Before These Memoirs - Part 27: Cousin Major Adnan Nabulsi, Barred From Visiting, Later Killed by an Israeli Missile

Monday the 6th

I have cut back on leaving the house, to avoid running into trouble.

I listened today to press commentary broadcast on Cairo radio, and it too was in the harshest, most violent terms against "the secessionist traitors." It threw itself blindly into inciting officers and soldiers to disobey any order to suppress unionist movements, and claimed the Syrian people had erected barricades in the streets, resisting the secessionist government's own men, speaking of casualties among the young demonstrators against the regime.

In answer to this incitement to revolt within Syria, the Syrian newspapers throw themselves into attacking Cairo's own policy, reserving their filthiest slanders and curses for President Abdel Nasser personally, while never forgetting, at the same time, to heap their own vile abuse on us as well.

Today, the Communist-leaning newspaper Al-Tali'a, whose editors remain anonymous, published a long, sprawling "article" titled: "Homad... the Nasserist..."

It bore the signature of an Aleppan lawyer, Taher Khayyat, who had already "toyed" with me once before, leaving not a single lie or fabrication unsaid about me.

It seems Mr. Bashir Awf, owner of Al-Manar, associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, had run short of worthwhile material of his own, for he, God rest his soul, rushed to crown his own newspaper's front page by reprinting Al-Tali'a's article word for word, as though he had stumbled upon the very key to liberating Palestine from Zionism's own grip.

He did, however, give the article a somewhat more refined title:

"A Letter to AbdulWahab Homad."

What a wretched letter it was!

The article included a description of Mr. Rushdi al-Kikhya, and quoted me as having said of him: "I have never in my life seen a political leader and popular figure more sincere and patriotic than Rushdi al-Kikhya."

To this very day, this remains exactly my own opinion of the late al-Kikhya.

I have in fact written a dedicated book about him and about the People's Party, as a tribute to his own integrity and patriotism. This does not mean, of course, that I find nothing at all to take issue with in him, but these are the same shortcomings found in any human being God ever created, given that none of us is infallible.

It is nobility enough in a man that his faults can even be counted.

Tuesday the 7th

The razor has now reached the very chin.

A cousin of mine informed me today that the air force command had ordered my own cousin, pilot Major Adnan Nabulsi, to stop visiting me, on pain of legal action against him.

Adnan, and a number of his own fellow officers, are unionist officers, filled with a spirit of vengeance against Israel.

Their own conviction is that Syria alone cannot stand against Israel's own military, armed to the teeth with the latest weapons,[1] backed by unlimited American, European, and Zionist financial support, and that those who carried out the secession, and those who embraced them for their own base gains, are men who, even granting them the benefit of good intentions, committed the single greatest historical error against Arabism and Islam.

Some errors are graver than the gravest of crimes.

This was not the first time my own cousin had been warned against visiting me.

I regret to say that I once asked him to visit me myself, since his own wife's family had asked me to intervene with him on some matter, and I felt obliged to do so. He never visited me again after that, except once, in a state of the deepest misery. I recall him telling me: "News of me will reach you soon, and news of two of my own comrades in the air force as well."

This sorrowful news did indeed come, though only after some further time had passed.

His plane was shot down by an Israeli missile, over land lying between Syria and Israel, and his own family could barely identify his own disfigured body, once Syrian forces had managed to "recover" it, forty days after his death.

This was after the secession's own fall.

The state "honored" him by naming a preparatory school in his own birthplace, Aleppo, after him. And what harm has ever come to a house it did not already carry within itself.

Wednesday the 8th

On the margins of the trial of the "Nasserist" officers implicated in the Aleppo movement, in which four captains were killed, one prominent lawyer, Mr. Hani al-Bitar, announced he had refused to represent the defense, which had offered him a tempting sum (25,000 pounds), preferring instead to join the private prosecution.

Perhaps "free of charge," out of chivalry alone!

I do not know how any senior lawyer could possibly justify betraying the confidences of defendants who had offered to have him represent and defend them, for whatever fee, large or small.

He has every right to accept, and every right to refuse.

But he has no right to broadcast the secrets of those who trusted him, who placed their own rights in his hands as a sacred charge. Nor does he have any right to "help" stir public opinion against them by condemning them in the press before any court has ever condemned them at all.

