Year 1961 - Part 3: King Farouk's Inshas Farms and Nasser's Private Tirade Against Bourguiba

Wednesday, 1 February

The President invited us to attend a performance at the Cairo Opera House, which we attended with him, to watch the Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow perform.

These performances carried a different artistic flavor entirely from what I had seen the evening before at the Auberge.

I had already had the experience of watching this same troupe at its own main headquarters, in what was then the Soviet capital, which I attended with a Syrian parliamentary delegation in 1955, headed by my late friend Rafiq Bishour. Senior Soviet leaders were present at that same performance.

Thursday the 2nd

A sudden invitation went out to the ministers, to attend a "closing" session at Qubba Palace. I believe this was one of the rare occasions when debate grew as heated as it did at this session.

Every objection remained mere ink on paper, for the President announced his own final decision, to impose currency controls in the Northern Region, along the same lines already in force in the Southern Region, forbidding its own export except by permission of the monetary authority.

This decision was hardly a surprising one, for every Third World country imposes controls on foreign currency, to protect it from being squandered on consumption, and to reserve it instead for the needs of development.

Even some of the great powers have imposed such controls, France among them, during certain difficult periods, to keep its own currency from becoming a target of international speculation.

An agreement was reached between the President and Dr. Husni al-Sawwaf that he would leave the Ministry of Economy amicably and take up the governorship of the Central Bank in Damascus, left vacant by Dr. Ezzat Tarabulsi's own resignation (or dismissal).

Ezzat is known for his own honesty and integrity, though he belongs to the free-market school of economic thought, especially where currency is concerned.

Mahmoud Riad writes in his own memoirs (p. 243):

"Husni al-Sawwaf, the Syrian Minister of Economy, objected to the nationalization measures of January 1961, holding the view that the economic situation in Syria differed from conditions in Egypt. Al-Sawwaf left the Ministry of Economy and was appointed governor of the Central Bank.

The soundness of Husni al-Sawwaf's own economic judgment was later confirmed, for the result of the nationalization was that the Syrian private sector turned instead to establishing numerous industries outside Syria, in Lebanon especially..."

Friday the 3rd

I visited, today, the Inshas farms once owned by the deposed King Farouk, a veritable paradise on earth.

I toured it for several hours, accompanied by one of Egypt's senior finance officials. The man overseeing the farm insisted on presenting me with a gift of strawberries, a fruit not especially common in Syria. I accepted it with thanks, but insisted on paying for it. The man tried to avoid letting me do so, but I gave him the choice between accepting payment or taking the gift back, and he took the "payment," visibly embarrassed.

On the way, I found myself reflecting, wondering:

Was I right to embarrass the man in this way? And how, exactly, would he pay what he had given me into the state's own treasury?

Sometimes one finds oneself in an unexpected situation, at a loss for how to act. But I feared the official might have to pay for the gift out of his own pocket, and did not wish to add insult to injury by charging him for it as well.

God Almighty spoke the truth when He said:

"How many gardens and springs did they leave behind, and crops and noble dwellings, and comforts they once delighted in. So it was, and We caused another people to inherit them. Neither heaven nor earth wept for them, nor were they given any respite" [Quran 44:25-29].

And how true, in Farouk's own case, were the words spoken by the mother of Boabdil, the young king of Granada, when he surrendered ignobly to the Spanish, and sat weeping over his lost kingdom:

"Weep like a woman for a kingdom you did not defend like a man."

Friday, 3 February

We returned home, to our own family and to work left idle for days.

People's own affairs had been left at a standstill by our absence, a state of affairs that badly needs a real, lasting remedy. On the plane, I read these magnificent lines by Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri, from a poem in his own collection "Saqt al-Zand," in which he longs for his homeland, and I too felt this very same longing for my own country, even as Cairo had, for the time, become our own towering capital:

"The meadows of al-Liwa, once graced by your presence, are now mere ruins today, yet in sleep your own image still haunts them, ever unbound.

Your meanings are many, though the words that hold them are but one, for your own glance is a slayer, and your own hand a slayer too.

I came to hate, for your sake, the palm tree, ripe and laden though it was, and found myself charmed instead by the humble acacia and desert shrub, for your sake alone.

For your sake I came to love the wilderness of al-Samawa and its own sandgrouse, though both bore me nothing but slander and rebuke.

