The Crafting of President Obama's Cairo Speech (Warning: have tissues nearby)

'A musical impulse'

Obama went over the new text on Air Force One as he flew to an overnight stop in Saudi Arabia. As he read, he nodded, pausing now and then to ink in a thought or a suggestion.

That night, at the Riyadh ranch of King Abdullah, Obama had cardamom tea with the Saudi ruler. Emanuel went for a run in the 110-degree heat. Then Obama holed up with him, Axelrod and other senior staffers. Their buffet dinner simmered over cans of Sterno as they studied the text.

At midnight, the door to the staff work space creaked open. The president and his personal aide, Reggie Love, were delivering more changes.

On the two-hour flight to Cairo the next morning, Obama continued to tinker with the words and whisper parts of the speech to himself.

"He's very focused on both content and cadence," said Axelrod, "so he'll move the order of words around in order to get the cadence that he wants. . . . It's almost a musical impulse -- how the words play against each other."

Rhodes would punch each change into his laptop, then walk to the back of the plane and read them to the Arabic translator.

"You've had a tough job," Obama said as they landed in the Egyptian capital.

A motorcade sped them through the streets. Then, surreally, the frenetic pace was interrupted as the president paused to tour the Sultan Hassan Mosque, one of the world's oldest.

Hussain from the White House counsel's office joined Rhodes, McDonough and others trailing behind Obama.

Afterward, there was a hint that the Cairo speech achieved at least one goal -- reaching over the heads of leaders and making contact with ordinary Muslims.

Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, heard poignant evidence of that.

A friend in Cairo told Salem that on the day of the speech, he saw a little boy walking along the street, a smile on his face as he chanted in a soft, singsong voice: "Obama quoted the Koran. Obama quoted the Koran."