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Few asked about her sweep through Europe and the nonstop hts on the iovernment by Moslem fundamentalists

The extent of the turmoil was unclear to her Fanatical mullahs, led by Ak

hious passions that ran through the ers of the Nile and the i officers in the ar with the Islamic radicals to remove the recently installed president, Nadav Hasan The situation was extremely volatile, but Hala had received no up-to-the-overnuous

On the surface Hala appeared infinitely poised and sphinxlike as she replied calmly, without emotion Inwardly she floated between confusion and spiritual shock She felt distant and alone, as though uncontrollable events were swirling around someone else, someone beyond help for whom she could only feel sorrow

She could have posed for the painted portrait bust of Queen Nefertiti in the Berlin -ste look Forty-two years old, sli jet-black silken hair brushed straight and falling down to her shoulders She stood five feet eleven inches in heels, and her lithe, shapely body was enhanced by a designer suit with pleated skirt

Hala had enjoyed the attentions of four lovers over the years but had never n to her She refused to spare the ti love held littlethe ballet

As a child in Cairo, where her mother was a teacher and her father a shoe and digging in the ancient ruins within bicycle distance of her hoyptian antiquities, she had landed one of the few jobs open to Moslem women, as researcher for the Ministry of Culture

With great individual effort and prodigious energy, she then successfully fought Islamic discrimination and worked up to Director of Antiquities and later head of the Departht the eye of then President Mubarak, who asked her to serve on the Egyptian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly Five years later, Hala was named Vice Chairman when Javier P6rez de Cudllar stepped down in thean upheaval when five Mosle a controversy over deious reform Because the men in line ahead of her refused the job, she was appointed to serve as SecretaryGeneral in a tenuous hope she anization's foundation

Noith her own governood chance she ht become the first chief representative of the United Nations without a good try

An aide came up and whispered in her ear She nodded and held up one hand

"I'm told the plane is ready to take off," she said "I'll take one more question"

Hands flew up and a dozen queries filled the air at once Hala pointed to aa tape recorder

"Leigh Hunt of BBC, Madame Kaovernypt?"

"I aardless of the government in poish me to come home, I will comply"

"Even though Akhmad Yazid has called you a heretic and a traitor?"