Year 1961 - Part 5: Gagarin's Flight Into Space and a Visit to the Ancient Justice of Lake Qarun

Wednesday the 15th

The Council of Ministers met, chaired by Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj, running until just before the pre-dawn meal. This day is the eve, the final day of Ramadan.

And yet the Minister of Rural Affairs did not forget his own "snack stands."

He returned once more to demand large sums of money from me, to adorn the summer resort villages with these stands. I explained to him the deteriorating financial situation, and he only grew more stubborn.

He wants the money, and the money wants finding, but as for where I am to find it, that is my own affair to sort out.

I once asked him: do you really approve of my imposing taxes on the people in these lean years, with agriculture in ruin, capital fleeing, and people at a loss for their own food and their children's clothing?

He said: and why not? Equality must be achieved, taking whatever exceeds the rich's own needs.

But where, exactly, had the rich gone by now? To Lebanon, France, Egypt, Morocco. Today, al-Sarraj was in a positive mood toward Aleppo, and voted in favor of setting aside a quarter of a million lira to begin establishing a Faculty of Law at its own young university.

The university's new director, Mr. Tawfiq al-Munajjed, was watching the lips of the Minister of Higher Education closely, so I slid a folded note across the table to him, which he read, and afterward no longer looked in my direction at all.

In it, I had told him: propose the sum, and I will approve it for you on the spot.

He never dared propose it, since his own minister opposed this university, in both form and substance.

I had forced it upon him, and it had become a fait accompli, though one his own heart never warmed to.

Thursday the 16th: Eid al-Fitr

We prayed the feast prayer at the Umayyad Mosque.

Since the days of al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik, the Umayyad caliph, this sacred house has been a refuge of faith, a banner of government, and an emblem of Islam.

The government received well-wishers offering their own greetings for the feast.

This is a tradition one can only welcome.

The ministers stand in a row, arranged by their own seniority on the protocol list, and the master of ceremonies begins ushering in the well-wishers, group after group.

Former ministers first, then the head of the Supreme Court and senior counselors and judges, then the army commanders, the governor, and senior officials.

Then the doors are thrown wide open for the ordinary people to enter in their own multitudes.

The ushers offer them hospitality, and they sip their own bitter coffee before returning home. What I noticed was that the number of "ordinary" people at this feast was greater than at previous ones.

Had they sensed the conspiracies being woven around them, and resolved to show their own support for the state?

Past experience does not encourage drawing any conclusion at all from such fleeting appearances.

Monday the 20th

Brothers of mine from the "dissolved" People's Party had lunch at my home: Rushdi al-Kikhya, Maarouf al-Dawalibi, Ali Bouzo, Ahmad Qanbar, Rashad Jabri, Rashad Barmada, and Shukri al-Rahmoun al-Shihabi.

I am happy at these gatherings, for they bind our hearts together. My own brothers are not unaware that the alternative to the Union, which spared them so much trouble, is a return to military rule, under a Baathist or reactionary façade, Sabri al-Asali, Akram al-Hourani, Khalid al-Azm, though they would be no more than a mere curtain.

The politicized officers would return to their own factionalism and infighting, and the country would return to chaos and coups.

Rashad Jabri, known among us for his own hardline rightist views, grew heated, and said:

"He wished Abdel Nasser would crush his own head under his boot, rather than see the officers or the communists return to power."

In his own unfailing calm, Rushdi said: God forbid, God forbid.

Tuesday the 21st

The Algerian question seems to be building toward something, and has entered a new, unfamiliar stage.

French Prime Minister Monsieur Debré spoke of the coming "referendum" there, and, for the first time in the history of the French occupation, an official of his own standing openly acknowledged the possibility "that Algeria might choose separation from France."

While a small number of French leftists support Algerian independence, fleeing conscription rather than fight against those in the right, the foolish majority still remain "convinced" that Algeria is French soil, one of the mother country's own overseas provinces.

This statement, coming from a prime minister said to be of Jewish origin, is certain proof that the weapons in the freedom fighters' own hands have managed to convince the French government that it would otherwise be waging an eternal war, one that would exhaust every last penny and every last round of ammunition it has, and it has little enough of either to begin with.

Its own franc lies at rock bottom.

Is not their own appointed hour approaching? Is the dawn not near?

Friday, 31 March: To Cairo

I was summoned to Cairo to study the Syrian budgets.

I decided to bring the children and their own mother along with me, since they had their own ten-day Easter holiday, to which we could add two or three more days.

We "inaugurated" one of the three planes Arab Airlines had recently purchased to reinforce its own fleet.

The plane was an enormous jet, a DC-6B, and we passed over the mountains of Lebanon as gently as a mild breeze passing over the treetops.

We crossed Lebanon's own maritime region, into the open sea's own airspace, its blue waters appearing black to us from the air.

