the late Omar Suleiman at work

I posted this NY Times photo on April 16. My first reaction was that it made Suleiman look like the world’s sleaziest architect. Of course, he was something a lot worse than that.

I’m actually quite surprised by his death. He seemed to have unnatural powers of dark vitality that would allow him to live to age 100 and then shape-shift into a bat or wolf and take on another incarnation elsewhere. At any rate, I certainly never thought he would be outlived by Mubarak. How quickly they’ve all turned into yesterday’s men.

How much of the Suleiman story was myth and how much was reality? I don’t know, but I do know that you’d have to think twice about anyone surrounded even by myths of the sort linked with Suleiman’s name. One story involves a difficult interrogation with a prisoner who would say nothing. It is said that Suleiman then summoned a second prisoner into the room and shot him straight in the head in front of the first prisoner in order to show that he meant business.