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The endurance of Camelia Sadat
The daughter of the former Egyptian leader has lost nearly everything, but not her grace
On a blistering morning, there she is, sitting alone at a table, waving to you, dressed in a red plaid skirt and soft yellow blouse, and, at age 53, still beautiful. The warmth of her greeting, however, is a camouflage, because for Camelia Sadat, the past decade has been hell. It began with epileptic seizures and then brain surgery in 1993, followed by neurocognitive complications, the loss of her job, alienation from friends, the forfeiture of her house, eviction from an apartment, bankruptcy, homelessness, and now, a life reduced to monthly Social Security checks and residence in a small room without air conditioning in a dormlike facility made available by the Newton Housing Authority. Twenty-one years after her father's death, she still longs for his approval. Before she sips her coffee, she pulls from her purse a folder of photographs, the first of which shows Anwar Sadat, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, handsome in military uniform, head held high. To him, she attributes all her success, none of her failure. ''He looked at me at birth and said that I was most like him,'' she says. ''Everything I am is because of him. ''The assassination I don't need to see again because it's engraved in my brain. When you lose someone, the loss starts as emptiness, then turns to anger, and you wonder, how can this happen? My father had observation towers, police, the army, barricades - and all it took was one bullet. ''My father and Mr. [Yitzhak] Rabin died the same way. My father was saluting like this, and it came from there,'' she says, contorting her body to demonstrate the path of the bullet, ''entering his body here and coming out there, and he died standing.'' A resident of the United States since 1981, Sadat is not a citizen of the United States, and why? ''Because of my father's love of Egypt. Anwar Sadat's name cannot be on papers for another country,'' she says, shaking her head vigorously. ''I am loyal to this country, as much as you could think. First American, then Egyptian, but I am my father's daughter. This man who fought the British, this man who fought westernization'' - her voice rises, drawing attention - ''this man who threw up his blood for his country? No, he would turn in his grave.'' Memories ease the pain For Camelia Sadat, gone is the prestige of teaching about the Mideast. Gone are speaking engagements worth $40,000 a year, the invitations to appear on CNN, and the six-figure book deal. Gone are the dinners in Washington, the standing ovations, the flattering introductions by James Baker, then secretary of state. Gone are the houses she owned in Needham and Newton. Gone are the jewelry, the Jaguar, and the elevated status among Boston's elite. After she was evicted from her seven-room apartment in Brookline two years ago, she put most of her furniture in storage, although it will have to be sold soon to pay for the storage. The remainder is crammed into a 14-by-16-foot room cooled by a cheap fan in a window overlooking a parking lot. How does she spend her time? ''I read,'' she says. She spreads Arabic magazines and newspapers on the floor of the community room at her housing complex. ''And I write,'' she says, holding up a yellow legal pad with scribbles. ''Sometimes I walk to the Charles and sit by the waterfall and feed the ducks.'' Despite the tension among residents in a public facility that houses the elderly and mentally ill, and despite harassment - having the ''Dr.'' erased from her name on the mailbox - and despite the stench of urine in the hall outside her apartment, life in Newton public housing is a lot better than life a few months ago when she lived at Motel 6 in Nashua or when she lived at the YWCA in Back Bay, across from the Copley Plaza Hotel, where she once dined and partied. ''I'm very happy,'' she says above the hum of an air conditioner in the community room. ''I don't measure success or happiness with money. I accept that I can't use taxis. I accept that I must use the bus. I accept that I cannot walk without my cane. And if I want to buy something, I cannot. I cannot eat at restaurants. I accept going from homeowner to renter to homeless person. All of it contributes to wisdom, and if you cannot accept it, you cannot live. ''Am I embarrassed? Not at all. My father gave more than a million dollars once to restore a village, and when someone asked why, he said, `Does a coffin have pockets?''' Ah, yes, her father. You cannot know Camelia without knowing her father. ''He even taught me how to walk,'' she says, rising and limping to the center of the room, where she straightens