I carried from the lands of Syria the sweetest of draughts, and shared it out among a people camped in the barren waste.

Does she, the woman adorned with earring and pendant, know that I am roused to a roar, by a lion mightier than any other?

O house of hers, in the land of sorrow, your own visiting is near enough in distance, yet terrors lie between it and me still."

Of this last line, a certain narrator tells the following story:

I was walking once across the Rusafa bridge in Baghdad, when a beautiful woman passed by, and one of the passersby said to her: God have mercy on Ali ibn al-Jahm. She answered him: and God have mercy on Abu al-Ala as well. The matter intrigued me, so I caught up with the woman and asked her, under oath, to explain the meaning of these two remarks. She said: by "God have mercy on Ali ibn al-Jahm," he meant this line of his:

"The eyes of the wild deer, between al-Rusafa and the bridge,

stole my heart away, from a place I know, and from a place I do not know."

And I answered him: God have mercy on Abu al-Ala as well, meaning his own line:

"O house of hers, in the land of sorrow, your own visiting is near enough in distance,

yet terrors lie between it and me still."

Among the sweetest lines in this same poem are these words of the buried man of Maarra:

"A songstress once sang to us, in the house of Sabur, a bird of the branches, singing sweetly at every twilight, restless in her song.

I told her: sing as you please, for your own song, O dove, is, to me, mere wailing all the same.

The fair women all around you envy you the necklace at your own throat, adorned with a figure of fragrant musk.

I wished the wine might grant me, for one night's rapture, some forgetfulness of how I ever came to find myself in such a state.

I marvel that I find myself in Iraq, on the very brink of ruined hopes, with neither companion nor wealth to my own name.

Bereft of my own people, of both ease and family alike, grief enough between plenty and want.

The water of my own homeland was ever the sweeter draught, though the water of al-Karkh flowed like tawny wine itself."

These last lines hold a special place in my own heart, for they came to us in the very scholarship examination through which I won my own place, in 1938, to study at the Sorbonne, where I placed first. Had it not been for this excellence, I would never have won the scholarship at all, for political reasons of a kind all too familiar.

Saturday the 4th: Regulating Currency Transactions

If lightning flashes, expect the thunder to follow. And flash it did, and the thunder was not long in coming.

The President issued Decision No. 11, dated February 1961, concerning the regulation of foreign-exchange transactions in the Northern Region.

Its first article read as follows:

"No dealing in foreign banknotes or traveler's checks, nor any transfer of currency into or out of the Northern Region, nor the conclusion of any obligation denominated in a foreign currency, nor any clearing operation involving a transfer or full or partial settlement in foreign currency, nor any other foreign-exchange operation, whether spot or forward, shall be permitted, except under the conditions and terms set by a decision of the Minister of Economy, and through banks and exchange brokers licensed by him for this purpose."

Article 2 provided as follows:

"Neither the currency of the Northern Region nor foreign banknotes may be imported or exported, except under conditions set by the Minister of Economy. Exempted from this are those arriving in the Northern Region, who are entitled to bring in with them foreign currency of any amount whatsoever, by any means, just as non-residents may take out all or part of the currency they brought in, in the same manner they brought it."

Article 5 required anyone exporting goods abroad to repatriate their own price within three months of the date of shipment.

The decision provided for severe penalties against anyone violating its provisions.

Viewed from a socialist standpoint, there is nothing to fault in this decision.

And viewed from the standpoint of serving the state's own interest, its issuing was a duty. Even so, I voiced my own concern, during our discussion of this decision, over its effect on the region's own economy.

Our own merchants have wide experience in bringing in and taking out whatever cargo they please, even paper currency itself, national or foreign.

And they have partners in Lebanon.

The ancestors of the Lebanese, the ancient Phoenicians, were the most skilled merchants of the ancient world, the most capable of crossing the open sea to reach a customer, or a shipment of goods.

"Today's news comes at a price, tomorrow it comes for free."

Sunday the 12th

Dr. Husni al-Sawwaf, Minister of Economy, was appointed governor of the Central Bank of Syria, replacing Dr. Ezzat Tarabulsi, whose own term ended at the close of January 1961, this appointment confirmed by Republican Decision No. 36, dated this same day.

With this, this fine, gentle-mannered minister, broad in his own knowledge and sincere in his own convictions, found some relief.

