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From Our Own Correspondent
A Happy Ending
00:28:00
The stories behind the stories. In this edition: why Germany's ambivalence towards may...
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This is a download from the BBC. It's from our own correspondent. We make one version of the program for the BBC World Service, but this is the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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It's introduced by Kate Ad hello today, why some will say go easy on Russia when East meets west to discuss the Ukraine crisis next week. It's homework in the dark now, as Egypt makes life tougher for the people in the Gaza Strip. We find out why the city Kipling described as a place of dreadful night wants to be a little more like London and how a king provided a happy ending for the last storyteller in Marrakech. There are to be top level talks on Ukraine next week. With relations between Russia and the west now severely strained. The US Secretary of State John Kerry will sit down in Geneva with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov and representatives from Kiev and the European Union. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, spoke to President Obama on Thursday night and agreed that more sanctions on Russia would follow if President Putin ordered his forces further into Ukraine. But Steve Evans In Berlin says Mrs. Merkel has to tread carefully in Germany. The There is an ambivalence about Russia.
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On the wall of the office of the left wing MP Jan van Aarken is a very big framed black and white picture. It's the classic image of a Red army soldier balancing precariously on the turret of the old Reichstag building and raising the hammer and sickle banner, the smouldering ruins of Berlin in the background. I asked him why he had it on his wall in the German parliament, and he replied with a laugh that it was taken on his birthday, May 1. And then he added more seriously, that it tells a story. The Russians were liberators, he said. They rescued Berlin and Germany from the Nazis. He doesn't diminish the contribution of others like the British, but he makes much of the Red Army's role the picture, and he's the first to admit it tells a more complicated story too. It is a tale of propaganda. He said it was taken on May 1, but the actual event, the raising of the Red Banner on the Reichstag, happened the day before, on April 30, the day Hitler committed suicide in his bunker about half a mile away. The picture had to be restaged because the soldier raising the flag had an arm full of wristwatches looted from the terrified population, a population in East Germany which was liberated but then subjugated for more than half a century. In the days before Photoshop, the soldiers had to climb back up with the flag, their arms now clean of the spoils of war. But the picture shows why many Germans today are ambivalent about what's happening in Ukraine. Jan van Aken is an MP for Die Linke, the party descended from the old Communist Party in East Germany. He says many of his fellow party members remain grateful to the Soviet Union. In the west of the country, anti Communism was rife. But in the east of the country, Russia was not only the oppressor, but also the liberator. The signs of that liberation are there for all to see, even in the Bundestag building itself, where graffiti scrawled by Russian soldiers in the Cyrillic script has not been scrubbed away. It is there for MPs to see as they enter the chamber, the names of soldiers with dates. In May 1945, the soldiers who raised the flag came down and did what soldiers do. They wrote their names on the walls they'd breached. One of the soldiers who raised the flag was Ukrainian, from Kiev. East Germans learnt Russian at school. Chancellor Merkel learnt Russian. We will never know if she accidentally bumped into Agent Putin, stationed in Dresden with the kgb, but she's certainly bumping into him now. Berlin feels a lot nearer Moscow than does London or Washington. Of course it is nearer, but it is also emotionally closer. Politicians like the former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, now in his mid-90s and still, by the way, smoking furiously even in television studios, is unequivocal in his commitment to democracy. But he is also of the go easy on Russia. School sanctions, he said, were nonsense. Germany has to do business with Russia is the common sentiment. So let's remember that the same sentiment comes from another former Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, though in his case, he really does do business with Russia, as the chairman of the board of Nord Stream, owned by Gazprom, the Russian energy company currently in dispute with Ukraine. Apart from Chancellor Merkel's predecessors, a string of very powerful German businessmen is lining up to say how important Russia is. From the boss of Siemens, often pictured with President Putin, to the chief executives of Adidas and the steel giant Thyssen Krupp. A short distance from the Bundestag, there is a grand Soviet memorial to those killed liberating Berlin. It is in need of some loving attention. Some of the letters on the inscription have fallen off. The V in Soviet has gone. For example, on top of the columns is a huge statue of a Red army soldier gazing down at anyone bold enough to look up at him. I said gazing, but actually he's staring. He may be inert and bronze But I have to say, I find it hard to look him straight in his fierce eyes. He seems to be saying, we rescued you. Don't forget where power lies.
