The new French Culture Minister arriving at Matignon on May 27, 2022. (Credit: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP)
French and Lebanese flags adorned the windows of the French president’s Airbus A330 as it landed at Rafic Hariri Airport. It was the evening of Aug. 31, 2020, and Emmanuel Macron was visiting the Lebanese capital for the second time since the Beirut port explosion.
The presidential delegation sped to Rabieh, arriving around 10:00 PM at the home of the diva Feyrouz. “What is your favorite song?” she asked him. “Li Beirut.” Good answer.
Did Macron’s new Franco-Lebanese advisor on culture and communication, Rima Abdul Malak, suggest this answer? His tribute to the city, with the scent of jasmine and the taste of “fire and smoke,” resonated through Lebanese homes, just like when the song was released in 1984.
“Rima Abdul Malak helped the president a lot during these two trips to Lebanon and organized the meeting with Feyrouz,” said Jack Lang, former culture minister and current president of the Arab World Institute.
“She did everything to make the president sensitive to the Lebanese cause,” said a French-Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, who said he had contacted her on Aug. 5, 2020, to propose holding a fundraising concert for Lebanon.
“She immediately contacted France Television and Radio France, and we received a favorable response within two hours,” said Maalouf, Abdul Malak’s longtime friend.
Macron’s adviser was thrust into the spotlight on May 20, as Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne appointed the 44-year-old Abdul Malak Minister of Culture.
“The ministry of what gives meaning and flavor to life,” she said at the investiture ceremony. Her style is different from that of her predecessor, Roselyne Bachelot — who has been in the world of politics for 40 years and with whom she shares the “same insatiable appetite for music, art, literature and theater.”
“She is a very simple person, in the noblest sense of the word, very humble,” said Karim Amellal, ambassador and interdepartmental delegate of the French republic to the Mediterranean since 2020. “Not so long ago, she did not imagine becoming culture minister. She just bought a small apartment in the suburbs of Paris. She had a lot of work to do and was preparing to move in soon.”
“Leaving Beirut in the midst of war”
Rima Abdul Malak’s story is that of thousands of Lebanese forced to seek refuge abroad, with some hoping to return to the country once things “calmed down.”
“My brother and his wife were convinced that it was temporary,” said her uncle Samir Abdel Malak. “They even took with them the curriculum of Jamhour, the school where their children were enrolled, and insisted that they continue to study Arabic.
The minister, who grew up in the suburbs of Lyon from the age of 10, did not hesitate to mention her origins during her investiture.
“My thoughts go out to my parents, who gave me the foundation of confidence that allows me to stand before you today, who had the courage to leave Beirut in the midst of war with three children and five suitcases, and who chose France for its motto of liberty, equality, fraternity, in which they have never stopped believing and contributing.”
“For a person who is not of French origin, it is like a dream to access the Culture Ministry in the the country of enlightenment,” said Samir Abdel Malak.
Hailing from the village of Chikhaneh (Jbeil), her father Nabil met Ajaltoun-born Violette Tabet at Lebanese University in the 1970s. They both pursued doctoral degrees, in biochemistry and archaeology respectively, in Villeurbanne (near Lyon), then returned to teach at the Lebanese University as “good Lebanese keen on helping their country.”
Born in 1978, the eldest of three siblings, Rima was a very quiet child, passionate about reading, writing and piano. Maya is now a filmmaker and teacher, while Kamal is a musician.
In 1989, during the inter-Christian war, the family house on the heights of Jamhour was heavily bombed. The couple and their children, who were in the house at the time, were unharmed but the traumatic experience compelled them to pack up and leave.
Their passports were hastily prepared, and a General Security officer spelled the family name “Abdul” Malak in Latin characters.
“It remained as is, and my brother never wanted to franciser [change name to sound more French] his name even though it was possible for him to do so,” said Samir Abdel Malak.
The family did not cut the cord completely. It spent vacations in Lebanon from time to time, and the children did not forget Arabic.
After pursuing studies at the Lyon Institute of Political Studies and a postgraduate degree in development and international cooperation from Pantheon-Sorbonne University in 2000, the future minister chose a career path away from the arts.
But her Grade 8 French teacher had infected her with “the most beautiful virus of all, the theater virus.” In the early 2000s she traveled to Gaza to work with the Palestinian NGO Culture and Free Thought Association, where she threw herself into combining theater and international cooperation.
When she returned to France, she joined Clowns Without Borders International, an artistic and humanitarian association.
