Fortunately things are not always so gruesome in Africa. In April 1995, Omar Bongo, President of the west African state of Gabon since 1967, was implicated in a good old-fashioned sex scandal when a routine Parisian court case involving allegations of prostitution erupted into an affair of international dimensions. Bongo, the court was told, was regularly supplied with prostitutes by the Italian couturier who also supplied his made-to-measure suits.
The trial of Francesco Smalto, the Paris-based menswear designer, became the setting for bizarre and extravagant allegations about the ferocious competition in the fashion world for free-spending celebrity clients. It also presented a wounding portrait of Bongo, a debonair autocrat who is reputed to be one of the wealthiest men in Africa.
According to evidence presented to a Paris tribunal, prostitutes were terrified of having sex with Bongo because he refused to wear a condom. Bongo was not represented in court, but his Paris lawyer and doctor denied the allegations.
Police interest in Smalto’s activities stemmed from an investigation started two years earlier into a Paris network of les call-girls de luxe. The local vice squad found a link with a small fashion-related business run by a young woman named Laure Moerman, who supposedly supplied models for shows.
Several of the young women employed by Moerman told police that Smalto had hired them to take shipments of suits to Libreville, the Gabonese capital, where their duties apparently had more to do with removing Bongo’s clothes.
In testimony read to the court by the presiding judge, a girl named Monica explained what happened on one trip: “It went very badly that evening. Bongo didn’t want to wear a condom, and as he had a friend who had died from Aids, I refused to make love to him.”
Another girl, Chantal, testified that she had been told the going rate with Bongo was £6,000 without a contraceptive and £1,200 if he had to wear one.
Having previously denied all knowledge of the affair, Smalto told the court that Bongo had been his best customer, spending £300,000 a year on suits and other clothes, and he had been frightened of losing him to a rival.
“We knew that President Bongo was sensitive to a feminine presence, and that is why I sent a girl on every trip,” Smalto said. “I suspected that he kept her to sleep with, but I wasn’t sure.”
Omar Bongo’s appetite for luxury is legendary and this was not the first case in which his name has surfaced in the French courts. When Chaumet, the French society jeweller, ran into financial difficulties, Bongo was named in the firm’s accounts as owing £500,000.
The case inflicted lasting damage on Smalto’s reputation as “the king of tailors and tailor to kings” after the transcript of a recorded telephone conversation between two prostitutes named Ariane and Sarah was read out.
“Marika telephoned me, she has to go to Libreville. I told her that’s dramatic. His [Bongo’s] friend died of the thing,” said Ariane.
“Aids? That’s disgusting,” said Sarah.
“Yes, the worst is, a great couturier proposed it,” Ariane replied.
Gasps were heard in the Parisian court-room.
13. ATATÜRK — FATHER OF A NEW TURKEY
Kemal Atatürk is seen by many as a liberator. Certainly he was more liberal that the Sultan’s regime that he overthrew in 1920. But Atatürk believed in modernization at all costs and this required a one-party state. When he did flirt with the idea of creating an opposition party in 1930, it proved so successful that he immediately crushed it. Opposition by ethnic minorities, such as the Kurds, was suppressed even more ruthlessly.
Besides, Atatürk openly acknowledged that he was a dictator. He was proud of it. When a French journalist wrote that Turkey was governed by one drunk (Atatürk was famous for liking a drink), one deaf man (Atatürk’s prime minister) and three-hundred deaf-mutes (the chamber of deputies), Atatürk said: “The man is mistaken. Turkey is governed by one drunk.”
At the age of twelve, Mustafa Kemal was sent to the military academy in the then Ottoman city of Salonika. He already loved uniforms and became one of a group of flashy dressers. Although he had entered a practically all-male world, he managed a small romance with a girl named Emine. She was the eight-year-old daughter of an official at the school. Years later she recalled how fastidiously he dressed and how, in her schoolgirl’s eyes, she believed he was destined to become sultan. However, they were kept apart by Muslim custom and barely did anything beyond look at each other longingly through the window of her house as he passed by.
Kemal was incredibly jealous when his widowed mother remarried. He searched for a pistol to scare her new husband but, fortunately, did not find one until they were safely out of reach. He did not see her again until he finished his military training.
At fourteen, he moved on to an academy at Monastir. Before he went, a friend gave him a knife to defend himself against the sexual interest of other men. Women were still behind the veil and pretty young boys like Kemal were much in demand. Occasionally, he would travel back to Salonika to see Emine. Her sister recalled that they planned to marry, but nothing came of it.
On his vacations in Salonika, he enjoyed visiting the European quarter where women were unveiled and sang and danced and sat at tables with men. He enjoyed drinking and the women there found this handsome young soldier irresistible.
Later he was posted to Istanbul, where he became a regular visitor at the home of Madame Corinne, an Italian widow who lived in Pera, a Westernized district of the city. When he went to Sofia as military attache, he wrote to her constantly, assuring her that there were no pretty women there. However, his letters are strewn with mentions of women he had met — each and every one, he stressed, was not beautiful. One woman he did not mention was a German nurse called Hildegarde. When he moved on, he began corresponding with Hildegarde too.
In Sofia, he became the favourite of society hostess Sultane Rasha Petroff. One night, at a masked ball, he met Dimitriana “Miti” Kovachev, daughter of the Bulgarian Minister of War. They danced and talked all night. Soon Kemal was a regular visitor to the Kovachev household where Turkish was often spoken. He was also allowed to take Miti out on the town without a chaperone. In Turkey at that time, no young lady from a good family would be allowed out with a young man.
Miti was Kemal’s ideal European bride, but there was the problem of religion. Kemal consulted his friend Fethi, who was wooing the daughter of General Ratcho Petroff. When the question of marriage came up, General Petroff said: “I would rather cut my head off than have my daughter marry a Turk.”
General Kovachev also put his foot down. Marriage was out of the question. Miti was a Christian; Kemal a Muslim. To make his feelings abundantly plain, General Kovachev even refused to attend a diplomatic ball at the Ottoman embassy.
The beginning of World War I saw Kemal recalled to Istanbul. After showing great bravery at Gallipoli, Kemal returned to Sofia. He and Miti were plainly still in love, but convention demanded they be no more than polite to each other. Four years later, she tried to visit him in Istanbul, but the collapse of the Bulgarian front made the journey impossible. She married a Bulgarian deputy, but continued to follow the astonishing career of her young Turk.
Kemal had a reconciliation with his mother after she split from her second husband. After his death, her husband’s young sister, Fikriye, came to live with her, and Kemal took her as his mistress. Kemal’s mother disapproved heartily. Fikriye was not nearly good enough for her son.