The Unity Project Unanimously Approved - Part 5: The Failed 18 July Pro-Nasser Uprising, Mass Executions, and the Author's Surrender to Prison

Weep like women for a lost kingdom

you failed to defend like men.

Had the Baathists not fought so desperately to monopolize power for themselves, and remained sincere in their own cooperation with the unionists, true to the good faith of their own signatures on the tripartite agreement, the powerful Maghreb movements, which had themselves declared their own wish to join this agreement, would have joined it too, and a powerful union of progressive forces would have taken shape across the length of the Arab homeland, backed by organizations of tremendous influence throughout the length and breadth of the greater Arab world.

But greed, and the love of power and domination, won out over the very nationalist direction the Baath's own theorists had themselves called for over so many long years.

Yet once the glitter of power blinded them, their own principles collapsed entirely.

This was confirmed by the Moroccan leader Mehdi Ben Barka himself, at the press conference he held on 30 July, in which he openly accused the Baath Party "of reneging on its own commitments to form a unified national front, one meant to bring together the Mashriq parties, Morocco's own National Union of Popular Forces, and Algeria's own National Liberation Front."

Even so, they found no real joy in their own monopoly of power, for they soon fell out among themselves over posts and directions, and one faction after another set about purging the others, for many years to come.

The movements of history continue their own astonishing, endlessly strange interplay even now. I will have occasion to return to both Salah al-Bitar and Akram al-Hourani, in two personal meetings with each of them, more than ten years later.

Thursday, 18 July

It was very early when the telephone's own ringing woke me. I picked up the receiver and heard a woman weeping on the other end of the line. After some effort, I realized it was Dr. Abidin Hammadeh's own daughter, calling to tell me that her father had met his own Lord at dawn that very day.

I felt grief's own grip tighten around my throat.

Two hours later, I contacted some of his friends, so that we might all take part together in his own funeral procession.

I learned from them that they had been sitting up with him that very night, at a café in Dummar, staying there until a late hour, before seeing him home safely.

Yet his own hour came with the dawn, and he departed this world he had loved, and which had loved his own wit and his own droll stories in turn. With his death, a chair once held by one of the most distinguished professors of history now stood empty.

At midmorning, we made our way to his house to take part in his funeral procession. His house stood close to mine, in the al-Shahbandar quarter. As we sat in the house's own sitting room, waiting for the shrouding and preparation of his body to be finished, we were startled by the sound of artillery fire, coming from somewhere nearby.

We were at a loss to explain the reason for this bombardment.

Among those present was Dr. Sami Kabbara, a friend of the deceased and a brilliant journalist. He seemed even more unsettled by his own confusion than the rest of us.

We went out to learn what news we could, and saw police officers urging passersby to hurry along and get to their own homes. It was somewhere between ten and eleven in the morning.

The deceased's own family found themselves unable to bury him, until they obtained special permission, and the burial finally took place that evening.

Mr. Ali Bouzo proposed that we make our way to his own "den" in the al-Akrad quarter, so that we might have a clearer picture of the situation and act according to however these sudden events unfolded.

We sat at the house of one of his relatives, where conflicting reports kept reaching us. But one thing became certain: an artillery battle was raging in Umayyad Square, between the General Staff building and the radio station.

I recalled what a man, whom I knew only slightly, had whispered to me some days earlier, as I walked down my own street and he fell into step beside me, his own shoulder nearly brushing mine, telling me that "Jasim" would strike his own blow soon. In all honesty, I paid no real attention to what this passing stranger had whispered to me, since I found nothing appealing about him, neither in his own manner nor in what he said, and I steered away from him as I walked, so as not to keep walking alongside him any further.

I told "Ali" of this "whisper," and he doubted that Jasim held anywhere near enough real strength to justify any such "move" on his own part.

As news kept pouring in of a "fierce battle" in Umayyad Square, our hosts, good people of the Kurdish community, proposed that we stay with them in this very house, or else that the two of us move to some safer house to hide in, until matters became clearer.

A teacher who had been sitting with us vacated his own house for us, moving with his own family to another relative's house, and we slipped into it at night, listening to the radio station, which kept broadcasting rousing military music, as though the country were locked in some decisive battle with Israel itself. The weather was hot, yet we decided not to open a single window facing the street, so that the house would appear unoccupied, or as though its own family had simply gone off on a trip somewhere.

We chose not to light a single lamp, as a further precaution, and spent our own night in total darkness.

Food would reach us whenever the lady of a nearby house found some opportunity to slip past the curfew barriers imposed on the country.

This same lady told us that an officer and a few soldiers had broken into Mr. Ali's own house to search it at night, with his own family still inside. One of the soldiers fired his own submachine gun at the refrigerator, which had switched on right in front of him, making a sound he had never heard before, being unfamiliar with such things in his own village, and his own survival instinct took hold, emptying his own magazine into the refrigerator's own door.

