Before These Memoirs - Part 22: The Bombing of the Author's Car and al-Qudsi's Living in Tangier Remark

Tuesday, 3 July: The Bombing of My Car

We were asleep in our beds when the sound of a huge explosion shook the street. I got up and went out to the north balcony, and was stunned by what I saw, tall tongues of flame rising from my own car, the new, clean Ariane. I looked at my watch, and it was only a little past two in the morning. So the secessionist criminals had done it.

I hurried to the telephone to notify the emergency police, and by the time the water tanker arrived, the car had already become nothing but a charred iron skeleton.

A public prosecutor summoned me, having come "to investigate."

He asked me: why didn't you go down, while you watched your own car burning? I told him: am I a water tanker, to put out the flames myself?

He went on dodging around with his questions, in a way that made clear he had been "coached":

Did you leave the door unlocked? No, I lock it as I always do.

But the investigation has confirmed a bomb was placed inside it? I told him: you're only just starting your investigation now, while the fire is still burning in the car, so how has the investigation already confirmed something no evidence has yet established? Besides, is it really so difficult for a criminal apparatus "specialized" in protecting people's own money and honor to pick a lock, or break a door, and place whatever it likes inside?

From questions as pointless as these, I realized the man was simply "mad," and that there was no use arguing with him.

The commander of the internal security forces, Mati' al-Samman, arrived, in high spirits, chatting and laughing with one of his own officers. He then came over to me and began speaking to me of his own lofty conception of Arab nationalism, and the depth of his own belief in it, and of how a junior Egyptian officer had once held sway over a senior Syrian one. He stood, he said, with the union, not with the Egyptian army. Colonel Suhail Sharqiya, the intelligence director, was also present, and never uttered a single word, though he signaled to me with certain movements of his head that he all but knew who was responsible.

And who does not know these men, so fanatically devoted to their own regionalism that God has blinded their hearts to every virtue, imagining that through such criminal acts they could kill a noble idea, one whose roots run deep and whose branches reach the sky? Had they possessed any real sense, they would never have committed such follies, follies that do nothing to secure their own leaders' footing, nor do anything to encourage us to help them climb out of the abyss they have thrown themselves into.

We remained, in our own homes and in our own homeland, with our own dignity and honor intact.

Brigadier General al-Samman, director of the internal security forces, wrote in his own memoirs (p. 278): "...after great effort and a lengthy investigation, it was said that the owner of the car was not himself entirely unconnected to the causes of the incident, being a former Minister of Justice, and it was rumored that he had received the price of a new car, by order of His Excellency the Leader-President, as compensation for his own antique car, which he had since had repaired and restored to good condition."

Regrettably, what was "said" and "rumored" was pure invention on his own part, for the car was not an antique at all, but a new one.

Nor did I ever "receive" a car, or the price of one, from Abdel Nasser, for such conduct is not in my own nature or character. It is rather those who do receive such things who live off the tables of whoever pays the most, whether oil-rich Arab states or others, or colonial powers, states they threw themselves upon the doorsteps of the moment they scattered like autumn leaves, the day the winds of truth blew against them.

It is worth noting that five cars normally stood parked along the same curb where my own car was parked, but that night it stood alone, with no company at all, until its own fate came for it. It is certain that the owners of the other cars had been "officially" informed to move them elsewhere.

The assault on the Nasserists did not stop there. General Muhammad al-Jarrah was himself physically attacked near the Damascus governorate building.

Two criminals also tried to assault Nihad al-Qasim while he was having lunch with friends at a restaurant.

The night watchman who guards our own neighborhood confided in me that two intelligence men had come by around one in the morning, and asked him to go to a café at the end of the street to fetch them a cup of tea. When he asked them, what tea, at this hour? they scolded him and sent him off with threats, telling him not to come back for two hours. He later learned that some security men had blocked off the roads leading to where my car was parked. As he was making his way back, he heard the sound of the explosion.

An initial official report put the amount of dynamite used to blow up the car at five kilograms, while a second official report put the amount at twenty kilograms.

These reports were later submitted to the court.

