Before These Memoirs - Part 31: Khaled al-Azm's Government and the Coup That Ended Yemen's Imamate

Monday the 17th: The Formation of Khaled al-Azm's Government

For days now, "the people's deputies" have been searching for "legitimacy," ever since submitting their own resignations after the 28 March coup, or, more accurately, being forced to submit them, on the advice of Dr. al-Qudsi and Mr. Rashad Barmada.

Their resignations were accepted at the time.

But the deputies, watching conditions deteriorate, went back to their old ledgers. They were called to a single session, after which they would disperse.

Yet they carried on regardless, "to lend an air of legitimacy to the regime."

What follows is what my friend Rafiq Bishur, Deputy Speaker of this same parliamentary council, told me.

He said: the army barred us from meeting inside the chamber of deputies itself, so once it gave its own approval, we met instead at Khaled al-Azm's house in Dummar.

The deputies leveled the harshest criticism at the President of the Republic and at Mr. Rashad Barmada, saying the two of them had arranged matters for themselves and left the rest of us like a bone the dogs had already spat out. Khaled al-Azm, in fact, spoke of al-Qudsi in language even uglier than this.

Mr. Bishur said: after lengthy sessions, the council settled on approving the following:

1. Dissolving itself, either directly or by decree of the President of the Republic.

2. Amending the constitution, according to whatever the President of the Republic proposed.

3. Granting confidence to the head of government alone, after which he would form the government with the President of the Republic's own approval.

The proceedings unfolded in the following order, as my own source tells it:

Dr. Maarouf al-Dawalibi announced that Dr. Ma'mun al-Kuzbari, Speaker of the secessionist chamber of deputies, had submitted his own resignation, without reading it aloud or even showing it, and praised "his own blessed era."

A vote of confidence was then held for Khaled al-Azm to form the government, and he secured unanimous approval, even though the vote-counter read out only fifty-six ballots, with no one standing beside him to verify the count. Approved... approved. The only one to break this unanimity was Abdel Karim al-Fayyad al-Farhan, whom the newspapers treated as a Nasserist, even though he was in fact a supporter of Jalal al-Sayyid, who had by then become one of the fiercest enemies of union.

The same farce played out in electing Mr. Said al-Ghazzi Speaker of the chamber of deputies. Khaled al-Azm tried to form the government at once, but ran into demands from Akram al-Hourani and Issam al-Attar, Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Even so, the ministry was formed without consulting the ministers themselves, for fear the army might seize power outright should the consultations drag on.

Mansour al-Atrash "raged" over this, though he never openly declared whether he would accept remaining in the ministry or withdraw from it.

He did accept it afterward, and took up the duties of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor.

Decree No. 2725, dated 17 September 1962, corresponding to 18 Rabi' al-Thani 1382 AH, was issued forming the government.

What caught our attention was the presence, within this ministry, of the three knights of Chtaura: As'ad Mahassen, Khalil al-Kallas, and Amin al-Nafouri, who had built themselves a "fragrant" reputation through curses of the utmost vulgarity, hurled against President Abdel Nasser, president of the greatest of the Arab states. Also present were three members of the Muslim Brotherhood: Mazhar al-Azma, Omar Odeh al-Khatib, and Dr. Nabil al-Tawil.

They remembered Bashir al-Azma too, naming him Deputy Prime Minister, and appointed Mr. Rashad Barmada Minister of Education.

Our friend Rafiq Bishur secured the seat of Minister of Culture and National Guidance. And even though not a single minister had been consulted beforehand, not one of them refused the post.

To anyone who reproached them for it, they said: a ministry, in these days, is a burden imposed, not an honor bestowed.

It is worth noting that this was the sixth ministry since the secession took place. I list them here, for the record and as a lesson:

1. Ma'mun al-Kuzbari's ministry, lasting from 19 September 1961 to 20 November 1961.

2. Dr. Izzat al-Nuss's ministry, lasting from 20 November 1961 to 27 December 1961.

3. Dr. Maarouf al-Dawalibi's ministry, lasting from 22 December 1961 to 27 March 1962.

4. Military rule, exercised by Lieutenant General Abdel Karim Zahreddine, during the arrest of the President of the Republic and his ministers.