No one was hurt at the time, but Abu Urwa's own third child, only five years old, fell victim to a terror so severe he never recovered from it, and met his own Lord's face a few months later.

We heard, over the radio, the Council of Ministers' own statement on "the failed conspiracy," which read as follows:

Brothers and sisters:

Today, exactly what we had expected, for days now, indeed for months, has finally come to pass, at the hands of those who denied the 8 March revolution, disowned it, and turned their backs on it, thereby turning their backs on one of the very pillars of tripartite union, we mean the revolution that put an end to the secession, to the secessionist apostasy, and cleared the widest possible path for our own Arab people to enter union through its own widest gate.

This vile sedition, and the crime its own conspirators committed against the people and against its national goals, has now been crushed.

Victory here belonged to faith in principle, and to those who believe in the loftiest of causes, the cause of union.

Lieutenant General Amin al-Hafiz, Deputy Martial Law Administrator, delivered an address on the radio, saying:

This was a base, filthy conspiracy, its own threads woven by these tyrannical rebels (he clearly meant President Abdel Nasser), to realize their own putrid ambitions, one that hired hands, professional traitors and turncoats bound together by cheap greed, attempted to carry out, presuming, dwarfs that they were, to lay a hand on the very seat of heroism and the very homeland of sacrifice.

Indeed, yesterday morning, these hired hands surged forward, a mere handful of mercenaries, worshippers of the dirham, forming their own battalions under the command of these very traitors, men the army itself had already cast out from its own ranks.

And though yesterday morning's own battle ended quickly, uprooting the remaining tendrils of this conspiracy will end even more swiftly still, in the courtrooms.

Military martial-law tribunals have already been formed, to prosecute the enemies of the army and the people, and their own rulings will be immediate, final, and merciless, severing hands and breaking necks alike."

The legislative decree establishing these martial-law tribunals was in fact issued, bearing the signature of "General Louai al-Atassi, Head of the National Council for the Leadership of the Revolution," summarized as follows:

Article 1: A military martial-law tribunal shall be formed in Damascus, and wherever else necessary in other cities, taking up its own duties the moment this legislative decree is issued.

The tribunal's own president shall have the right to hold its sessions wherever he sees fit.

Article 2: The martial-law tribunal shall be made up of military officers (a president, four members, and alternate members), appointed by martial-law orders issued by the Martial Law Administrator or his own deputy.

Article 3: The martial-law tribunal shall have jurisdiction over the following crimes:

a. The crime of sedition that took place on 18 July 1963, and those who incited it, along with the acts that paved the way for it.

Article 6: "Insofar as it does not conflict with the direct right of defense, and at the tribunal's own discretion, the tribunal shall not be bound by the procedures set out in the laws currently in force, in any of the investigative or trial proceedings. Trials shall be held in secret, unless the tribunal's own president chooses to make them public."

Article 7: This tribunal's own decisions shall be final and binding, subject to no form of legal review or appeal, whether in form or in substance, nor on grounds of jurisdiction, conflict of jurisdiction, or any other objection raised during the proceedings.

Article 7 (again, sic): All rulings issued in absentia shall become enforceable the moment the convicted party is apprehended, and shall not be subject to objection or appeal in any form whatsoever, unless the party surrenders voluntarily, in which case he shall be retried.

I hold clear views on legislation of this kind, concerning exceptional criminal tribunals, which I set out in detail, in particular, in the final two chapters of my own book In-Depth Studies in Comparative Criminal Jurisprudence. This is not the place to dwell on them further.

I will not repeat here my own condemnation of them, nor my own denunciation of their own establishment, for violating constitutional principles, public morality, and the very foundations of criminal legislation. I can find no better description for them than that they stand as a badge of shame upon the very regime that establishes them, and upon the country that opens its own arms to them.

At the same time, a communiqué was issued "banning movement throughout the Syrian Arab Republic, effective from this Thursday morning until further notice. Anyone violating this order exposes himself to being shot dead."

Field Marshal Abdel Salam Aref, President of the Iraqi Republic, congratulated the Baathists on crushing the conspiracy, in a telegram he sent them, saying:

"We congratulate you, government and people alike, on crushing this base conspiracy.

We hope you will trust that the Republic of 14 Ramadan remains committed to placing the Iraqi armed forces at the disposal of the National Council for the Leadership of the Revolution in Syria."

Syrian radio likewise broadcast the text of a telegram from Ali Salih al-Sa'di, which read:

"Crush them to the very bone. Crush every lackey and follower, these peddlers of slogans and servants of reaction. Move without hesitation, and strike without mercy at whoever stands behind this filthy conspiracy against our revolution. Let these vile heads be crushed."

