I Leuve Neyu Yeurk: When Chirac Spoke English!

here is no doubt that the French are a proud people and their language ranks supreme among the values that make the French what they are—it is an elegant, powerful and expressive language that has dominated the world for a large portion of its human history, bringing the full range of the majestic intellectual puissance, military brutality and sexual paramours of the French nation from Algeria and the 132 years of occupation, dehumanization and assimilation, down to Central Africa and the anthropological studies of “primitive” people and “subhumans”, and all the way up to Lebanon and the insemination of the grandchildren of the Phoenicians, with a long trail of genetic imprints from the town of Nakura through to Jwayah (Jouée/Joyeux) to ad-Damour (d’amour) — littered with blue eyes and blond hair along the coastal line all the way up to Tripoli and then down on the road to Damascus and the Silk Route to the Far East! But that was in the past, and history is history. France cannot and will not say sorry to the Algerians for the atrocities it committed against them, nor will it give up its seminal heritage in Lebanon. There is a town in the south called hasbayyah. Rumour has it that etymologically the name is derived from a sentence in colloquial Lebanese (hass – bayyah), which means (her father became fidgety and restless) perhaps because she took off with a French soldier in the middle of the night and her father was worried sick about her. But that’s ok. It’s part of spreading superior genetic materials across the globe from Timbuktu to Cambodia to Vietnam.   

French statesmen and women never speak but French in public—they may and they should be expected to speak another European language, most likely English, the language of their historical rivals, perfectly, and probably with an accent that would make most women feel hot and moist, but they never deign to do so in public so long as they are in office—unlike most groveling Arab politicians who would drool and dribble at the thought of speaking a foreign language in public, especially where Arabic is an official language, such as the United Nations, despite all the baloney about the Arabs taking pride in their language.   

This is national pride! For as long as I can remember, from the moment I became aware of the world of politics in my teens I had never heard a French politician say a word of English in public until the French President Jacques Chirac uttered his historic words at ground zero in New York in the aftermath of September 11 attacks: “I Leuve Neyu Yeurk”, in a most touching expression of solidarity with the Americans in their darkest hour!  

There is an old Lebanese joke about Abu Abed, a fictitious traditional Beirut thug. One day he entered a cinema theatre and said good day to the moviegoers, but they were all absorbed in the movie they were watching and did not reply. Abu Abed got really angry and, hot under the dishdashah collar exclaimed: “You are all on my shoe” (the ultimate insult in Arabic)!

 A little man came out of the dark row of seats, walked up to Abu Abed, who was still standing in the aisle and meekly said, “But Brother Abu Abed, I said good day to you”! Abu Abed looked sternly down on the little fellow and said: “You can get off my shoe!”      

 At La conférence de Paris III pour le soutien au Liban—and we are not talking about bras here, brassiere, you catch my drift? Rather the Paris III conference for supporting Lebanon—the new UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, delivered a speech in French. At the end of the speech, the French President Jacques Chirac, who was chairing the opening session, congratulated Ki Moon on his good French. Uncharacteristically, the Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal later began his speech in French, and then switched over to Arabic, telling his audience he wanted to do so (for whatever reason—low fuel perhaps!). Monsieur Le President cut in and said to Al-Faisal, jokingly of course: “I would also like to congratulate you on your French”. What the Saudi foreign minister said was drowned by the voice of the stupid interpreter and technical hamfistedness of the clumsy and green-horned sound monkeys of that glorious Arabic satellite television network that everyone seems to be raving about, especially in the Arab world—where the saying or the polite version of it goes “a man who had never seen a naked woman saw his mother naked and passed out” (in other words, what the hell is all that fuss about?). We couldn’t tell what he said. But irrespective of what witty comeback the Saudi minister may have had in response, the French President’s reaction in the first instance was brewed with racial superiority and marinated in colonial arrogance. Would he say this to Tony Blair for example?

Monsieur Blair! Permettez-moi de vous féliciter pour votre bon Français.

Mr Blair! Allow me to congratulate you on your good French.

Not in your dreams or a million years. It would probably rekindle the 100 years’ war between France and Britain and threaten the unity of the European Union! “Superior nations” dare not speak in this condescending manner except to former slaves and serfs and nations deemed weak and inferior. Yes, we want to subjugate you, bring you to your knees, occupy your land, destroy your culture, obliterate your language and screw your women! Yes, we want to reconstitute you in the name of progress and civilization, re-create you in our own image and bring you freedom and democracy! And yes, we want you to learn our language, that glorious and magnificent instrument of divine superiority, but don’t you even dare think of mastering it. You will not! You will only learn it enough to serve our interests so that we can issue our orders and demands to you and feel orgasmically superior and so you could, with your limited mental faculties, understand what we are telling you to do and bow and obey. That is your fate and our destiny. You can get off my shoe now!

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