“All through my childhood, I saw the civil war… Friends, brothers, neighbors killing each other. We had no recreation, no amusement; we had only a television, and the power used to fluctuate," said the 26-year-old Abdul Malak said in a 2004 interview with Lebanon’s The Daily Star newspaper.
A child of war. It was only when she arrived in France that she realized what she had missed. “The cinema… the theatre… I thought all children should have it, all over the world ... Laughter, fear, wow, amazement — I didn't know these emotions when I was in Lebanon,” she said.
Humanitarian and social dimension
In the cultural microcosm where she gravitated, Abdul Malak crossed paths with composer and songwriter Matthieu Chedid, then with Ibrahim Maalouf, and they became friends.
“When she was working in New York, we almost shared an apartment together,” said Maalouf. “I told Rima that one day she will get a very important job in France. She has always ensured that the arts take on a humanitarian and social dimension and she is one of the most professional, demanding and honest women I have ever known.”
Her deep knowledge of the art world opened the door for her to enter the cultural department of Paris City Hall, where she gradually moved up the ladder, becoming Mayor Bertrand Delanoe’s cultural advisor between 2012 and 2014.
It was then that she met Franco-Algerian writer Karim Amellal. “For nearly a month we toured the United States together after being selected by the [US] state department for a study visit.”
The two clicked. They were the same age, studied political science and were proud of their respective binationality. “She has a deep attachment to Lebanon, and a solid knowledge of the Arab world, and that’s what enriched her perspective on cultural affairs,” Amellal said.
Jack Lang, who took over the presidency of the Arab World Institute in 2013, noticed her and shortly afterwards commissioned her to carry out a study to open an AWI in New York, where she was appointed in 2014 as cultural attaché at the French embassy.
“She made an excellent report, thorough, but unfortunately it didn’t happen,” said the former minister, who suggested to Emmanuel Macron that she deserved a job.
In November 2019, Abdul Malak joined the president’s team as culture and communications advisor, replacing Claudia Ferrazzi, and worked to promote the Culture Pass that her predecessor had created.
The French press quickly nicknamed her “the other minister,” her name being mentioned in conteiton for the post following Franck Riester.
According to an L’OBS article in January 2021, her “too technocratic” profile prompted the French president to finally replace her with media professional Roselyne Bachelot in July 2020.
The media analyzed the growing ties between the president and his advisor who, according to OBS, exchange poems by SMS.
“When the president goes on a trip, she prepares a selection of books for him, which he takes the time to read,” a frequent visitor of the Elysee told the French weekly. L’OBS described her as a “second minister of culture, a shadow minister that is flattered almost before the real one.”
“If Rima has influence on the President of the Republic, it is great,” commented Roselyne Bachelot to Figaro Madame a month later. “It actually serves me also, because our differences are very slight.”
“Not the type to blabber”
Less than a year after taking office, culture plunged into darkness. COVID-19 drained the sector, stranding thousands of artists. On May 6, 2020, the French president unveiled his “plan for culture,” which tends to reassure industry professionals of their future, by compensating them. Abdul Malak was at the helm of this fruitless project.
“This was a unique decision in the world!” said Jack Lang. “Rima Abdul Malak was excellent. She is not the type of person to ‘blabber.’ When it is necessary she gets her hands dirty, whereas as an adviser, she did not have important means, she had only an assistant.”
She also convinced the president of some projects that remained in the drawers of the Culture Ministry — the ministry being unable to act, due to bureaucratic procedures.
According to several interviewees, the advisor earned a very good reputation in the cultural and political milieu, where courtiers always elbow their way through. “She is an honest person. She is away from this game, from influences, from low blows, from treachery. She has taken a lot of hits in her career,” said Maalouf.
“I told her that she should be the next minister. She replied: ‘I am not political.’ I said: ‘You are more political than the politicians,’” said Jack Lang.
Abdul Malak set the tone the day after her inauguration when she went to the Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis, and applauded high school students reciting the poems of former prisoner Khaled Miloudi.
Her appointment, as well as that of Pap Ndiaye to the Ministry of Education, drew criticism from far-right sympathizers.
Even Le Figaro saw fit to specify that she has a Christian background, as if it sought to reassure a France where the appointment of a minister with an Arab name is still a big deal.
As she moves out of the shadows and into the limelight, Abdul Malak will now have to be careful with her every move — remaining a symbol while and at the same time never be reduced to one.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.