Source: Politics<\/p>\n
NEW YORK \u2014 <\/span>\u201cOh, s—. She\u2019s here, she\u2019s here.\u201d<\/p>\n In the small dressing room backstage at the 92nd Street Y, Huma Abedin looks up from a makeup bag on the counter, meeting her own eyes in the mirror. Her back is to the door, but by some familiar instinct, she can feel her boss enter the space behind her. <\/p>\n \u201cHi, everybody!\u201d Hillary Clinton says to a small collection of staffers, hanging up her coat and scarf. The two women don\u2019t greet each other right away, but instead settle into a comfortable silence, the conversation continuing around them. Clinton lays her purse on the counter, fishes out a powder case, and side by side, the two women prepare to take the stage, hovering around each other. Abedin addresses Clinton as \u201cMadam Secretary.\u201d Clinton addresses her back: \u201cYes, dear?\u201d<\/p>\n Over the last 25 years, in rooms just like this, Abedin has become the most famous and least understood right-hand woman in politics: adviser, surrogate daughter, friend, \u201call-around gatekeeper.\u201d When Hillary Clinton meets the world, she says, she is the \u201cbridge.\u201d<\/p>\n On this occasion, Clinton is support staff for Abedin, here to promote her aide\u2019s new memoir, Both\/And: A Life in Many Worlds. The panel discussion \u2014 \u201cHuma Abedin and Hillary Clinton in Conversation\u201d \u2014 is the first time they will share a stage. The book is a raw and detailed account of Abedin\u2019s childhood in Saudi Arabia, the way her late father shaped her view of the world, the career she built in \u201cHillaryland\u201d and the slow disintegration of her marriage to Anthony Weiner, saturating her life with personal and professional shame. Throughout, Abedin examines the underside of a one-note public scandal \u2014 the complicated mix of gratitude, confusion and pain that she felt along the way. A nod, she says, to the title: Two things can be true at once.<\/p>\n More than that, it\u2019s the most Abedin, 45, has ever talked about herself in public.<\/p>\n In one week, shepherded by a black SUV and a publicist from Scribner, she does CBS Sunday Morning, the Today Show, Morning Joe, Tamron Hall, Joy Reid, Stephen Colbert, The View. She talks to the Associated Press, USA Today, New York magazine, NPR, WAMU, BBC. She does live hits from her East Village apartment. She attends two book parties, one surrounded by celebrity friends at Anna Wintour\u2019s townhouse. For the first time, on the sets of live tapings, she sees footage from the press conference where she stood by her husband in 2013, after his second scandal. \u201cI\u2019m doing the thing that scares me the most,\u201d she says at one event, \u201cwhich is this.\u201d<\/p>\n In the book, there is constant attention paid to Abedin\u2019s silence. \u201cWhen I did speak out,\u201d she writes, \u201cit was more with a whisper than a megaphone.\u201d She describes serving Clinton, that \u201cbrightest flame,\u201d as like living in a \u201cglass jar,\u201d circling a person whose life \u201ctook precedence\u201d over her own, she says. In one scene, before the 2013 press conference, her colleague Philippe Reines asks if she\u2019s sure she wants to make a statement on camera: When he tells her, \u201cThis will be the first time most Americans will hear your voice,\u201d he means it literally. During the waves of scandal, when Weiner\u2019s political career collapsed after having sexual conversations with women he met online, including a 15-year-old girl, she saw a widening \u201cchasm\u201d between her own experience and the version she saw reflected in the eyes of reporters and photographers. \u201cI defiantly stared right back,\u201d she writes, but publicly, she said almost nothing. Backstage on her book tour, she is nervous and relieved, almost giddy to be talking. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen her this happy,\u201d a former Clinton aide says in passing. The word Abedin uses is \u201cunburdened.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s pent-up demand to hear something from Clinton\u2019s closest aide, but it\u2019s not to ask about her childhood, or her travels at the State Department. As she presents herself to the public, almost every interview begins with the same question: Why did you feel the need to write this book? Abedin is being pressed for an explanation, though the ask is never made explicit. Why bring it all up again, they seem to say. The laptop, the emails, the betrayal, James Comey. Why write the book at all? Did people want an apology? A defense? A justification? And then comes the second question, the same one her boss got in 1998: Why did you stay with your husband?