Whoever lives long enough, sees strange things indeed.

No one begrudges him joining the chorus of trumpeters and flatterers, but it is his own duty to remember that the penal code recognizes a crime called breach of professional confidentiality.

Thursday the 9th

Mr. Abdel Khalek Hassouna arrived in Damascus, to discuss with the Syrian "government" the complaint this government had lodged with the Arab League against the government of the United Arab Republic, "for interfering in its own internal affairs."

Mr. Hassouna is the Secretary-General of the Arab League. I had known him before the union, when I represented the Syrian government at a meeting of the League Council to approve the government of Sudan's own admission as a member (that was in 1956).

I met him again at the United Nations General Assembly hall in New York, when I represented the United Arab Republic, during the union, at the International Monetary Fund's own council meetings held in Washington in 1959, attended by President Eisenhower, who delivered a speech there.

What caught my attention was that His Excellency our own Secretary-General, seated in the same box as myself, spent the time enjoying a nap, complete with snoring, while the delegates of various countries took turns at the podium presenting their own countries' demands.

Today's issue of the Lebanese magazine Al-Usbu' al-Arabi arrived, and I read in it the following passage: "For the first time since 28 March, the second secessionist coup, a direction calling for immediate union with Egypt has appeared on the political stage, following the granting of press freedom, embodied in five political figures: Dr. AbdulWahab Homad, Ratib al-Husami, Nihad al-Qasim, Abdel Samad al-Fatih, and Ali Bouzo.

Mr. AbdulWahab Homad and his brothers' own bloc may be considered the only political bloc to have appeared on the political stage so far, even though its members are well-known Syrian political figures.

This bloc has, for its part, engaged in open political activity, issuing statements and taking positions on more than one crisis. We do not know for certain whether it will eventually transform into a political party."

I noted two things about this long article:

First, that in every one of our statements we called for a union built to last and endure, that is, a union arrived at through calm negotiations between representatives of the Syrian and Egyptian states. Second, that we are a movement formed by a group of brothers for a specific national purpose, working toward Arab unity, beginning with Egypt and Syria. We never once considered transforming ourselves into a political party.

Today the Damascus newspaper Sawt al-Arab surprised us with a sensational report, publishing a list of "the coup's own ministry," meaning the ministry to be formed should the coup against the secession succeed, claiming I would serve in it as Minister of Culture and Guidance.

This news is, without doubt, pure invention.

This newspaper feeds off the scraps from Saudi tables, steered in its own repulsive direction by Mr. Akram al-Hourani. Al-Hourani, as a friend of his, and of mine, told me, has grown increasingly harsh toward us, demanding, in his own private gatherings, "that the Nasserists' necks be cut."

He had once been among the most prominent of the "Nasserists," before turning against the union and the unionists. In a conversation relayed to me about our own army commanders, they are said to be exploiting al-Hourani and the Communists only temporarily, as necessity dictates for their own survival, but will never let him actually reach power.

The story goes that the officers will agree to restore the dissolved chamber of deputies, on condition that twenty-five deputies be removed from it, and five ministers be dismissed from the government, Ahmad Abdel Karim among them.

Friday the 10th

We "Nasserists" live in a repugnant atmosphere, under continuous press campaigns, and in fear of the intelligence service's own "dogs" attacking us in the street.

My two sons arrived from Aleppo today. I had sent them there to be safe, within the family's own circle.

Their arrival only added to my own worries, especially since they would now have to be sent to school.

On this same day, a daughter of my cousin, Major Adnan, died, and he telephoned me asking for my help in burying her at her final resting place.

Intelligence command had forbidden Adnan from contacting me, but he did not know how else to handle this sorrowful matter.

I went to his house, and we accompanied the child to her burial.

In the evening, I sent word asking whether I might visit him to offer my condolences, and he said no one was visiting him at all, and begged me to come with my family, to console his grieving wife.

Such is the atmosphere of freedom now hanging over this country, under the presidency of the democratic Dr. President Nazim al-Qudsi.

Late that night, I heard on our own radio the text of "the gracious royal address" delivered by King Saud, upon his own "blessed" return from a trip to the West.

