Obituaries of political figures in the Arab world tend not to be splashed in the media as in the West, and I only recently learned of the death in February of Jassim Jamal—Qatar’s gifted and very first UN ambassador, who I met in New York in the 1970s.
It was indirectly because of Dutch oil trader John Deuss that our paths crossed. Deuss’s business interests in Qatar beginning in the early 70s and his Seventh Avenue fashion company in Manhattan, where I was the model, resulted in an invitation in my mailbox from Jamal to Qatar’s celebration of its National Day at the UN. I had taken a break from journalism for a few years in the 1970s and was a runway model for Geoffrey Beene, Bill Blass, Giorgio Sant’ Angelo and other fashion legends.
Jassim Jamal has been described as “an outstanding diplomat” by John J. Hoey, a former US foreign service officer in Vietnam, who as an investment banker in the 1970s was based in the Arabian Gulf, later heading the New York branch of the Arab African International Bank from within the Olympic Towers offices of Deuss’s oil company.
Jassim Jamal was marvelous at bringing people together. And Qatar’s booming economy in the 1970s enabled Jamal to entertain brilliantly.
Per capita, newly independent Qatar (a British protectorate until 1971) in the 1970s had become one of the richest countries in the world because of its oil & gas reserves. Increased wealth followed with the formation of OPEC.
Jamal arrived in New York in September 1971 and served as Qatar’s permanent representative to the UN and then as its ambassador to the UN. He brought to America a progressive image of Qatar, encouraging people to visit the country and early on advocated Qatar’s hosting of international sporting events. He, of course, championed the Palestinian cause.
I first passed through Qatar in 1976 when the country’s public infrastructure was still relatively undeveloped. I was on my way around the Gulf to the Sultanate of Oman—whose infrastructure was also just getting underway. My visit to the Gulf followed an official visit earlier that year to Kuwait and Iran, as a runway model participating in a US bicentennial fashion show.
I remember walking into Doha, Qatar’s Gulf Hotel at the time and being surprised that you could order a gin & tonic, although you had to go behind a black curtain to drink it. I was fascinated to see, during a 2010 visit to Qatar, what development decades of prosperity had enabled without erasing the country’s traditional charm.
Several years after my gin & tonic at the Gulf Hotel, I bumped into Jassim Jamal at Mortimer’s, the Upper East Side restaurant, having been invited to lunch there by John Hoey. I was still a fashion model and was dressed in a gold-striped dishdasha, my hair in braids. Jamal was delighted to see Gulf fashions “make an entrance.” Mortimer’s was not then the snooty eatery it would later become.
I vividly remember attending one of Jamal’s soirées at his Sutton Place ambassadorial residence, which was a five-story townhouse formerly belonging to comedians Bob and Ray. Silver trays of roast lamb, fish, rice, fruit and other sweets were carried in by costumed waiters followed by a belly dancer, accompanied by Arabic music. Wine was served in Austrian crystal glasses. Another party took place in a disco on the top floor of the townhouse—there was an elevator to take you there.
Jamal enjoyed people, and I met some vibrant and accomplished personalities at his gatherings, like Hamilton Shirley Amerasinghe—the Ceylon (Sri Lanka) envoy to the UN, who served as president of both the General Assembly and the Law of the Sea Conference; Ernst Wynder, who is credited with linking smoking and cancer in the 1950s; surgeon Paul Striker and his wife; among others.
Jamal left his UN post in 1983. He told me that through the years he had dined “at every restaurant in New York.” He next served as ambassador to Morocco, a country he adored.
I last saw Jassim Jamal in Vienna in 1992 when he was ambassador to Austria. He invited me to dinner at the embassy along with Qatar’s OPEC representative and a few other guests.
We talked about the Gulf War, which I had covered for The Economist and Newsday’s editorial pages. Jamal told me he was not happy to see the US push the sale of F-15 jets on Saudi Arabia following the war. He also confessed that he found Vienna somewhat boring after New York and Morocco. He regretted ever leaving Morocco.
Jassim bin Yousif al Jamal was a lovely human and, indeed, for Qatar a skillful ambassador to the people and nations of the world, representing his country’s transformation from a storybook past to one of the most progressive and politically agile states in the region.
OSCILLATIONS 