We began learning the names of those behind the movement from the official communiqués.

The Deputy Martial Law Administrator (Amin al-Hafiz) broadcast a communiqué reading as follows:

"The following fugitive criminals are to be arrested: Colonel Jasim Alwan, General Muhammad al-Jarrah, Youssef Muzahim, Colonel Ra'if al-Maari, Major Haitham al-Ayoubi, Major Akram Safadi, and Captain Mustafa Rajab.

A reward of ten thousand Syrian pounds has been set for whoever captures any one of them. Anyone helping to hide or shelter these criminals shall be punished with death."

The radio also broadcast a series of "urgent" communiqués containing the names of those sentenced to death by the martial-law tribunal convened at Mezzeh prison, sentences already carried out.

The number executed on the very first day reached nineteen, "conspirators who betrayed the revolution and thereby earned death." They were: Colonel Hisham Shabib, chief of the signals staff; Chief Petty Officer Kallash, who was chanting "long live Gamal Abdel Nasser" even as the bullets tore through his own chest, as fellow inmates later told me; Chief Petty Officer Shehadeh Massoud; Sergeant Jihad al-Atrash; Chief Petty Officer Hussein Ghoneim; Ahmad Yassin Muflih; Youssef Muhammad Attallah; Lutfi Mahmoud Madariyah; Ali Ahmad Abu Issa; Chief Petty Officer Muhammad Abdullah al-Youssef; Chief Petty Officer Omar Ismail; Muhammad Abdel Hadi; Suleiman Mahmoud al-Ahmad; Mahmoud Muhammad Hamdak; Issa Mahmoud Issa; Muhammad Ahmad Mustafa; Musa Khuzai Hamad; Ali Qasim Dakhlallah; and Saleh Shaaban.

Some hours later, on this same Friday (19 July 1963, corresponding to 25 Safar 1383), Martial Law Order No. 19 was issued, containing the names of "those wanted for investigation," all of them prominent unionist figures in the country, still at large.

Here is its text, which I reproduce for the record and in their own honor:

Pursuant to Military Order No. 2, dated 8 March 1963, declaring a state of emergency,

The Deputy Martial Law Administrator hereby orders the following:

Article 1: The persons named below, wanted for investigation, shall be considered fugitives from justice, and every security officer is ordered to arrest them wherever found:

Rashed Qatini, Hussein al-Qadi, Hani al-Hindi, Jihad Dahi, Sami Sawfan, Adib al-Nahwi, Zuhair Aqqad, Hussein Halak, Mustafa Hallaj, Adham Mustafa, Abu al-Nour Tayyara, Shukri Faisal, al-Hakam Darwaza, Nazih al-Hakim, Ahmad Ismail, Hasan Diab, Sayyah Abu Aslah, Fadl Nasreddine, Ali Bouzo, Abdel Samad al-Fatih, AbdulWahab Homad, Kamal Hamza, Mahmoud Arab Said, Abdel Ghafour al-Mosuti, Fouad Shabani, Adnan al-Majarkash, Awad Turkawi, George Habash, Marwan Sabai, Mamdouh Ahdab, Abdullah Jasouma, Captain Jasim Ways, Muslim Dairani, Shafiq al-Saleh, Hammoud al-Bakfani, Dhawqan Qarqout, Aziz Jad, Muwaffaq Jaafari, Ahmad Mahamid, Faisal Ta'ani, Mamdouh Habbal, Adnan al-Zein, Abdel Fattah Farfour, Maher Khayyara, Hamza al-Hafez, Nazir Ammar, Mahmoud Atwa, Ibrahim al-Rahib, Daoud Rahmeh, Farouk Quwatli, Kamal Karaz, Nawwaf Ghazaleh, Ma'moun al-Dandash, Ahmad Abdel Salam, Muhammad Dannoura, Imad al-Harakeh, Lieutenant Mahmoud Dannoura, and Shawqi Daqqaq.

Article 2: Should the above-named persons fail to surrender themselves to the authorities within 48 hours, effective from 8 a.m. on Sunday, 21 July 1963, they shall be considered accomplices in the crime of sedition that took place in Damascus on 18 July 1963, their own movable and immovable property shall be seized in preparation for confiscation, and they shall be brought before the military martial-law tribunal the moment they are apprehended, to be tried under its own provisions.

Damascus, 20 July 1963

General Amin al-Hafiz

The names of Talat Sidqi, Abdo Hakim, and Munir Breikhan were later added to the list.

Finding my own name among those wanted for investigation came as no real surprise to me, for I had long expected to be pursued, sooner or later.

I asked the lady in whose house we were staying, the one bringing us our own food, to contact my family and bring me word of them.

