RAMALLAH: Since we have nothing much better to do, my friend suggests we might pay a visit to Yasser Arafat at his office in Ramallah. It is the chairman’s 74th birthday. My friend is the Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein, who speaks fluent Arabic and whose articles in the newspaper Haaretz are admired by Palestinians for their fairness.

Seeing Arafat is not usually a simple matter. He is notorious for making you wait until the early hours of the morning. But Rubinstein has good contacts, and Arafat does not have as many visitors as he once did. He may, indeed, be feeling a little lonely, living under virtual house arrest amid the rubble of his offices, demolished around him by Israeli tanks.

It is a grotesque sight: the facade of one large building has been blown away to reveal half-furnished rooms with pictures of Arafat still hanging on the walls, like a ruined doll’s house. Nearby is the skeleton of an elevator shaft, standing alone in a pile of concrete and twisted steel. The Palestinian soldiers who let us in at the gate are friendly and surprisingly lax about security. Neither of us is searched or even asked to show our papers. Instead we are offered a dish of crushed olives and beans. One of the soldiers, shod in black boxing boots, tells us about the incomparable beauty of the Arabic language, and shows off his engagement ring.

To get inside Arafat’s office, we pass a stack of oil drums stuffed with earth. Some of the rooms are empty. Each has an identical photograph of Arafat on their walls.

“Please, welcome,” says a man in a blue suit, as we are ushered into the chairman’s presence. His desk is empty apart from a foam-rubber arm rest.

Arafat extends a chalk-white hand for a soul brother’s handshake, takes off his left slipper, and stretches his bare foot for our inspection. His toenails have the colour and sheen of ivory.

The television in the corner is tuned to al-Jazeera. I notice footage of the latest riots in Baghdad, and ask the chairman whether the war in Iraq has made things better for the Palestinians or worse. “Oh, much worse,” he says, “for everyone.” The fall of Saddam, he explains, has strengthened the Shias, not only in Iraq but in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And the Shias are backed by Iran. This has upset the balance of the whole Middle East. He may be right. But he refrains from mentioning that Iran also backs Palestinian militants in Hamas and Fatah.

Arafat has no illusions about his fellow Arabs, however, and talks about the injustices suffered by Palestinians in Arab countries. The latest outrage concerns the way Palestinians have been kicked out of their homes in Iraq. I ask him who the Palestinians’ best friends are now. I am thinking of countries, not people. Arafat takes off his glasses, widens his moist eyes, giggles, says nothing for a while, and then mentions the name of Yossi Sarid. This is odd. Sarid is the former leader of Meretz, the leftist Israeli party, who did indeed once invite Arafat to call him “any time”, but has often been critical of him too. Experts in Jerusalem are stumped by Arafat’s statement. Perhaps, in his present state, nobody else comes to mind.

The television is broadcasting images of Osama bin Laden surrounded by his loyal followers. Arafat fingers the badges on his grubby green uniform; badges of various Palestinian friendship committees with other nations: France, Holland, and others.

The chairman’s mobile phone rings for the only time in 40 minutes. I hear many voices. Arafat’s face creases into a smile. Children from a boys’ camp in Jericho are singing a birthday song for him.

Behind Arafat is a picture of the old city of Jerusalem. He points at a neighbourhood near the al-Aqsa mosque, and says: “I lived there for eight years as a child, and played with my Jewish friends every day. You may not believe this, but I spent more time praying at the Wailing Wall than most Jews.”

He kisses Rubinstein and me twice on each shoulder. We walk out into the Ramallah night. The moon glitters like a silver dagger, and mosques, lit up in green neon, are calling people to prayer. For a brief moment, I forget about the rubble around me, and the checkpoints, where babies cry in the arms of their mothers, and Arab boys tug at their fathers’ sleeves, as they are being pushed around by Israeli soldiers. And I wonder what might have been if the Israelis had been more generous and the Palestinians less perverse. Arafat has left his people in a mess, but without him they would not have been a people. I have been in the presence of failure, but of a certain greatness too.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.

(Yasser Arafat celebrated his 74th birthday on Monday, August 4)