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Steve Evans in Berlin. Voting's continuing this weekend in India's general election, but people in Calcutta, or Kolkata as it's now known, won't be going to the polls until next month. This was once the second city of the empire, but after India gained its independence, it became a byword for poverty and squalor. The now, though, as Mark Tully explains, the chief Minister of West Bengal has announced that she intends to revive Kolkata's past glory. She's going to make it, she says, more like London.
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Rudyard Kipling called Kolkata the city of dreadful night. And that's how it's all too often thought of now. Besieged by problems which would have overwhelmed many a city hordes of refugees, massive migration from the countryside, violent communist revolutionaries, obstreperous trade unions, years of rule by defeat, democratic communists swimming against the tide of market capitalism, the city became renowned for its poverty. Mother Teresa brought relief to many of the city's poor, but she also contributed significantly to that renown. There is another side to Calcutta. When Rudyard Kipling arrived in the city, he was amazed. Why? This is London. This is worth coming across India to see, he said. Winston Churchill found it possible to imagine he was in London when he was in Kolkata. It's the Kolkata which is like London, that the first non communist Chief Minister for 34 years, the feisty Mumtabanaji, wants to create, or revive may be a better word, because so much of it still survives. But why London? Mamta Banerjee is small in stature, but a giant killer of a politician. She has not only defeated the deeply entrenched communists, she's also reduced Sonia Gandhi's Indira Congress to a non starter in her state as a passionate Bengali. Why would she want to remind Bengalis of their colonial past? I asked Derek o', Brien, an MP and party spokesman for Mumtah's Trinamal Congress. It's obvious, he replied. It had to be London. It's the city we are most like even today. Driving across the Maidan, the vast park at the heart of the city, you might well be reminded of Hyde Park. The glittering white marble Victoria Memorial Museum at the south end of the Meidan is far grander than the monument in Hyde park erected to commemorate that queen's husband. Nearby stands Calcutta's own St Paul's Cathedral, more Oriental gothic than Wren, with a tower which is a model of the Bell Harry Tower of Canterbury Cathedral, just north of the Maidan. The governor of West Bengal still lives in the magnificent house the the British governor generals and viceroys lived in when Calcutta was the capital of all India. It's almost a replica of one of the grand country houses Londoners like to retreat to, Kedleston hall in Derbyshire. Calcuttans still treasure their links with London clubs. With rules as arcane as any London club still flourish. Eden Gardens. The Lords of Calcutta is renowned for the boisterous crowds that packed the stands. Derek o' Brien said to me, our Christmas lights on park street are the lights of London's Oxford Street. We were the first Indian city to have an underground and now we're going to have a London eye. No wonder going abroad for us means London. Conservation is at the heart of the plan to make Kolkata like London. Considerable progress had already been made by the communists. Broken down buildings, mostly illegal, made it almost impossible to see the river Hooghly which flows through Kolkata. The river bank was cleared and a new park made access easy. Now a riverside promenade is being constructed. The dilapidated Great Eastern Hotel opposite the Governor's house is now more splendid than it was even in its heyday. Mamta's refurbishment of the West Bengal government's Headquarters Writers building is so extensive that all her officials have had to move to temporary accommodation across the river. But one of Mamta's schemes for brightening up Calcutta has not met with conservationists approval. Her painting buildings and even trees in the new riverside park blue her party's colour. Two British experts are strengthening Calcutta's links with London by advising Monta. George Nicholson, who used to be the chairman of the planning committee of the Greater London Council, said to me, I was shocked in a nice way to come back to Calcutta after five years. What has been achieved is pretty extraordinary. The other British conservationist planner Philip Davies, who was director of English Heritage, is now urging Kolkata to establish two conservation areas, one covering the great buildings of British Kolkata and the other the mansions of the Bengali merchants in the north of the city. Inevitably, some will argue that money and time should not be spent on conservation when there's still so much poverty. But George Nicholson had an answer to that. He said to me, calcutta's face is its fortune. With its splendid heritage, it has a huge advantage over other cities which have lost theirs. Mumta believes that Calcutta with a clean face will attract the tourists and investors needed to boost her city's economy.