But his own "problem" was not yet over, for he now had to prepare himself to take part in difficult decisions, and to carry them out himself.

The autumn rains would not be long in falling.

And tomorrow, indeed, is close at hand.

It falls to the region's own Minister of Economy now to "pull the chestnuts from the fire."

Saturday the 18th: The Founding of Two University Cities

The National Assembly approved Law No. 289 of 1960, providing for the establishment of one university city in Damascus and another in Aleppo.

The law provided for the collection of 1 percent of the revenue actually collected under the budgets of the municipalities of the Syrian region.

Arab and other states, and institutions, may erect independent buildings or wings attached to the university city's own buildings, provided they obtain the approval of the university council.

Donations are accepted from donors wishing to help students.

To complete this law, Law No. 5, dated 18 February 1961, was issued, providing for the establishment of the "Financial Authority for the Assistance of University Students," whose purpose is to help university students complete their own studies, by granting them interest-free loans and other forms of assistance.

This authority has a board of directors, chaired by the executive Minister of Education.

At the Sorbonne, back when we were students there, there was an institution of this very kind, one that needy students, especially those cut off from contact with their own families by the raging fires of war, turned to for loans.

They would sign a pledge that they "would repay their debt once their own circumstances allowed."

A number of Syrian students benefited from this institution.

Some of them repaid their own debt, exactly as agreed.

Others simply treated it as a gift never to be repaid.

Saturday, 4 March

President Abdel Nasser has been in Damascus for some days now.

President al-Quwatli invited him, and invited the members of the government as well, to a dinner at his own home. I noticed that Abdel Nasser holds President al-Quwatli in very high regard, and takes the greatest care to show him every courtesy.

Whether al-Quwatli's own path toward the Union arose from an absolute conviction in the Union itself, or from a mixture of genuine conviction and simply going along with the politicized officers, he remains, in the eyes of the citizens, one of the elder statesmen of patriotism.

There is no doubt that Abdel Nasser knows full well who came to him "imposing" the Union upon him, yet he knows well how to treat men of standing.

A "Malian" delegation, from the African state of Mali, visited Damascus in these very days, headed by its own Minister of Interior.

This minister spoke French, and Abdel Nasser did not, so he chose me to serve as interpreter between them.

After the dinner banquet concluded, the President withdrew privately with the minister, and I was the third person present.

The visiting minister spoke of his own country, saying that Mali, along with the Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, are countries where Muslims make up nearly seventy percent of the population, with a small number of Christians, the rest holding to local pagan beliefs. He noted that Islam was spreading there steadily, and that he had come to the Republic to request a commitment to teach the Muslims there the true nature of their own faith, at the hands of Islamic scholars, and to request technical assistance, so that they might free themselves from French tutelage.

The President promised him he would send officers and teachers who spoke French, to help Mali free itself from France's own stifling grip.

The Malian minister said he had passed through Tunisia, and met with Habib Bourguiba, president of its Republic, and noted that he enjoyed great popularity among his own citizens, and that most of his own attention was devoted to reaching a solution to the Algerian problem, since the presence of the "Algerian army" on Tunisian soil worried him, and he feared its own consequences.

He noted that Bourguiba felt no hesitation in declaring that he wished to become the leader of the Arab Maghreb, now that its own king had "failed" to achieve this leadership for himself.

I noticed a look of displeasure cross the President's face, for I know full well the depth of his own dislike and resentment toward Habib Bourguiba. He therefore gave himself free rein to criticize him, launching a fierce attack on him, so much so that I asked him: are these remarks, Your Excellency, meant for translation? He said: yes, translate them for him.

The President pressed hard the accusation that Bourguiba was working secretly with the French to establish an economic union bringing together France (the colonial power) and the states of the North African Arab world, so as to sever every tie between the Maghreb Arabs and their own brothers in the East, an economic union that also threatened the African states neighboring the Maghreb.

We all despise this "Supreme Fighter," whom we once knew as an outstanding freedom fighter, back when he was a refugee in Damascus, only for him to later turn his back on his own past, throwing himself, with his own "blue eyes," as he once told a French newspaper correspondent, to set himself apart from the Arabs, onto a crooked path, unhesitatingly calling for recognizing the usurping state of Israel and coexisting with it.

This was before making peace with Israel became "an irreversible strategy" for so many others as well.