5. Bashir al-Azma's ministry, formed on 16 April 1962, lasting until 17 September 1962.

6. Khaled al-Azm's ministry, formed on 17 September 1962, lasting until it was toppled by the 8 March 1963 coup.

These six governments, then, were plainly formed and fell within only a year and a half. Such is the proof of the "political stability," the security, and the peace of mind the secessionist era enjoyed, under President Dr. Nazim al-Qudsi's own presidency. We have no wish to laugh here, for the true state of affairs was one to weep over.

The "Damascene" officers who had carried out the secession proved themselves flagrantly incapable of holding the reins of power, since they made up no more than two percent of the army's total officer corps, swimming, as they were, against the tide.

The result was that they exposed the country to ruin, and exposed themselves to exile as well.

Tuesday the 17th

I notice the campaigns against us have begun easing off in the daily newspapers. Perhaps their own owners fear some "Nasserist" surprise descending on their own heads one fine morning.

They are shrewd men, and know well how to bend with the wind. They can see the secessionist era falling apart, day by day, before their own eyes.

Wednesday the 18th

The "Brotherhood deputy" Zuhair al-Shawish conveyed to us his own group's view on union, that the Brotherhood are themselves unionists, though they set the following three conditions:

1. That the union state's own direction be Islamic.

2. That we give them firm guarantees against resorting to political disqualification, once new elections are announced.

3. That public freedoms be granted in earnest, not merely as a formality.

I told Nihad al-Qasim, once we were alone with our own brothers, that these demands were reasonable, and were among our own principles as well, and that our only reservation concerned the first condition, which needed real clarification of its own meaning, so that religious and political matters not become entangled.

Al-Qasim spoke of al-Attar in terms that gave me little reassurance, words I would rather not repeat here. He did say of him, though, that he was a man capable of playing a dozen different hands at once, despite holding no more than a secondary school certificate.

Our own view was that we should keep in contact with the Brotherhood, without any real coordination between us in matters of public action.

Sunday the 23rd

Cairo radio broadcast the full text of two letters exchanged between American President John Kennedy and President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Abdel Nasser's own letter came from the heart, sincere and drafted with the utmost precision. In it, he set out the Palestinians' own rights, and highlighted the grave harm Israeli occupation and the international community had inflicted upon them, in their own homeland, their own livelihood, and their own dignity.

Akram al-Hourani's own answer to this letter was among the worst of "responses." He returned to his own tired refrain, accusing him once more of "treason and collaboration with Israel."

It is a genuine misfortune that the press carries his own statements, splashing them across its front pages, while he himself delights in seeing his own words repeated by the media and his own pictures published, as though he were one of the secessionist era's own great leaders.

Tuesday the 25th

Algeria's General Assembly of deputies convened, and elected Ferhat Abbas its own president. It has become certain that this same assembly will elect Ahmed Ben Bella Prime Minister tomorrow. Word has gone around that Dr. Nazim al-Qudsi mediated between the rival Algerian revolutionary leaders, and that "his mediation succeeded," as the newspapers backing him now claim.

I was reminded of the poet Khalil Mardam Bey's own verse about Shukri al-Quwatli:

How can you hope to gather what has scattered, and prevail,

when your own garment, my friend, lies torn and cast in every direction?

The dwelling places of Amr ibn Kulthum are now overrun,

by the whims of your own age, a mere cobbler and a tavern-keeper alike.

In this poem, he was speaking of the unrest that broke out in the Syrian Jazira region (al-Hasakah) in 1937, led by two Assyrians, one a tavern owner, the other a cobbler, whom the French had elevated into "leaders" of an ethnic and religious minority.

But the fledgling national era buried this unrest in its very cradle, and punished those who had strayed from national unity.

And now, alongside "the success of al-Qudsi's own mediation," the Syrian regime's own hatred of Ben Bella surfaced clearly, since he was Abdel Nasser's own friend and disciple.

Could the free men of Algeria ever truly forget what Abdel Nasser did to support their own just cause, supplying them with money and arms, so much so that France's own Prime Minister declared that crushing the Algerian resistance ran straight through Cairo?