<\/p>\n The memoir offers 500 pages of answers \u2014 on every page, she tells us what she was feeling, when and why. \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of speculation over the last 15 years,\u201d Abedin says. \u201cWhat is wrong with her? What is she thinking? I tell you exactly what I am thinking in this book.\u201d She details therapy sessions with her husband. She pulls from journal entries and letters. She accounts for the different stages of despair and self-doubt that haunted her marriage. The index entries for Weiner take up almost three pages. But she doesn\u2019t sell outright scandal (her portrait of Weiner, a partner who was as much a source of happiness and financial stability as trauma and anger, doesn\u2019t begin until you\u2019re more than 200 pages in). She doesn\u2019t give up scoops on Hillary and Bill Clinton (her publisher had to ask for a section on the impeachment). She details the unwanted advances of a male senator in the mid-aughts, but when pressed to name him, she refuses. She writes at length about her own silence, but the way in which that reflex to retreat might have been shaped by the Clintons\u2019 own bunker mentality \u2014 always digging in rather than out in the face of scandal \u2014 is a parallel she examines without criticism or question. Abedin is finally talking, but as she explains her side of the story \u2014 \u201cI realized that other people were writing my history,\u201d she says \u2014 there\u2019s a nagging sense that some find the answers unsatisfactory.<\/p>\n She discovered this early on, before the manuscript was done. For a while, the book\u2019s working title was \u201cClarity.\u201d The idea was scrapped, \u201cbecause, to people on my editorial team, it wasn\u2019t \u2018clear.\u2019 I\u2019m not joking,\u201d she tells me. \u201cPeople who haven\u2019t gone through what I have gone through, as it relates to my marriage and betrayal \u2014 they find so much of it confusing. Like, \u2018But I don\u2019t understand! Why did you stay?!\u2019 \u2018Why didn\u2019t you leave?!\u2019 \u2018I don’t get it!\u2019 \u2018It\u2019s not clear.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the way the senator story was covered, too,\u201d she says. The memory of the incident, when an unnamed male senator tried to kiss her, only came back to her after the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. \u201cThis is more about having a discussion, knowing that it\u2019s my truth, knowing that it was a trauma that was buried for 20 years!\u201d she says. \u201cLike, guess what? It\u2019s not about him.\u201d<\/p>\n At the 92nd Street Y, Abedin is talking about the interview she just finished taping with Jake Tapper and Christiane Amanpour on CNN. \u201cI kept saying, \u2018My boss, My boss \u2026\u2019\u201d She still serves as Clinton\u2019s chief of staff. \u201cBoth Christiane Amanpour and Jake Tapper were like\u201d \u2014 she shifts into an anchor impression \u2014 \u201cto be clear, when she says \u2018her boss,\u2019 she means Hillary Clinton.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think they wanted me to say: \u2018Secretary Clinton.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Clinton takes out a tube of lipstick and laughs, shaking her head.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, for goodness\u2019 sakes. Oh, for goodness\u2019 sakes.\u201d<\/p>\n Lifting a bottle of hairspray in the air, Clinton aims and fires, accidentally hitting Nick Merrill, her former press secretary, in the eyes with aerosol. \u201cOh, my god, I\u2019m so sorry!\u201d she yells. Merrill turns away. \u201cJesus!\u201d Clinton digs through her cosmetics. \u201cOh, wait! Wait! Wait!\u201d She takes out another bottle, a small can of the Evian facial spray she used to use on the campaign trail \u2014 \u201ca walk down memory lane\u201d \u2014 and starts spraying people in the room. Abedin barely notices.<\/p>\n Another former staffer, on loan to volunteer for the event, comes over to brief Clinton on the sequence of events \u2014 quick photo line, introductions, take the stage \u2014 but there is no real prep for the panel. Abedin doesn\u2019t ask Clinton how she wants it to go, and neither does she.<\/p>\n Outside the room, friends and former colleagues are lining up to take pictures.<\/p>\n Clinton turns to her aide and tells her get in the middle.