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And that was Mark Talley. Israel this week said it would bring in new economic sanctions against the Palestinians. The move came amid mounting pessimism over the eventual outcome of the ongoing peace talks between the two sides. And in Gaza. It came as the Islamic militant group Hamas was facing its deepest crisis since it took control of the Strip in 2007. Hamas is regarded as a terrorist group by Israel, the United States, and the European Union. And now, as Yolande Nell has been finding out, the interim government in neighbouring Egypt has begun to take a tougher approach as well As a coach forces
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its way through the crowds on the Palestinian side of the Rafah terminal, Ramzi Abu Shahrib heaves a sigh of relief. He refolds a fleecy blanket around his pale, faced, sick little daughter and they join the passengers surging forward to climb aboard. In his hand, he clutches a hard won permit that will let him travel across the border from Gaza to a hospital in Egypt. As their suitcase is hauled onto a trailer, Rumsey tells me how 4 year old Ramas was left with a neurological disorder after local doctors gave her the wrong medication last year. I was told she should see specialists in Egypt, but until now we couldn't get there, ramsey says. The border's been closed too often. The Rafah border crossing is Gaza's main gateway to the world, but recently Egypt's kept it shut for months at a time. Relations with Gaza's Hamas government have dramatically worsened since Egypt's elected president, Mohamed Morsi was ousted last summer following mass protests. Hamas was closely aligned with Mr. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood movement. Now Cairo's new military backed authorities accuse Hamas of meddling in their affairs. They've banned all its activities, and ordinary Palestinians feel the consequences. Already, hundreds of smuggling tunnels under Egypt's border have been destroyed by its troops. They used to act as a lifeline to get around restrictions that Israel tightened seven years ago after Hamas wrested control of the Palestinian territory from forces loyal to the president, Mahmoud Abbas. Trade is visibly down at a market in southern Gaza. Nobody can bring in goods anymore and people are suffering, says a grizzled stallholder. Walid our economy's at zero without the tunnel business. Unemployment's risen sharply, there's a shortage of building materials, and there's no cheap, subsidized Egyptian fuel. That means longer power cuts. A housewife, Jameela, who's out shopping, finds these hardest to bear. The electricity's eight hours on, eight hours off. Sometimes we get less, she explains. I cook in the dark, my kids do their homework in the dark. Back in Gaza City, I find the veteran human rights campaigner Raji Sarani looking uncharacteristically miserable. Egypt's added another dimension to this siege that suffocated Gaza socially and economically. It's a collective punishment. We're reduced to hostages and beggars, he says. And I don't think anybody should expect Gazans to be good victims. Things will ultimately explode. Already, there have been explosions. Last month, fighters from Islamic Jihad, an armed group more extreme than Hamas, launched a barrage of rockets at their historic enemy, Israel. And Israel retaliated with airstrikes on militant targets in Gaza. It was the most serious violence in over a year. On that occasion, Egypt intervened to help restore calm, but called Islamic Jihad directly snubbing the Hamas authorities. Hamas, which fell out with its other regional patrons Syria and Iran earlier during the Arab uprisings, was was left feeling even more squeezed. A massive rally held soon after in Gaza was meant as a show of force. Hamas leaders spoke defiantly about Israel and the failing peace talks led by their political rival, President Abbas. But some also criticised Egypt and what they called its military coup. That's a risky strategy, with the former head of Egypt's armed forces, Abdel Fattah el Sisi, as the frontrunner in forthcoming presidential elections. Wondering what the future holds for Gaza, I stop off at a new restaurant to sample its traditional Egyptian fare and the views of its Egyptian owner. Abu Muad serves up a hearty heap of koshri, a mixture of rice, pasta, lentils and chickpeas topped with fried onions. Then, finally, he offers some optimism. If the Palestinians hated the Egyptians or vice versa, nobody would come to my shop, he remarks. I think after next month's vote, Egypt will be more stable and everything will improve. For now, though, the shiny posters of the pyramids at the Nile Koshari restaurant are the closest that most Gazans can get to neighbouring Egypt.