That is exactly why he took part in the 1956 Suez war, to weaken Abdel Nasser's own hand and clear the Algerian field for himself.

Yet his own hopes were dashed, for he was routed at Suez, Algeria won its own freedom, and he himself fell from power in his own country.

Wednesday the 26th

Today, along with Abdel Samad and Ratib, I visited Mr. Muhammad Sulayman al-Ahmad, better known as the poet "Badawi al-Jabal."

He gave me a copy of his own collected poems, signing it with a trembling hand.

Mr. al-Badawi is an old colleague of mine from the chamber of deputies, though we belonged to rival parties, he to the National Party, I to the People's Party, and naturally found ourselves at odds on many questions.

Yet my own regard for his poetic gift was never touched by the fires of politics.

I used to receive leaflets about him from the people of Latakia, during election seasons, quoting verses he had once written in praise of the French, back when Latakia was its own separate statelet.

Mr. Ali Bouzo once told us that Sudan's own Foreign Minister, Mubarak Zarouk, himself a poet of radiant countenance, whom he had come to know at the Arab League Council in 1956, once told him: "For al-Badawi's own poetic gift, I would forgive him any fault, even treason itself."

We embraced al-Badawi warmly, and spoke of politics and literature, and he recited to us his own magnificent ode in praise of Umar ibn al-Khattab, may God be pleased with him, even though al-Badawi himself belongs to the Alawite Shia community.

Here are some verses from his masterpiece, "The Radiant Kaaba," showing the very qualities that mark al-Badawi's own poetry: a rich imagination, a powerful command of language, and a music that steals the heart away:

By a light upon the Mother of Cities, sweetness itself,

I washed my heart clean of sorrow and of flame.

Seven times I kissed the earth, and darkened my own eyes

with a beauty veiled like Heaven's own secrets, awesome to behold.

I held my own heart fast, lest it take flight toward Mina,

weighed down as it was with longing and with a pounding of its own.

O my very soul: this is the valley of the Trusted One, Muhammad,

rich in guidance, though its own soil bears no crop at all.

Here stands the Radiant Kaaba, here the Revelation and its fragrance,

here is the Light itself, so lose yourself in its love, and melt away.

And O my soul, between al-Hatim and Zamzam

I left my own tears to plead on my sins' behalf.

At the Radiant Kaaba I dressed my own anguish in its finest robe,

and the Lord of Heaven perfumed my own weeping.

***

Processions like waves, their own call rising loud,

and the noonday fire, red, ablaze.

They gathered there, rich and destitute alike,

the downy-winged young and the gray-haired old together.

Equals there, their pilgrim's cloth like the cloth of the sacred month itself,

giving off its own fragrance, every heart there a heart turned home.

Had I still some remnant of my own youth left in me,

I would have hastened toward it, mounted on a noble steed.

And in it he says:

The days have stripped me bare of those I loved,

like a thicket the spring itself now shuns, plundered and bare.

Many a thing far from you is sweeter than the heart's own desire,

and many a house nearby is no true home at all.

Alas for these fickle beauties, whose own trials I never felt safe from,

until, with gray hair upon me, I finally felt safe from mine.

I asked him whether he had ever performed the pilgrimage himself, to be able to describe the pilgrims in such moving terms, and he said, with real regret, that age had overtaken him before he could.

God later granted me the grace to perform this very pilgrimage myself, twenty-two years after this conversation. I prayed for al-Badawi's own soul as I circled the Kaaba myself.

As for him, he turned to God, asking Him to accept his own repentance and grant him His own forgiveness, addressing Him thus:

O Lord, I never worshipped another beside You, nor knew malice,

and I kept my own youth, and my own old age, free of both.

What sin is there that cannot be washed away, for a poet

whose own heart was given over to every shade of beauty, and sang of it?

And were the maidens of Paradise ever to witness my own tears,

they would drink deep of my own sunset, in the terror of the Reckoning.

God rest his soul, and grant him His own vast Paradise.

In the evening, we listened to President Gamal Abdel Nasser's own speech, announcing his new democratic direction.