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are the person in power,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n One of the prerequisites to being \u201cenigmatic\u201d is some measure of silence.<\/span><\/p>\n The public\u2019s perception of a figure like Abedin solidifies imperceptibly and gradually. Almost always, it\u2019s the one that we project, filling the void with paparazzi stakeouts, speculation, snippets of reported insight. Often, it says more about us than the person at its center. \u201cSe\u00f1ora Danger,\u201d one New York Post cover asked in 2013. \u201cWHAT\u2019S WRONG WITH YOU?\u201d<\/p>\n In Abedin\u2019s case, she has been cast as either (1) private, (2) glamorous or (3) mysterious. In the final act (4), she is the cautionary figure and punchline of a three-step Greek drama we all know well: Clinton stays with her husband after a public betrayal, Clinton supports her closest aide as she does the same, Clinton finds that the aide\u2019s husband \u2014 due to his laptop, the scene of the betrayal \u2014 is the cause of a new FBI inquiry, 10 days before the election that\u2019s supposed to make her president.<\/p>\n Fifteen minutes into the 92nd Street Y event, the moderator asks about the most difficult moment they\u2019ve shared \u2014 the question maybe everyone wants. Abedin says Sept. 11, 2001. Clinton goes there.<\/p>\n \u201cI will say, because she writes about it \u2014 I wouldn\u2019t talk about it if she hadn’t written about it \u2014 toward the end of the 2016 campaign, there was a decision made by the then-FBI director to reopen the closed investigation into emails, based on a computer that Anthony Wiener had used. I think that was, in many ways, one of the worst days for her.\u201d Of course, \u201cit was terrible for me, too,\u201d Clinton adds. \u201cIt obviously impacted the outcome of the election.\u201d<\/p>\n When the news broke that day, they were on the campaign plane, headed for Iowa.<\/p>\n The public, and the press, never saw a reaction from Abedin. What I remember from the back of the plane was the way events carried on, surreally, as if nothing had happened. All day, Clinton held her smile. She did her two rallies in Iowa. She sat for her scheduled photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz. On the press bus, aides passed out Halloween candy. There was no mention of the news until 7 p.m., after the last event of the day, at a 10-minute press conference in a high school choir room in Des Moines, Iowa. Abedin, always present, always just off to the side, wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n Five years later, the book describes what we couldn\u2019t see.<\/p>\n On the plane, Abedin started sobbing. \u201cThe moment she made eye contact with me, I just broke down.\u201d Clinton came over to give her a hug. That night, Abedin says in the book, she wrote down one line in her notebook: \u201cI do not know how I am going to survive this. Help me God.\u201d<\/p>\n The experience of reading Both\/And is, in part, to finally understand why Abedin is the way she is: You see the reticence and discipline shaped by her Muslim faith, her life as an American in Saudi Arabia, her two parents, an Indian father and a Pakistani mother, both Fulbright scholars who came to the U.S. Her father, Zain, wrote poetry and received his master\u2019s degree in English literature. Cosmopolitan and intellectual, he could be a \u201cmystery\u201d to his own children, shielding them from his fatal diagnosis of renal failure. Abedin was 16 when he died. When you open her book, the first thing you see, opposite the title page, is a handwritten note from Zain: \u201cIf you can\u2019t stand the heat, then as Truman said, get out of the kitchen. But your exit should be graceful, decent and above board.\u201d Really, the book is written as a kind of letter back to him. \u201cIt\u2019s me having this conversation with him,\u201d she tells me, \u201csaying, \u2018Look! Look what I\u2019m doing! I want you to be proud. I\u2019m so good at this job! I work at the White House! I wrote this book! I am a good writer!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Abedin\u2019s preoccupation with stories, the ones we write ourselves and the ones that are written for us, begins as part of that dialogue with her father. As a child, she read novels in order according to his instruction, each one numbered by level of difficulty. When she was 9 or 10, he gave her Silas Marner, one of George Eliot\u2019s most challenging novels, labeled \u201cL1,\u201d entry-level. As an adult, Abedin became an astute observer of the public glare, adopting her boss\u2019s instinct to \u201cbattle\u201d in the face of scandal. She remembers the way reporters and photographers moved around the Clintons \u201cin unison as a single amoeba.