Appendix 10, Part 5: Mourning Rushdi al-Kikhya: Akram Zuaiter's Tribute

And Akram Zuaiter wrote the following, dated 4/9/1988:

And So the Ideal Leader Rushdi al-Kikhya Has Passed Away

He said, seeing me troubled and weighed down with gloom: "What article will you give us this week?" I said: "A word of mourning, or a few lines of loyalty, for the late Rushdi al-Kikhya." He said, as if reproaching me: "Your articles of mourning have followed one after another.. as if you had dedicated yourself to lamenting your departed brothers." He wanted to go on, as a critic or as an adviser, so I said to him: "Listen to what the poet Amin Nakhla, my late friend, said in answer to you":

They said: every day he comes with an elegy.
Woe to them, they find no sweetness in loyalty.
From the loss of my dear friends, and from
so many farewells, my weeping has no end.
They crossed the bridge to the other world, and
the caravan is far away, and the drivers' song has faded.
How many of their phantoms before my eyes
have come and gone in the face of the night.
At times I close my eyelids so that
I may sink into the illusion and hold on to the meeting.

Now then, the death of the great Syrian leader from Aleppo, Rushdi al-Kikhya, in Cyprus, and his burial there, made the news of his death fall twice as hard on those who knew him, let alone on his friends and those who valued him, and made the grief twice as eloquent.. In the flood of sorrow for the great departed, as memories and thoughts crowded one after another, the mind could not let go of the fact that his death and burial outside the country that bore him, far from the homeland he had vowed himself to serve and from the comrades who loved him and were as devoted to him as he was to them, point to the ordeal amid which that generation of patriotic leaders bade this world farewell! Rushdi began his public life by joining the National Bloc organization in Syria under the leadership of the heroic fighter Ibrahim Hananu, about whose revolts against the French in northern Syria and whose unique leadership of the national movement I wrote in an article in Asharq Al-Awsat on the occasion of his commemoration.

The young Rushdi al-Kikhya rose to prominence in the ranks of the National Bloc under Hananu's banner, and his gifts drew many who saw in him the living example of a clean conscience, sound thinking, honorable conduct and refined taste, so that he won every parliamentary election in the city of Aleppo and enjoyed the respect of all his rivals and the esteem of his political opponents. His speeches in parliament, especially when he was leading the opposition, were marked by sobriety, sincerity of tone, clean language, honest and fair criticism, and skill in the logical analysis of the questions before the house.

Rushdi had no advanced university training in law, yet he outdid the lawyers when arguing legal questions; he was one of those exceptional men who educated themselves through reading, research and study.

For reasons of his own he broke away from the National Bloc and formed the People's Party and led it, and a large body of young men, deputies and educated people joined him. He was the axle of its millstone and the pole of its tent, and he carried its financial burdens, spending on it from his ample farm income.

The two parties competed for the nation's sympathy: the National Party, heir of the National Bloc, and the People's Party. I bear witness that party passion never dragged them into a rivalry unworthy of them, or into partisan positions that harmed the national interest, and that they never let opportunists with a past profit from the dispute and slip into their ranks, so that they resembled Britain's two parties, Labour and the Conservatives. Rushdi rose above trivialities in his party struggle; and the care we knew in him for fulfilling his social duties and keeping up his relations with everyone, whether he befriended them, worked alongside them or opposed them politically, left the storms and upheavals of Syrian politics unable to shake his standing. And although he was against military domination and an enemy of coups, so that he went to prison with Syria's leaders, the chiefs of the patriots, in al-Shishakli's time, he kept his standing. I remember that Gamal Abdel Nasser, when he was Egypt's prime minister and Muhammad Naguib its president, asked me in a private meeting about Syria's leaders of the day, and when I named Rushdi al-Kikhya among them, he gave me to understand that he knew enough of his rank and qualities to need no introduction. And when the power of the military grew in Syria, and, as we know, with the union of Syria and Egypt and then the secession, nothing came from Rushdi that was unworthy of him or of his unionist principle. Among the positions of Rushdi al-Kikhya that I remember is this one: when Husni al-Za'im carried out his ill-omened coup in 1949 and arrested President al-Quwatli, the intervention of some influential figures in the Arab countries with al-Za'im led to President al-Quwatli being allowed to leave prison and leave Syria once al-Za'im had obtained his resignation from the presidency, and al-Quwatli addressed his resignation, in two lines, to the Syrian people and to no one else. Years after he had gone away from Syria, when things had changed, parliamentary rule had returned there, and at the urgent wish of the Syrian people, al-Quwatli came back to Damascus with honor, a return through which the Syrian people atoned for what the coup makers had committed against the man of independence.