She graciously did so, and my own wife told her that soldiers from the army had come searching for me twice at night, searching the house thoroughly each time, and that our two children and their mother had been gripped by real terror, with no one there to steady their own nerves. A great sorrow and a deep anxiety for my own small family took hold of me.

There is nothing shameful in such fear. It is related of the Prophet, peace be upon him, that he said: "Children make a man miserly and cowardly," meaning that a father reckons everything carefully, to secure his own children's livelihood, and sets aside his own courage, once he knows it might bring harm down upon his own family.

I felt that my own continued hiding had become a danger, both to my own family and to the good man who had vacated his own house for us, especially since the apartments above and below his own were occupied by two officers and their own families, both supporters of the Baathist regime.

I told Abu Urwa plainly that I had decided to surrender myself to the authorities.

He tried to talk me out of this decision, given the circumstances, in which reason itself no longer had any real place, and people acted on nothing but the principle of "kill or be killed." He tried to tempt me into fleeing with him to Lebanon instead, since he had the means to guarantee our own safe passage across the border, on foot, through the mountains and the fortress passes.

But I, knowing full well that I had played no part at all in what had happened, nor held any opinion on it, embraced my friend, and we said our own farewells, hoping God would one day bring us back together, once this dark cloud had finally lifted.

He reached Beirut himself, a few days later.

I left the apartment for my own small car, which I had left, two days earlier, in a spot near our own hiding place.

I found myself facing the problem of the curfew, for the area was thick with heavily armed soldiers, stationed behind barricades, or stretched out behind heavy machine guns, or perched atop tanks blocking every road. It was clear they would stop me from passing. But I was determined to reach my own house, not far off, to pack a "travel" bag, and call the military police from there myself, to have them send someone to arrest me.

God eased my own car's path, for a non-commissioned military police officer happened to be walking nearby, and I offered him a ride, to drop him off near the Teachers' College building (today the Ministry of Education), where his own battalion was camped. He climbed in, and the car made its own way past the soldiers' own watchful, astonished eyes. Seeing an officer beside me put them at ease, and they took me for a civilian on some official errand.

From my own house, I contacted the military police, and told the officer I would wait for them there.

I confess this was a reckless gamble beyond measure, for communiqués announcing the execution of death sentences against the detained kept coming, one after another, over the radio, and a wave of madness had seized "the victors." Falling into their own hands, then, carried no guarantee of safety at all, for the taste and the smell of blood alike were stirring an appetite for even more of it, exactly as Ali Salih al-Sa'di had demanded of them, in his own ill-omened telegram sent from Baghdad, urging them "to crush to the very bone." The number of those arrested reached sixty-six.

As for the number killed in the battle itself, it reached eight hundred dead, with hundreds more wounded, as Dr. Adel Zaaboub notes in his own book The Arab Charter.[1]

An hour after my own phone call, an officer arrived at my house and introduced himself. I picked up my own suitcase of clothes, bid farewell to Umm Ghassan and the children, and closed the door behind me, on my own way into the unknown.

I shall leave this world, sooner or later, but I will never forget the sight of my own little girl and boy, tears streaming down their own faces, for they had come to know exactly what "soldiering" meant, in terms of chivalry and honor, when their own home was searched twice in a single night, by these "guardians of the homeland." What eased my own heart somewhat, though, was the composure and "strength of character" I saw in their own mother, and her own fortitude in facing this misfortune.

I climbed into a military jeep, and sat in its own back seat, between two armed soldiers, with the officer sitting beside the driver. The car sped through streets emptied "of any man walking or any bird flying," save for the soldiers and their own officers, and the very weapons we had prepared for our own wars with Israel, now turned inward instead.

From that very moment, life became nothing more than a hope. Which is why the officer did not frighten me, once we found ourselves on the road to Mezzeh prison, between two high hills, when he suddenly shouted at the driver, in a loud voice: stop. The car stopped abruptly, and the officer and the two soldiers got out. I remained in my own seat, watching them, bracing myself for the very worst. But they returned to the car, in what turned out to be nothing more than a rather absurd little performance, and let me out in front of the prison's own gate. I was formally handed over, and received.

And I entered the labyrinth.

From this very hour, I no longer had pen or paper of my own, to record my own "memoirs." Everything I write from now on, then, is simply what has remained in my own memory.

Nor will I set a date to events from now on. My own memoirs will instead be nothing more than an account of scattered events, ones that happened to me, or that I witnessed myself, and which have remained etched upon the very core of my own heart.

I hope to remain faithful in recounting them, as best I am able, a third of a century after they took place, years during which my own life took an entirely different course.

Time works upon memory the way wine works upon the mind.

But events that carve out a place for themselves in the very cells of the brain remain capable of resisting both faintness and forgetting, the deeper and more painful they are.

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Endnotes:

[1] P. 121.