More than protocol in Madrid

State visits in normal times are often more stately than substantial. Big wigs merit protocol in even the smallest matters. But these times are most certainly not normal. Nor was the head-of-state visitor who wowed Madrid last week. Even so, problems of etiquette and decorum threatened to complicate host-guest relations. It’s what happens when the king and queen of traditionally Catholic Spain receive the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Time out for a security check: Isn’t Iran part of our own president’s “Axis of Evil”? And isn’t Spain one of only three European countries (the others being Great Britain and Italy) whose leaders actively support W’s plan for war on Iraq? What’s an “evil-doer” doing there? Is Spain “with us or with the terrorists”?

Time out for a reality check: While still commiserating with Americans over 9-11, most Europeans regard such Bush phrases as the stuff of childish, reckless, and politically driven fantasy. They remember a real Axis from World War II. And Spain, in response to three decades of Basque terrorist attacks, has never given way to dumbed-down sloganeering. Folks hereabouts look our way, admire all we’ve accomplished as a nation, thank us for saving Europe twice in the 20th century, and worry that a dubiously installed president and his extremist advisors may wreck the 21st.

President Mohammed Khatami is an extremely cultured human being. He speaks English and German in addition to his native Persian and liturgical Arabic. An erstwhile professor of philosophy and theology (who misses academia), he sprinkled his discourses this past week with references to (are you ready?) Martin Heidegger, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Marcel Proust, Tomas Mann, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, and of course Miguel Cervantes, author of “Don Quixote” (see below). But his visit was complicated in advance by two more supra-intellectual issues: wine and women.

Both had protocol implications, especially in courtly Spain. The press was agog over potential gaffes: How to handle diplomatic dinners with their formal toasts and not-so-formal tippling? Wine, deeply rooted in Spanish tradition, is forbidden in Islam (together with other conscious-altering drugs). Not only are Khatami and his retinue teetotalers, they would not, could not, attend any function where alcohol was served.

And what about contact with Spanish women, specifically the queen (who is Greek by birth but assumes her acquired nationality with grace and charm), the minister of foreign affairs, and the president of the Congress? Sequestered for centuries, Spanish women now take a back seat to nobody. But current Iranian Islamic custom forbids bodily touch, including handshakes, between (non-family) adults of opposite sex, and frowns on prolonged eye contact. How to organize a receiving line whose guest of honor would not, could not, slap palms with the queen?

And so, for the first day or so, the newspapers were full of fluff. Page One: The usual State Dinner was – gasp! – canceled because Spaniards won’t, can’t, eat dinner without wine. In its place was a sort of stand-up State Cocktail Party with – gasp and gag! – soft drinks instead of cocktails. Page two: Did Khatami mean to snub the queen when he first met the king? (Answer: No, he didn’t know she was there. A later photograph, which will doubtlessly be used against him by hard-liners back home, shows Khatami looking at Her Majesty, smiling, and – Muslim gasp! – chatting.) Page three: How would Khatami react when males members of Spain’s Senate, in solidarity with their female colleagues, decided in advance not to shake his hand? (Answer: The senators were cordial in every other respect, and their sophisticated guest, as always, kept his cool.) Page four but really in the forefront of everyone’s mind: What would happen at the private, very private, dinner given by the king and queen at their royal residence. (Answer: We’ll never know. In this country of discretion and civility, no one in the press corps had the effrontery to ask.)

But then, all across the media, things got serious. Spaniards, having endured civil war and fascism within living memory, take their politics seriously. (When he came to Bangor two weeks ago, President Bush addressed himself to Republicans, Democrats and “people who don’t give a hoot about politics.” This last was noted in the White House transcript as an applause line. Bush seemed fine with the notion of indifference. What calamities will it take before more of us Americans, on whose policies all humanity now depends, “give a hoot”? How long until such puerile applause lines cease to elicit applause.)

Things got done in Madrid. At visit’s end, Spanish President Aznar, normally one of Europe’s few Bush admirers, spoke of “a qualitative leap” in bi-lateral relations between Iran and Spain: legal and fiscal guarantees for businesses operating in each other’s countries, customs agreements to ease trade, promotion of tourism, and – most intriguing – foundation of “Dialogue Between the West and Islam” to include artists, scholars, and politicians. Khatami (“God willing,” as Muslims always say of future plans) will be in Barcelona for the opening forum in 2004.

People really began to like this guy. More important, they resonated with much of what he said. Here’s some of it, translated from Persian and Spanish.

On wine: Not a word. For further details, ask the royals.

On women: “How do you do?” said in English to a female who greeted him directly in Madrid’s city hall. More broadly, “I believe that women still have many rights to gain. They’ve suffered a great deal in the East and the West. And I believe that their attendance in universities is crucial. In Iran at present there are more women than men in universities.” This at a time when girls’ schools – forget universities – are coming under violent attack next door in U.S.-supported Afghanistan. Why? Because U.S. support does not extend to first-hand peacekeeping.

On Afghanistan, the Taliban and two varieties of Islam: “For many years two million long-suffering Afghans lived as guests in our country. There’s no doubt that without the goodwill of Iran the situation in Afghanistan would not [as good as] it is today. The Taliban caused us great harm. There’s the Islam of the Taliban, and the Islam of our experiment in Iran which has accepted the principles of liberty and democracy.” Note the word “experiment.” Khatami, unlike some heads of state, does not pretend to know it all.

On 9-11 and its aftermath: “The events of 9-11 were very bitter, very painful …. A great wave of sympathy was generated towards Americans and we should have been able to take better advantage of that atmosphere to combat terrorism. Unfortunately, with the pretext of combating terrorism, some have enlarged a sense of violence and war for the whole world.” Note the “we” – as in “we inhabitants of planet Earth.” Note also the “some.”

On Iraq: “We oppose a military intervention in Iraq [but] not because we support a regime from which we’ve already suffered more than anyone else. It used its chemical weapons against us. We ask ourselves where Iraq got its chemical weapons and who today are regretting that provision of weapons to be used against us.” Lost in the polite allusions? Check who sided with Iraq – and with what “provisions” – for most of the 1980s Iraq-Iran War (started by Iraq).

On Samuel Huntington’s celebrated and inherently bellicose “Clash of Civilizations”: “I am horrified by Mr. Huntington’s thesis and the future that it draws for us. Muslim civilization has inherited much from the civilizations of Persia, Rome, Greece, India, and China. And, subsequently, Western civilization has been influenced by Islam. Here in Spain [Muslim for more than seven centuries] we have the point of contact. … In the same way, we Muslims today … have much to learn from the West.” When’s the last time that our leaders spoke of much – or anything – to learn from Islam?

On Cervantes’ Don Quixote, world literature’s most enduring (and endearing) symbol of fantasy-based perception: “We see [in Don Quixote] an honorable, charitable, affable person. But today’s political Quixotes lack kindness. Don Quixote, in place of windmills, saw malevolent giants. All those who see a world dominated by the devil [as does Osama bin Laden] and turning on an axis of evil [as does President Bush] are doing the same as Don Quixote in creating enemies.”

9-11 was no windmill fantasy. But what about our perceptions ever since?

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. He was last in Afghanistan in May on a U.S. government contract.