Yousuf Shirawi Raymond Ke ne
Yousuf Sharawi, who died earlier this year, was the prime mover of chess in Bahrain. The match between Krarnnik and Fritz was his brainchild. Unusually for a government minister, he emerged from non-royal origins. It was his life's mission to educate people and make them think. He was Bahrain's first chess champion, Bahrain's first foreign scholarship student, Bahrain's first minister without the usual royal connections, etc. With his great drive and energy he rose to become, in a quite literal sense, Lord High Everything Else in the Bahrain government, as well as chairman of Gulf Air, acquiring en route a seemingly endless list of awards and distinctions.
I first met Yousuf in 1981 and again in 1999, when I visited Bahrain for the second time to promote their national board game, dama. Yousuf pledged he would raise the money for a dama/chess/mind sports centre. Indeed, the sandy backlot he identified was to become the venue for the Fritz-Kramnik match three years later.
It was a terrible blow to him when the terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in New York, which nearly resulted in cancellation of the match. This was fortunately transmuted into a one-year postponement, but the match nearly did not happen. Moreover, Yousuf was a rational human being whose roots were in the Arab Enlightenment of Baghdad in the 8th-10th centuries, when the best scientists, mathematicians and chessplayers were Arabs. To see his self-avowed co-religionists resort to unlawful violence, which contravened the basic tenets of his faith, was a horrible shock.
He had been very ill with leg problems recently but I had no idea his illness was life-threatening. I am sure he was solving chess problems to the last — or possibly bridge, which he liked just as much! He was one of those giant tsunami-like personalities whom you think will never die.
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