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Joland Nel the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has wasted little time in announcing a new cabinet and promising to continue what he started after the landslide victory of his Fidesz party in Sunday's election. The result won't have been greeted with total enthusiasm by some at EU headquarters in Brussels, with whom he's clashed on a number of issues in recent times. Some there will tell you his reform programme is at odds with the democratic ideals of the European Union. Nick Thorpe's been reflecting on the re election of the man who's arguably Europe's most controversial leader.
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I got to Viktor Orban's press conference early in order to inspect the writing on the wall. Just two Ludic andor the name of the Artist is in the bottom right hand corner of the magnificent wall painting which stretches along one side of the delegation hall of the Hungarian Parliament. Painted in 1901, it depicts the newly crowned king of Hungary, Ferenc Jozef, astride his horse on the coronation mound. In June 1867 the king was already Emperor of Austria and his coronation marked the launch of a new venture known as the Dual Monarchy whereby Hungary regained control of its sovereignty within the Austro Hungarian Empire. In his right hand is a sword and as part of the unique coronation ritual of Hungarian kings, he cuts the air in four directions. An ancient warning to Hungary's enemies to keep their distance. An appropriate setting then for Viktor Orban's first meeting since his re election with the media who will transmit or question his message for the next four years. At 50, Victor Orban is a solid bull faced fellow with a jovial manner combined with a frown which could freeze a lake. I last met him in the gloomy corridors of the sports hospital a few months ago. Look, isn't that. You know who my 10 year old son whispered in my ear. And to my amazement it was. Flanked by a bodyguard and a doctor, he was waiting his turn on a wooden bench in a state hospital for a heart test ahead of a minor operation. We went over to say hello. He introduced me jokingly to his colleagues as a representative of the hostile media and wished my son well. In his footballing career as a career politician and Hungary's only charismatic leader since the fall of communism, Mr. Orban arouses anger and devotion in almost equal measure. In Europe today, those who believe in a path beyond national interests and sovereignty are over represented. The Hungarian government has a different viewpoint, he told his Polish biographer Igor Janke. Europe can only be strong if it's made up of strong nations, is Viktor Orban's creed. And the sword in his hand will cut anyone whom he suspects of challenging that vision. I've watched him from close quarters since I first served him lapsang souchang tea in my Budapest flat 26 years ago. His strength has been his ability to adapt to new circumstances and learn from his mistakes. His weakness for me is his almost messianic belief in himself as the savior of the Hungarian nation. He has a fiercely majoritarian idea about democracy. The winner takes all in his view, and opposition parties, what's left of them after their second consecutive trouncing in the ballot booths, can join him in his crusade or not. At this point my own path divides from that of many of his other critics, domestic and international. I'm worried more by what he's not done than by what he's actually done in office. Hungary has been torn apart for 25 years, since the fall of communism by a cold war waged between its liberals and national conservatives. Ordinary people waited in vain for a compromise between the two elites, an agreement on the fate of Hungarian land, jobs, pensions and property. Viktor Orban in 2010 was the first leader who had the power to impose a compromise, for example, in drafting a new constitution which would have been agreeable to most Hungarians. Instead, he imposed an often controversial text, which the opposition will probably spend the next hundred years trying to undo. The trenches in Hungary's trench warfare get ever deeper in EU matters. His Hungary will take a proudly national angle on each issue. Beyond Hungary's borders. In Ukraine, he will be more concerned with the fate of the 150,000 Hungarians in in the west of the country than that of the 45 million population as a whole. In the economy, he believes in strong state intervention on climate change. He's in the skeptics camp, inclined to dismiss environmental protection as a conspiracy of the left. I dreamt last night of a circus, the Hungarian writer Albert vosch wrote in 1947. And people my dream was a monstrous one. He goes on to describe nightmarish scenes in which the Hungarians butcher one another in a circus as the peoples of the world watch from their seats all around, placing their bets and cackling with laughter. All I can wish for my adopted homeland is that with Viktor Orban or without him, the clowns in the Hungarian circus don't get the upper hand.