The Nile Valley then revealed its own smiling face, winding like a snake through the pale-colored sands. To our left, the Suez Canal lay open like a page from the book of history, recording the suffering Egypt's own laborers endured, to make it fit for the passage of the colonial powers' ships, between Britain, France, and Holland, and India, Indochina, and the thousands of islands of Indonesia.

We settled into an apartment I had rented on Giza Street, facing the famous zoo.

The children were delighted to catch sight of the actress Shadia, who used to swan about in her own youthful glamour as she came and went from her own apartment, in the very building where we were staying.

Egypt is a land of plenty, cheap prices, and comfortable living.

I sent the driver to bring us fish for lunch, from a famous shop in Tahrir Square, and he returned with two large platters, holding several kinds of grilled and fried fish, along with a plate of appetizers.

The bill came to only about two Egyptian pounds.

The four of us had dinner at a cafe on the Nile, facing the Shepheard's Hotel, its main dish charcoal-grilled kebab.

This evening's dinner also cost me two pounds.

In those days, when I used to stay at one of the hotels overlooking the Nile, a room facing Tahrir Square cost three pounds and thirty piastres, while a room facing the Nile cost four pounds and forty piastres.

Sunday, 2 April

I was summoned to a meeting held at the President's home that evening, to study the Syrian budgets. His three deputies attended, Abdel Latif Boghdadi, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, and Nour al-Din Kahhaleh, along with central Minister of the Treasury Abdel Moneim El-Kaissouni.

The meeting ran on until a late hour of the night.

The President was in an unusually cheerful mood that evening, more so than usual at his own smaller gatherings, and told us a series of biting Egyptian jokes, some of them at his own expense.

I told them a story of my own with a certain moral, which made us all laugh.

In 1950, I had been rapporteur of the committee that drafted the 1950 constitution, and we had announced, in the newspapers, an open competition to design an emblem for the Republic, one suited to this new era of independence.

Among the entries we received was a letter whose sender wrote:

"If you have decided to design an emblem for the gendarmes (the rural police), then I propose the following emblem: an oil painting showing an enormous colored eagle, holding, in the talons of one leg, several chickens bound by their own feet, heads hanging down, and, in the talons of the other leg, a tin of clarified butter."

He plainly meant to disgrace these policemen, stationed in scattered villages, as men specializing in preying on these peaceful birds.

"Lunch at one village elder's, dinner at another's," whether given willingly or extracted through shame.

The President laughed from the very depths of his heart. His own good-natured, uncomplicated rural character returned to him in that moment, and that "gravity" dictators typically cultivate for themselves fell away entirely, and I truly found myself wondering: how could this man ever be accused of dictatorship?

I, who never once brought him a decision or decree that he did not sign without a moment's hesitation?

Naturally, I speak here of Abdel Nasser the man, and of the President of the Republic I dealt with as one of his ministers, not of freedom of the press or a multiparty system, for we know full well he accepted the Union only on these two conditions.

And a third condition, keeping the army out of politics.

He kept faith with what he had pledged to his Syrian negotiators, and we accepted what the officers had agreed with him on, until convictions themselves would change with time.

He may well have been amused by the story because he himself had been a peasant, growing up in the countryside, and his own family may well have suffered more at the hands of their own police than Syrian peasants ever suffered from their own gendarmes.

Wednesday the 5th: The President Speaks of the Circumstances of the Union

We held a second meeting today, with the President at his own home, attended by the same men as before, except for Vice President Abdel Latif Boghdadi, who was absent.

We continued discussing the Northern Region's own financial situation, and agreed on the budget figures for 1961/1962.

Once we had finished with the figures, the President found he still had some time left to continue his own "evening" with us.

He spoke to us of "the story of the Union," saying:

When the Syrian officers came to Cairo proposing full merger union, the President refused to receive them, and delegated Field Marshal Amer to speak with them instead.

The Field Marshal laid out the President's own conditions before them, in complete candor and clarity:

No parties, and no politics in the army.

They agreed unanimously, and only then did the President receive them, and the Union agreement was reached.

He wondered aloud: what has changed, that "yesterday's comrades" should now turn against the very thing they themselves proposed, and agreed to?

Salah al-Din al-Bitar once came to him complaining of "al-Sarraj's own very serious conduct" (he did not specify what it was), so he summoned al-Sarraj and asked al-Bitar to speak of these very serious acts al-Sarraj was supposedly carrying out. He grew flustered, and began stammering, and it soon became clear that everything he had said about al-Sarraj was pure invention of his own imagination.

When the Baathists resigned, Mr. Khalil al-Kallas, the Baathist Minister of Economy, did not submit his own written resignation in solidarity with his brothers. The Field Marshal, then in Damascus, was asked to sound out al-Kallas on whether he intended to resign with his own brothers or not. The Field Marshal summoned him and put the President's own question to him, and he said he was staying in his own ministry, and would not resign.

He carried on with his own work for a few more days, then submitted his own resignation after all.