her back and demonstrates his military bearing. ''Lift your shoulders!'' she says, imitating his voice. ''Walk with stride! Remember, you are not a jacket on a hanger! ''I have a way of recalling him,'' she says, seated again. ''It is the scent of his perfume, Monsieur Givenchy. I take a steamed towel. I put his cologne on it, and I inhale. The hot towel reminds me of the heat of Egypt, and the cologne reminds me of the aroma I'd smell when he held me in his arms. ''I used to go like this,'' she said, reaching for the hand of her guest. ''I would kiss his hand like this, and I could smell his lavender soap. Then, with his other hand, he would lift my chin up like this and give me a big kiss. When hard times get hurtful, this is what I live on.'' Harsh beginnings For girls, even those of status, life in Egypt was harsh. Camelia was born July 12, 1949. Seventeen days later, her father divorced Camelia's mother and married another woman. When Camelia was 12, her father arranged her marriage to a military officer. She said later it was like being raped. Her husband beat her. At 21, she divorced him. At 26, she married a Syrian, had a daughter, and then, at her father's behest, divorced him. After graduation from Cairo University with a degree in communications, she came to the United States in 1981 and enrolled in the master's program at Boston University. The red folder with biographical information she provides is more honest than many public relations packages because it includes the low points, too. There are photographs of her with Arab leaders, documents about her founding of the Sadat Peace Institute in Boston, to further the initiatives of her father, and tributes from President Ronald Reagan, President Rabin, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel. But there are also court documents about her eviction, letters from her attorney, and appeals for public housing. For years, Sadat was a familiar figure in Boston society, and friends remember her grace and political acumen. ''She burst forth and became very much a part of Boston's social scene,'' said Doris Yaffe, a Boston social maven who once spent Ramadan with the Sadat family in Egypt. ''She was vibrant and bright and beautiful and the sweetest, dearest person you'd ever want to meet. Everything fizzled for her after the operation, but I can't tell you how much I love being with that girl.'' In 1991, after her son died of Hodgkin's disease, Bunni Roberts of Brookline still draws comfort from the response of her friend Sadat. Around Bunni's neck, Sadat snapped a gold locket that she'd had since birth in Egypt. The locket was inscribed with a message from the Koran. Inside was a photograph of Alan, Bunni's son. ''The necklace made a difference,'' Roberts says. She has worn it every day for 21 years. Donald Rodman, president of Foxborough-based Rodman Ford, recalls a celebrity auction 14 years ago at which he made the winning bid for dinner prepared by Sadat at her home in Needham. ''It was marvelous to listen to her talk about her father, and my family was in awe of her as a person close to all that power. It was one of the most interesting evenings I've had.'' Although everybody spoke of Sadat with affection, some insisted on anonymity in describing the changes since surgery. ''I beg you, be sensitive,'' said one. ''I love her, but since the operation, she's different. What she thinks is not always real.'' As it happens, Boston society remembers Sadat more favorably than she remembers Boston society. ''Do I miss it? No,'' she says. ''Doris and Bunni are good friends, but the rest? Fakes. I don't miss the social life at all, because how do you miss fakeness?'' Housing struggles In a recent letter to the housing authority, her psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan Worth, said that Sadat was under his care for neurocognitive complications following brain surgery for intractable seizures, and that postoperative complications were significant. He requested an apartment for her. (Worth was on vacation last week, but in any case, a publicist at Mass. General said, he would have no comment.) ''Her current dormitory-style housing situation appears to have contributed to her decompensation over the last few months,'' he wrote. ''The specific housing stressors she has mentioned regard her co-residents, of whom many have behaviors that are intrusive to the point of entering her room unannounced, with one resident groping her; territorial confrontations regarding community spaces such as the kitchen; and coping with numerous residents with widely varying ages, medical and psychiatric conditions.'' Before surgery, Sadat says, she experienced 12 seizures a day. Once, on Beacon Street, she sat through four red lights, waiting for a seizure