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Nick Thorpe in Budapest. Now we're always hearing the day of the printed book is numbered by but the story, surely that'll remain in favour. Whatever advances in technology lie in wait for us. Nearly eight years ago, Richard Hamilton, then our man in Morocco, wrote for this program about the ancient art of storytelling in Marrakech. It's a tradition thought to go back to the days when the city was first built in the 11th century. Richard has just been back to see how the storytellers there are faring, and the answer is not very well. Their art, it seems, might not, after all, be suited to the modern world.
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The Cafe de France in Marrakech is something of an institution. It's the oldest and most famous of the slightly louche establishments that surround the main square, the Jamar el Fanar, dating back to the days of the French Protectorate. It sometimes feels as if its decor and staff haven't changed since then either. Wobbly ceiling fans rotate languidly Trying to dispel the stifling heat. Portraits of King Mohammed hang at odd angles from its blue and white tiled walls. Inside, customers sit on faded wicker chairs, sipping mint tea and strong coffee. On the veranda, tourists try to avoid eye contact with the encircling shoeshine boys and hawkers selling single cigarettes, while the locals sit and stare at the hot teeming square, making their drinks last for hours. It was here, back in 2006, that I first met Abdur Rahim el Makweri, a tall man with a red fez hat, dark beady eyes, goatee, beard and a prominent nose. Abd al Rahim is a storyteller, one of the very last surviving Halakiya, as they're called, of an evening when the sun went down and the muezzin called the faithful to the mosques. He would recite ancient myths, legends and folk tales to rapt crowds in the square, and if they enjoyed them, they would pay him a few coins. There's a saying in Marrakech that when a storyteller dies, a library burns, for most of the stories exist only in the heads of their narrators, who take their repertoire to the grave. Abdurrahim has seen many of his fellow Halakiya come and go. Most have died, some have retired, and one even took up shoe shining. Very few can make a living anymore. The crowds who used to gather would rather watch TV. In the 1970s, there were 18 Hlaikiya recounting their narratives in the Jama' ah al Fanar. In 2006, there were only two, Abdurrahim and Moulay Mohammed. Sadly, the latter, a quiet, kindly old man, has passed away. So I spent many hours with Abdurrahim in the Cafe de France, recording his stories for posterity and a book. He was hoping his son Zaher would become a storyteller too. A German filmmaker even made a documentary about them, the Master Storyteller and His Apprentice, which was shown at the Marrakech International Film Festival. But Zaheer couldn't cope with this sudden exposure to fame, and he suffered some sort of mental breakdown. His mother and father would wake up to hear him screaming in the night. They had to take him out of school, and they struggled to pay for his medication. If Zaheer recovered, maybe he could tell stories in the square, I suggested one day last year as we sat on the cafe's veranda again. Look, said Abdurrahim. Can't you see there's no space anymore for storytellers? Pointing at the crowded stalls of merchants selling Everything from mystical aphrodisiacs to false teeth. And besides, it's too noisy. He was probably right. The storyteller's art, thought to be around a thousand years old, was a nuanced one that had not kept pace with the noise, new technology, or the general madness of Marrakesh, which had engulfed them and drowned them out. What had happened to Zaheer seemed like a sad metaphor for the decline of the storyteller in general. He's seen modernity, and it's killing him. When I returned home, I wrote a letter to the royal palace, more in hope than expectation, explaining to the king's advisors that Abdur Rahim was struggling and that he needed somewhere he and his son might tell stories in the future to save this ancient tradition from oblivion. I went back to Marrakech a few weeks ago and found out that a British man had started up a new cafe that might one day be as famous as the Cafe de France. Here, the art of storytelling is being revived with young Moroccans learning ancient tales from the older generation. I arranged to meet Abdurrahim to tell him the good news. I have some good news, too, he said, beaming beneath his red fez hat. The king got your letter and he's bought me a house. I was staggered, but then another Moroccan saying came into my head. Nothing is certain they will tell you here, but everything is possible. Marrakech is the strangest place I know. Truth here really is stranger than fiction. Where else can you buy aphrodisiacs and false teeth? Where else can you hear stories that are older than the pink walls and ramparts of this medieval city? And where else does the king end up buying a storyteller a house?
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A happy ending provided by a king with a little prod from our Richard Hamilton, and that's it. There'll be more stories from correspondence around the world next Saturday morning, so do please join us then. Goodbye.