned food. This story, however, reminded me of an unforgettable day near the beginning of my work in the press in Beirut. On the fifth of June, 1967, I was the morning shift leader at the Reuters news agency in Beirut. That ill-fated war erupted that day, and my shift was extended from six hours to six days; Jerusalem was lost, after which event I went to the Jordan Valley where I saw the newly-displaced people. I returned to Beirut later to resume my work at the agency's offices, which were situated at the Union building near the Sanaye'h Park. I had a night shift on the evening of September 14, 1967. Assisted by two of the editors, I translated the Arab news broadcasted in the region and we sent them to London. We also translated the world news coming from London into Arabic, to be distributed to all media outlets in the Middle East. My assistant in realizing the news report in English was my friend Hanna Anbar, who went on to work in the Daily Star of which I was the editor in chief, and is still one of the senior editors at my dear old newspaper. It was part of our job to listen to the official Arab news bulletins, the most important of which having been the nine o'clock news on Cairo Radio. We were living in the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who remained popular both in victory and defeat. I did not hear anything of interest in the news reports on Cairo Radio that evening. Nor did I hear anything important as I was listening to Radio Baghdad via shortwave. Near ten o'clock at night, I decided to look for an Umm Kulthum song on the radio, since her songs were usually played in the evening. Thus, I switched to the Voice of the Arabs Radio, where I heard the news reader say “a statement on the suicide of Field Marshal Abdul Hakim Amer”, before carrying on with the news brief. I quickly translated this to English, while hesitating in sending the breaking news to London because the news report was not clear on whether Field Marshal Amer commit suicide and died, or attempted suicide but survived. However, this confusion did not last for very long; as the news reader switched to the regular news report, he started out by reading a medical report regarding the suicide of the Field Marshal, which included in its beginning the names of the doctors who examined him. Those bore military ranks such as “lieutenant doctors”, and “general doctors”. I am writing here from what I remember; in fact, the Field Marshal was under house arrest at the time, and was hospitalized in an attempt to save him after he had ingested Aconite poison. I translated the statement literally, and the typists were being handed out the pages from my hands to type them on the telex machine, before fax and e-mail were invented. The statement had also mentioned that the Field Marshal had taken his life by ingesting Aconite, which he had hidden in a belt around his leg or belly as he faced possible charges along with other officers. I had not heard of this poison before, and I told my assistants to look it up for me in the dictionaries. They found it, and I completed the translation just as the statement finished being read on the radio. Mere minutes count in getting a scoop in the world of international news agencies. However, I beat the other news agencies by more than half an hour, because the Voice of the Arabs radio was not an important news source about Egypt, and the main source was instead the nine o'clock news on Cairo Radio. It seems that the workers in the other agencies did not look for an Umm Kulthum song as I did, and thus missed the news which I got “exclusively”, until the western news outlets began broadcasting citing Reuters. A week after that historical night, I received a letter from the management of Reuters congratulating me for the “scoop” that I secured, and saying that good observation is one of the important qualities of a successful journalist. Of course, I did not say that I was looking for Umm Kulthum. After 42 years, the aconite poison came to remind me of that memorable night. In journalism, a hundred days or a whole year may go by without any important news, and then an unforgettable story comes. All great news stories bear the word “flash” with a “highlight” to emphasize its importance. From the sixties, I remember that I saw many newsflashes, such as the assassination of John Kennedy, then the Chinese atom bomb, and after that the ousting of Nikita Khrushchev and the last one was the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser. From the decades' newsflashes, I was behind the story of the suicide of Field Marshal Abdul Jakim Amer, may god have mercy on his and our souls. [email protected]
