A Turkish woman living in Turkey and called Tharia Azzam sent Al-Masry Al-Youm an e-mail in which she claimed to be the daughter of the founder and first president of the League of Arab States Abdel Rahman Pasha Azzam. She also asked the newspaper to help her find her family. She wrote she was born in Palestine and that her family handed her to a Turkish lorry driver in 1948 when she was only 10. The driver took her to Turkey without her knowing why. Her father phoned the driver after he had arrived in Turkey. They then met and he gave him some gold, she said. She then added that she took the Turkish nationality through a court ruling. She was given a Turkish ID card and enrolled in Turkish schools. She said she asked her teachers to help her find her original family. They summoned the driver's wife and asked her about this issue. She told them that Tharia had had her memory affected by fever when she was a child and she even threatened Tharia of killing her if she told her story once more. In 1969, the driver was wounded in a car accident, Ms. Tharia goes on to say. Before dying in hospital, he told her that her father's name was Abdel Rahman Azzam, but he did not say which country he came from. Ms. Tharia says she started looking for her father in Jerusalem and Jordan, but in vain. She also gave interviews to Turkish TV channels. Finally, she was told her father was Azzam Pasha from Egypt. Speaking on the phone to Al-Masry Al-Youm, though, the president of the frozen Labor Party Mahfouz Azzam denied Ms. Azzam's claim. He added that Ms. Azzam came to Cairo last year and paid him a visit to his home with a Turkish interpreter. On that occasion, she asked him to help her find her alleged father's tomb and told him her story. Mr. Azzam, though, is skeptical and thinks there is a mistake or some ambiguity. He affirmed her story is illogical, as Abdel Rahman Pasha, who served as president of the Arab League from 1945 to 1952 and was called the Arab Che Guevara for his fierce struggle against imperialism, visited Palestine only once, in 1935. At that time, Azzam was married with the daughter of a Libyan ruler and they gave birth to four children. "Where has that woman been since 1969, when she found out her father's identity? I have advised her to look for her family in Palestine, where there is a large family called Azzam" he said.