He announced he would distribute the powers of the presidency among the members of a Presidency Council he would soon establish, and would appoint a Prime Minister (having until then carried both the presidency of the republic and the premiership himself, along the lines of the American system of government), and would establish councils of popular authority, arranged in a hierarchy running from the village at its base to the presidency of the state at its very summit.

We were pleased by this new direction, for it brought an end to one-man rule, however just and honest it may have been, in favor of democratic rule by the people.

We say: God willing.

We reckoned this new direction would find a favorable echo and support in the local media. But Saud's and Hussein's own money moved quickly, for the dog's own tail remains crooked, however long you try to straighten it in a mold.

Thursday the 27th: Military Coup in Yemen

Here is an event beyond all imagining and every calculation.

We woke today to news of a coup in Sanaa, against the Hamid al-Din dynasty and the new Imam, Muhammad al-Badr.

This coup took place before al-Badr had held the reins of power, inherited from his own father, Imam Ahmad, for even eight days.

Yemen has long been known for its own cultural backwardness, and for the widespread use of qat, a plant its own jurists have devoted extensive study to analyzing.

Those who have had occasion to visit Yemen relate that the country's only pharmacy belongs to the Imam himself, who exploits it in the ugliest possible way.

Al-Badr had in fact once considered killing his own father, over his backwardness, but President Abdel Nasser had advised him, during the tripartite union days, against such a monstrous act.

Yemen's own coup radio reported that the coup's leader was Colonel Abdullah al-Sallal, a graduate of an Egyptian military college, one where he had certainly learned how to open the road for his own country toward freedom and civilization.

It also reported that the revolutionaries had killed the Imam and a number of his own family members inside his palace, since he had refused an ultimatum to surrender, and had executed thirteen political figures, among them Foreign Minister Hussein Ibrahim.

I was moved by his own death, having known him personally, from his visit to Syria in the mid-1950s, and from his own visit to us when the Syrian-Egyptian union was established in 1958, and the tripartite union that followed it, one that failed utterly.

Cairo recognized the new coup regime forty-eight hours after it took place. It later emerged that the Imam had not in fact been killed, but had slipped out of the palace into Saudi Arabia, and set about gathering supporters from the tribes, launching attacks on Yemeni territory.

In answer to these "provocations," the "revolutionaries" asked Cairo for military assistance.

Abdel Nasser came to their aid, with a military division landing in Yemen within less than a month.

Saudi Arabia answered this "challenge" to itself by severing diplomatic relations with Cairo, and set about supplying al-Badr's own supporters with money and arms. Conditions grew extremely difficult.

Egypt paid, in the lives of its own young men, a price it had never reckoned with before becoming entangled in this affair. Yet this sacrifice was not made in vain, for a closed-off Arab country saw the light at last, emerging into a world of freedom.

Yemen today is a stable republic, and Muhammad al-Badr still lives, in Saudi Arabia. And because Abdel Nasser threw his own lot in with Yemen's own liberation movement, the Syrian regime stood against the Yemeni revolution.

New Political Structures in Egypt

President Abdel Nasser established a Presidency Council, including his own vice presidents, along with Mr. Ahmad Abdu al-Sharabasi and Dr. Nour El-Din Tarraf, two colleagues of ours from the very first union ministry. He also appointed Mr. Ali Sabri head of the Executive Council, and handed the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to Dr. Hekmat Abu Zeid.

Monday, 1 October

Quite unexpectedly, the lawyer and former minister As'ad al-Kourani visited me at home today, accompanied by his own relative, and ours, the engineer Abdel Latif al-Dashwali.

I was puzzled by this visit, since Mr. al-Kourani's own political direction has been a plainly secessionist one.

He proposed that I teach my own legal and criminal-law writings at the Faculty of Law in Aleppo, an offer I declined, telling myself: so long as they already have "professors" of their own at this faculty, why don't they simply write their own textbooks for their own students, in their own hand?

He then said: I have been tasked with offering you the chair of criminal law at your own city's faculty, which stands in need of "your own learning," and with offering you the deanship of this same faculty as well.

I declined both posts as well, for I had no intention of clearing the field for these deviant men, not until God willed the return of union, or decreed otherwise by His own command.