Then came the battle to elect the President of the Republic. Al-Quwatli and many of his supporters felt that his candidacy for the presidency amounted to what is called the restoration of his good name, and that his victory would be Syria's verdict washing its hands of the coup and condemning the wrong done to its president. But Mr. Khalid al-Azm, who had been al-Quwatli's prime minister when al-Za'im's coup took place and had been thrown into prison with him, put himself forward for the presidency against al-Quwatli. He was a man of influence, ability and standing; the military leaned toward supporting him, Arab political currents worked for his victory, and some deputies rallied round him. At this point Rushdi al-Kikhya and his parliamentary bloc, and the independents led by Dr. Munir al-Ajlani, took the honorable and courageous stand of declaring their support for al-Quwatli, although there was no party tie, or any other tie, between them and him, believing that their stand was a condemnation of coups, a support for civilian rule, and an honor to the man who had steered the national ship to independence. Throughout his political career Rushdi shunned office, and at one time, had he wished to be President of the Republic, he would have met with near unanimity among the deputies; it was with his approval that Dr. Nazim al-Qudsi was chosen for it, a man whose loyalty to his brother al-Kikhya remained exemplary. To him first of all, may God lengthen his life, our condolences go today for the loss of Rushdi, God rest him.

Yet Rushdi, who shunned office, did not hesitate after the coup that Sami al-Hinnawi carried out against Husni al-Za'im, when al-Hinnawi set the noblest of examples by declaring that his mission was over and that he was handing power to Syria's politicians and leaders (a precedent repeated only in the stand of Swar al-Dahab in Sudan after he delivered it from Nimeiry). Rushdi did not hesitate to take the Ministry of the Interior in the government formed at that time by the senior leader of the patriots, the venerable President Hashim al-Atassi, and Rushdi supervised the elections to the Chamber of Deputies, which were exemplary in their fairness, and some of the cabinet's own members lost to their rivals.

Because Rushdi was one of the representatives of the federal idea, certain quarters launched a campaign against the al-Atassi cabinet and against al-Hinnawi, but it did not weaken the cabinet, which led Syria on to what passed for security and stability. Al-Kikhya was elected Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, and he stayed true to his principles, a loyalty that marked his Arab course in support of the cause of Palestine, the cause of evacuation from Egypt, and the causes of liberation in the Arab countries of the Maghreb.

Worth mentioning here, in reviewing the course of the great departed, is that his movable and immovable property was confiscated, together with what remained of his farmland after the part taken under the agrarian reform that began in the time of the union and was extended under the regimes that followed.. Rushdi moved to Lebanon and lived in Beirut with his dignity intact and his standing high. Well-meant efforts were made with the authorities to have his confiscated property and money returned to him; to that end he was asked to submit a request petitioning for the release of his property and its return to him. But with the pride and the high spirit he was known for, he refused to submit the required petition, and so his property stayed confiscated!

Illness pressed on him, and he underwent surgery at King Khalid Hospital in Riyadh, then moved to Cyprus.. After a time his illness grew worse. His close friend Maarouf al-Dawalibi (a former prime minister of Syria) told me that word of how grave his condition was reached Prince Abdullah, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who telephoned him in Cyprus and offered to send a private plane to carry him to the Kingdom for treatment, or to any other country for the same care. He answered that he was not strong enough to get up, apologizing and thanking him. A few days later God took him in Cyprus, and it was said that he had asked that no one be troubled with moving his body from there, and that he be buried there.

May God have mercy on Rushdi al-Kikhya, who lived honorable and proud, and may He place him with those whom God has blessed, among the prophets, the truthful, the martyrs and the righteous, and excellent are they as companions (echoing Quran 4:69).