\u201d Watching the first lady navigate her husband\u2019s impeachment, she began to view the public gaze as a stalking presence \u2014 like \u201csuffocating layers on a hot day.\u201d Fifteen years later, when she finds the same hungry eyes set on her, she loses track of the story. \u201cWe were all so far down into the minute details of my personal life,\u201d she writes, \u201cI no longer knew what belonged to me and what did not.\u201d<\/p>\n After Clinton\u2019s loss in 2016, Abedin found refuge outside of politics, starting with Anna Wintour, who offered to take her to dinner and a movie. She wrote most of the book in 2018 and 2019 at the editor\u2019s vacation house in Mastic, N.Y. The fridge was always stocked for her arrival. At the book party Wintour hosted at her home in Manhattan, Abedin was at ease with celebrities and designers: Sienna Miller, Karlie Kloss, Michael Kors, Tory Burch, Adrien Brody, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, Vera Wang, Prabal Gurung. Toward the end of the night, on a low chaise in the middle of the room, Clinton sat half-reclined, flanked by Diane von Furstenberg and Barry Diller.<\/p>\n The public fascination with Abedin grew in part from her own encouragement. Early on, she went along with it. In 2007, she agreed to a New York Observer profile, so long as she didn\u2019t have to directly participate. The piece ran under the headline, \u201cHillary\u2019s Mystery Woman.\u201d Ten days later, Wintour sent a fax to Clinton\u2019s Senate office, asking her to sit for a Vogue interview. It was true that she believed staffers were \u201cmeant to be rarely seen, and certainly never heard,\u201d that the attention was uncomfortable. It was also true that she \u201cloved fashion as much as politics\u201d and saw the offer from a beloved magazine as \u201ca once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.\u201d Abedin said yes. When Vogue called during the 2016 campaign, she said yes again.<\/p>\n \u201cDid I like wearing nice clothes and getting dressed up and getting my hair done?\u201d Abedin tells me. \u201cYeah, absolutely. I\u2019d be lying if I didn\u2019t. To get to go to the Met? I mean, that\u2019s like a pinch-me moment every year.\u201d<\/p>\n But apart from the red flags she says she saw on the eve of their wedding, when she discovered his inbox full of fans, women, whom he seemed eager to engage, the hesitation she felt about Weiner revolved around her fear of a more public role. He was a sitting congressman, loud and attention-seeking. She liked her life \u201con the periphery,\u201d knowing exactly where to stand to monitor her boss but remain \u201cjust outside the camera\u2019s frame.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo much of it was, did I want to step from here to there?\u201d she says. \u201cBut it\u2019s a little bit more nuanced. I also never wanted to be wrong about anything. It\u2019s one of the reasons I was always so silent. I think it was a \u2018both\/and.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI never wanted to screw up for my boss. And then we had Comey,\u201d she says, like it\u2019s hitting her again. \u201cJesus!\u201d<\/p>\n The morning after the 92nd Street Y event,<\/span> Abedin is in her living room, considering where to stage a remote hit for BBC News. In the span of five days, she\u2019s done three radio interviews, three print interviews and nine television appearances, and she is visibly more comfortable.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s weird if you can see the kitchen.\u201d Four elaborate bouquets, gifts for the book launch, sit on the counter. \u201cAnd I have my funeral flowers,\u201d she jokes. At her apartment, a large unit in the same East Village building as her husband, where the two co-parent their son, Jordan Zain, there are books everywhere: novels, nonfiction, self-help (The Alpha Female\u2019s Guide to Men and Marriage). Bill and Hillary Clinton\u2019s memoirs, multiple copies of each, line the shelves.<\/p>\n She is happy about the night before. \u201cShe\u2019s so cute, right?\u201d Abedin says of her boss. \u201cNormally, I\u2019m like, \u2018Here\u2019s what they\u2019re gonna ask you.\u2019 We didn\u2019t even really talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, look, her doing the Comey thing was, you know, hard. But I\u2019ve been doing it. It was kind of nice to have somebody else do it.\u201d<\/p>\n