I told him of a conversation that had taken place between myself and Akram Deiri, who had taken al-Kallas's place at the Ministry of Economy, without naming him, its gist being that Minister Deiri, a former officer from Damascus, believed the army had a national mission it had to fulfill before returning to its own barracks. I remarked to my colleague Deiri: you were carrying out a political scheme, not a national one, forming your own factions and cliques, and very nearly reached the point of massacring one another.

The Union saved you from your own truly pitiable state, and I was not being unfair in saying so.

Most of the Syrian army's officers were, in fact, disciplined men, soldiers in every true sense of the word, and deeply resentful of politics creeping into the army, diverting it from its own essential mission, defending the homeland, instead splitting it into tribes and factions plotting against one another.

Abdel Nasser's own strong hand had removed four hundred of his officers, so I was told, into civilian and diplomatic posts, and with this, the army returned to its own barracks (though only for a time, regrettably).

Saturday the 8th: On Lake Qarun

We went to see Lake Qarun, where local officials had placed the very boat Abdel Nasser rode in when he inaugurated the High Dam.

Books of history and law recall that the ancient Egyptians used to place the coffins of their own dead on this lake's eastern shore, and hold a trial for the dead, its subject being that anyone wronged by the deceased had the right to press his claim, against the deceased's own heirs, for whatever remained owed to him.

The body could not be carried to its final resting place, on the western side of the lake, until the deceased's own account had been cleared.

I recall, in passing, that the ancient Egyptians had an organized system of justice, and that the pharaoh used to appoint priest-judges to rule on legal disputes.

They used to sit for the people with their own hands held behind their backs, and their own eyes fixed on the ground.

The reasoning behind this posture was that the hands, hidden behind the back, signified they would never reach out for a bribe, and that the eyes fixed on the ground meant the judges were bound not to look at the litigants themselves, so as to treat them equally without seeing them, or being swayed by their own appearance.

It is quite possible that the ancient Greeks borrowed this lofty view of justice from the ancient Egyptians, for they too symbolized justice with a blindfolded figure (so that she could not see the litigants), holding a scale in one hand (to weigh the two parties' claims) and a sword in the other (to strike down the unjust wrongdoer).

Wednesday the 12th: Gagarin in Space

The Russians launched a spacecraft into orbit, carrying the cosmonaut Gagarin aboard. The news stunned the entire world.

Those Arabs who dislike the United States, for its own biased, unjust stance in favor of Israel, myself among them, gloated over this news, delighted at this harsh blow to its own arrogance and condescension toward other peoples.

Thursday the 13th

The President invited us to a "lighting of the Sphinx and the Pyramids" ceremony, expressing his own keen interest in tourism.

In his own view, tourism is an "industry" that, properly developed, could bring "tourist" countries a great share of their own need for hard currency. He cited examples of countries that have become masters of the tourism industry, France, Italy, and now Spain, countries otherwise lacking in the tourist attractions that draw foreigners.

For example, the monuments drawing foreigners to Spain are the Islamic ones. In Egypt, there are both astonishing Pharaonic and Islamic landmarks.

And in Syria, there are Roman and Islamic monuments of the very greatest beauty and craftsmanship. To lend the event an international flavor, the President invited a number of dignitaries, foremost among them the Crown Prince of Greece, to a dinner held there.

The dinner was prepared by Ramses II's own chefs, at the table of this lion who has been contemplating eternity for four thousand years now.

Monday the 17th

Today is Syria's own Evacuation Day.

On this day, the last Frenchman left the country, in 1946.

I took the opportunity of my own presence in Cairo to arrange an appointment with the President's own physician, Anwar al-Mufti. He found my body, praise God, to be in sound health.

He advised me, all the same, to rest, wherever I could find a way to do so.

On this trip, we had the chance to spend a full day at one of the chalets by the Pyramids, at the invitation of a gracious Egyptian brother, Mr. Hussein Raafat, retired deputy Minister of Interior, and his own fine family.

Our brother Riyad al-Maidani, Minister of the Tripartite Union, and his own wife, were with us as well. I felt the true warmth and generosity of Egyptian hearts, laid open before us.

Without pretense, and without any airs at all.

Am I not a son of the Northern Region, the precious part of their own Republic, and of ours?

How sweet a meeting it is, between Damascus and the Land of Kinana, after a forced separation lasting centuries upon centuries.

At the chalet, young "Damascene and Egyptian" children were playing together, children or grandchildren of some of the guests.

Mrs. al-Maidani looked at them closely, and remarked on the difference between the fair faces and light-colored hair of some, and the darker complexion of others, some clearly showing an African heritage.

She turned to the seated guests (men and women alike) and said:

"I do hope this Union will improve the Egyptian race."

Her own "joke" was met with forced, awkward smiles, and looks of astonishment. Had they wished, they might well have quoted al-Mutanabbi's own words:

"The soul has its own needs, and you have your own sharp wit,

so that my silence, before it, becomes both statement and answer."

But no one said a word, for we were, after all, their own guests.