Cairo radio broadcast news of the bombing, citing the Associated Press, and praised my own political stance, describing me as one of the leaders of the United Arab Front, resisting the secession. It was as though the newspaper owners had known of the bombing in advance, for their papers came out against us with lies and obscenities befitting their own culture and patriotism.

The newspaper Al-Nasr (issue of 4 July) said:

"It is widely believed, across various circles, that the assault on Ratib al-Husami, followed by the bombing of AbdulWahab Homad's car, were both staged by the Nasserist agents themselves. As for the purpose and the goal behind it, that can hardly remain hidden from anyone."

The criminal scheme requires these agents to stage as many sensational incidents as possible, in the period separating us from 23 July (the anniversary of the fall of the Egyptian monarchy).

The newspaper Damascus wrote as follows:

"An attack was carried out against Mr. AbdulWahab Homad after midnight yesterday, when a time bomb was placed in his car, parked in front of his house near the Women's Teacher-Training College (now the Ministry of Education, on al-Shahbandar Street), which exploded at two o'clock this morning, scattering debris into the sky. A tremendous blast was heard as a result. A nearby car was also damaged.

Homad is a former minister and one of the signatories of the Nasserist politicians' statement."

The newspaper Al-Ayyam (issue of 10 July) wrote:

"The experts' report on the bombing of Dr. AbdulWahab Homad's car has confirmed that the amount of dynamite responsible for the blast is estimated at ten kilograms, and that it was placed inside the car, not outside it, as proven by the car's complete destruction. The dynamite was placed hours before the incident, and the process of placing it would have taken at least three to four hours, something no person or group of persons could have done in the location where the car was parked, a busy main street crowded day and night with pedestrians and traffic, all of which indicates that whoever placed the dynamite possessed the car's own keys."

How clever, and how knowledgeable you are, my "friend" the journalist Nassouh Babil!

Has it never happened to you that you lost your own car keys, and called a locksmith, who opened it for you in a matter of seconds?

Is it really so difficult for a state apparatus to break such a lock in less time than the blink of an eye?

Nor did Mr. Bashir Awf leave himself out, adding his own bucket to the well, commenting on the "Nasserist Five's" statement by saying: "Although we believe that the assault on Mr. Ratib al-Husami, and then the assault on Dr. AbdulWahab Homad's car, were both engineered by the Nasserists themselves, staged to throw dust in people's eyes and to justify future attacks on the enemies of Nasserism, despite all this, we declare openly, before all witnesses, that we condemn this aggression."

The newspaper Sawt al-Arab (a Damascus paper owned by Abdel Qader al-Qawwas) quoted Mrs. Alia al-Solh (daughter of the Lebanese leader Riad al-Solh) as saying (in its issue of 13 July): "Union with Abdel Nasser must return at once, or else the Arab people in Syria will never rest, and will never be allowed to settle, and sectarian strife and civil war will inevitably break out, just as it did in Lebanon. And if the spark that ignited the movement in Lebanon was the killing of Nassib al-Matni (whose assassination heralded the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war that lasted more than fifteen years), then in Syria, its spark will be an incident involving one of the five Nasserist leaders in Damascus."

And so the journalists of Damascus began citing, as evidence that civil war was about to erupt in Syria, a statement from a female journalist, no one quite sure whether whoever had relayed it was telling the truth or fabricating it.

The newspaper Al-Manar published a fabricated story claiming that several explosions had taken place in Homs, and that one of those responsible had confessed "that he would, by God, burn cars in revenge for Homad and al-Husami." Damascus radio broadcast this "fabrication" on Thursday, 2 August, at three in the afternoon.

Around eleven at night, Dr. al-Qudsi called me, offering his condolences, and asked that we, the five "Nasserists," meet with him the following evening.

Wednesday, 4 July

I would like to reveal a secret I have never disclosed before.

It is that we, the "Nasserists," were, truly and honestly, capable, given the broad support we enjoyed, of stirring up the widest unrest in the country. Yet the path we had bound ourselves to follow was one of compassion, persuasion, and great patience.