to pass, with cars braking and people yelling at her. She recalls the doctor saying there was a 75 percent chance she would not survive surgery, a 50 percent chance of paralysis or blindness. The surgeon drilled a hole in her right temple and made an incision in the shape of a question mark around her skull, ending behind her right ear. She recalls being warned about the risk of memory loss and of personality change, from aggressive to passive or the reverse. She insists that there has been no personality change, although she acknowledges modifications in her behavior. ''When I saw my father killed, I never cried. After surgery, I'd cry to see his photograph. They gave me medication and I became assertive.'' Relations became strained with her daughter, Ekbal, 37, who works in Boston. She was on vacation last week and did not respond to a request through an intermediary to be interviewed. ''Every time my daughter makes me mad,'' says Sadat, ''I go out the door, take deep breaths, then come back. Once when I did that, my daughter yelled at me, `Your patience is sickening.' ''On that day, I wish I had been deaf and blind.'' Paying a heavy toll Medical bills of several hundred thousand dollars stretched Sadat's finances to the snapping point. The government of Egypt sent $50,000, and the remainder, she says, was paid by a benefactor in exchange for a diamond watch made for Anwar Sadat. ''My father told me not to sell it except to save my life,'' she says, ''and I cried to give it up because it was the only thing I had from him.'' The benefactor returned the watch. Then it was stolen. Because she was teaching without a contract, Sadat had no medical insurance. With postoperative bills mounting, she tried to negotiate a contract with Bentley College but failed. ''That was the beginning of my fall,'' she says. ''I looked for a job, went to job fairs, tried everything, no job. So I collect Social Security, $640 a month, and you ask how I live on that? Since 1995, $120,000 in jewelry has been sold.'' In response to a question about her room, she rises. ''C'mon,'' she says. ''You'll see the room of a shelter, because they provide no storage, no place to put winter clothes. They mix in old people and crazies here and call it fair housing, but it's not fair to put the mentally disturbed here.'' On the door to Room 210 is a sign that says ''Respect Peace,'' images of Ramses and Mother Mary, and an evil eye. When her guest admires the evil eye, she removes it. ''Here, sweetie, take it. I can get another.'' She opens the door. On a sunny windowsill, flowers are long since baked into oblivion. At the foot of her bed is an exercise bench hidden by clothing, including a lei of pink feathers. The floor is littered with debris, clothing, letters, newspapers, magazines, books, and brochures about diabetes, epilepsy, and stroke. Perched atop a stack of books is a plastic award from an epilepsy association. She finds a sky-blue exercise mat, leads her guest outdoors and then, in the heat, removes Velcro and unfurls the mat to reveal a dozen devices for isometric exercise. Grabbing dumbbells, she drops to the floor and does 10 pushups, rapidly, then demonstrates parts of the 35-minute routine that keeps her weight at 113 pounds, her waist at 23 inches. ''My doctor doesn't want me to lose weight,'' she says, stretching a pulley. ''This is for my chest, and these grips help the arthritis in my fingers,'' she says, extending a hand of coffee skin, crimson nails, and swollen knuckles. An inner peace Camelia Sadat had been in the United States a mere eight weeks when she saw on television, over and over, the vision of her father's assassination. She also saw an interview with PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and when asked for reaction to the murder of Anwar Sadat, Arafat gave the victory sign and said, ''We killed the traitor.'' Seven years later, she surprised the world by shaking hands with Arafat in a photograph published around the world. How could she greet the man who celebrated her father's death? ''I learned about hate, and I learned how to live in peace,'' she says. ''I believe in the principle of turning the other cheek.'' Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging
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If you were acquainted with Camelia Sadat in the
years after the 1981 assassination of her father, Anwar, and if you
remember her appearances on national television to promote peace in the
Middle East, and if you knew her as a teacher at Bentley College, Boston
University, and Harvard, and if you recall how she brightened Boston
society with her charm and intelligence, then when you ask where she wants
to meet, you are surprised to hear her say: ''The Dunkin' Donuts in
Newton.''