Which is why, when a colonel, formerly commander of President Abdel Nasser's own guard and now governor of his own province, proposed to me that we blow up certain government buildings, or answer the secessionists' own assaults with matching assaults on their own persons, openly and in the streets, I refused the proposal in the strongest terms. For we are men of a cause, while they, driven by despair and terror at being held accountable for their own "secessionism," are pushed into committing follies unfamiliar to our own country, the product of the anxiety and the nervous, psychological state they now find themselves living in.

I quoted him the old Roman saying: when Zeus wishes to destroy a people, he first robs them of their reason.

And my own sense was that the secessionists had lost all control of their own nerves.

Which is why we had to leave them "to simmer slowly in their own broth."

I told him that government buildings belong to the state and the homeland. He accepted this from me, though he was genuinely capable of carrying out what he had proposed to me.

In the evening, Dr. al-Qudsi received us in his office at Muhajireen. As I walked in to see him, I felt a lump rise in my throat, and a tightness settle over my own spirit.

For we had once been the closest of friends, despite certain reservations, and had together founded the most honorable and upright party in this country's history, the People's Party. We had gone into detention together, resisted military rule together, and shared both hardship and ease together.

And today we stood face to face as adversaries, he presiding over the loathsome, criminal secession, we representing a pure unionist direction that had never once been a matter of debate or disagreement in our own past party meetings, nor in our own later political philosophy.

Nazim al-Qudsi received us and spoke with us, as was his habit, with warmth and courtesy. He opened by saying: the bombing of my car may well have been the work of Saudis or Jordanians, meant to spread strife and unrest in the country. He added that he had made it clear to "the security men" that if they failed to uncover the hidden circumstances and arrest those responsible, "the people" would have every right to believe the whole affair had been engineered by the security men themselves.

Of the newspapers writing as though possessed, he said they were paid papers, and that he had opposed granting them this sweeping freedom.

He told us that he and his government had been sincerely pursuing the path of union with Egypt, but that President Abdel Nasser had cut off this path himself, saying, in his own most recent speech, "that he wanted the Syrian government to genuinely express the people's own view." He now found himself, he said, caught between restoring the chamber of deputies (which had dissolved itself) and holding general elections instead.

We encouraged him to resume contact with Cairo, and told him plainly that the reins of power had slipped entirely from civilian hands. We told him bluntly that his own Prime Minister was nothing but a fickle clown, carrying out the Communists' own scheme step by step, and that he thought nothing of delivering a speech one day steering the state's own policy to the right, only to reverse course completely the very next morning the moment he felt himself under some pressure. We were therefore at a loss over how to deal with him, since he was like mercury, impossible for anyone to hold onto.

This criticism of his own Prime Minister seemed to land well with him, for he let out a booming laugh, as though relieving some inner distress of his own.

When I asked him directly whether he believed the government truly held the reins of power, he said: frankly, we're living in Tangier.

And how true this remark was, for the man had become "ruled" by a whole array of competing power centers: the army command, the internal security command, the intelligence director, military intelligence, the council of the military command, the secessionist officers, and whatever the era's own opponents were plotting, openly and in secret. Each of these power centers acted exactly as it pleased, and at times found themselves working at cross-purposes entirely. I marveled at al-Qudsi's own comparison of the Syrian situation to the strange arrangement that had once governed the Moroccan city of Tangier, whose administration had been divided among several Western powers, each holding its own separate zone, under international treaties.[1]

And so, since the matter no longer lay in his own hands, and he knew full well that he held nothing of real power beyond its very name, why did he go on clinging to his own present position, so unbefitting of him?

We took our leave of him, without truly knowing why he had invited us at all. But as I shook his hand, I remembered Badawi al-Jabal's own verse about President Shukri al-Quwatli:

He had grown so diminished that even our own grudge against him faded.

We did not weep over him, but for him.

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Endnotes:

[1] For an example of these disputes between the army commander (Zahreddine) and the commander of the internal security forces (Mati' al-Samman), see al-Samman's own memoirs, p. 287, and Zahreddine's memoirs, p. 391 and following.