This "address" was the height of triviality, both in its subject matter and in its utter disregard for every rule of grammar the late Sibawayh himself once laid down.

A Bedouin Arab, controlling inexhaustible oil wealth.

From the flow of his own wells, he showers his own accountants and his own hangers-on, in East and West alike, and in Syria too, journalists foremost among this procession.

And yet, despite the conciliatory logic contained in "Friday's article" by Mr. Mohamed Hassanein Heikal in Al-Ahram today, in which he condemned the logic of killing, assassination, and bombing, "which, had we truly wanted, we could easily have carried out ourselves," as he put it, our own people here found this atmosphere of enmity rather to their own liking, keeping their grip firm around their own enemies' necks.

And we make the finest scapegoat, one they use to threaten every potential enemy within.

I sat listening to Mr. Zuhdi al-Jasser speak at my own house, scarcely able to believe what I was hearing.

He said Rushdi al-Kikhya had told him he had reproached Nazim Bey for appealing to us for support of the government's own statement, meant to inaugurate a new unionist era with Egypt, only to disown what they themselves had announced to the public.

This was followed by his own disowning of us, and his failure to do anything at all to stop the flood of attacks against us, or to prevent the assaults.

The President of the Republic told Rushdi al-Kikhya:

That his own government, with himself at its head, had drawn up a secret plan for dealing with Abdel Nasser, resting on conciliatory language in public while applying harsh suppression internally, and that it had not been within his own power to reveal state secrets to me, lest I press ahead further along my own political path.

But what actually happened was that when I met with Dr. al-Qudsi on 11 July last, at a quarter past two in the afternoon, with my four brothers present, he took me aside privately for a while, and assured me he supported the government's own statement and its unionist direction.

He now admits that this very statement was a trap set to catch their own opponents, and a brief respite to catch their own breath.

I would never have imagined that Nazim al-Qudsi, under any circumstance, would agree to be a tool, if not the very architect himself, in this tragedy of playing both sides at once.

I learned today from a senior judge, a friend of mine, who came to me breathless, as though bringing me glad tidings, that he had heard from General Namiq Kamal, the army's Chief of Staff, that the command would be summoning me, along with Ratib al-Husami, for an extended discussion on finding a way out of the current situation.

By the end of the day, Ratib told us that the head of the Second Bureau (intelligence) had asked to see him and Ali Bouzo, to review the situation.

We read in the newspaper Al-Manar, aligned with the Brotherhood, a lengthy account of "a martyr of Nasserism" in Homs.

This martyr was Dr. Nasib Salahani, killed two days earlier. Al-Manar claimed the Nasserists themselves had assassinated him.

It was confirmed to us, by brothers who came specially from Homs to tell us, that the man in question was in fact a longtime Communist, who had fled Syria during the union for this very reason, but returned once the secession took place.

The true cause of the crime was purely a matter of personal morality, with no connection to politics whatsoever.

Yet "the bearded gentleman" at Al-Manar had no scruples at all about fabricating and slandering.

Tuesday the 14th

I can say, without fear of being mistaken, that Damascus today lives through an atmosphere much like that of 1956-1957, but in reverse.

It is "al-Hourani's own men" and the Communists who now control the machinery of government, with Prime Minister al-Azma, himself accused of Communist leanings and of being a wrecking ball against the very being of Arab nationalism, backing them and working alongside them.

This is the exact opposite of what the Baathists worked toward in the 1950s, when they raised the banner of Arab unity, and stood with Abdel Nasser specifically.

Today, they fabricate any lie at all to pin on Abdel Nasser and his own circle in Syria, and the latest fruit of their own genius came in a conversation the intelligence director had, at his own request, with Ratib and Ali Bouzo, in his own office.

He received them warmly, and told them that reports had reached the government from one of the Syrian embassies, containing "reliable" information that Abdel Nasser was preparing a new plot to destabilize Syria's own being, involving the assassination of Ratib al-Husami (a native of Homs), to spark unrest in Homs, followed by the assassination of Ali Bouzo, to stir the Kurds' own resentment against the regime. This series of assassinations, he said, might well continue further still.

He asked them both to take every possible precaution to protect their own lives, and ours as well. General Namiq Kamal's own interest in meeting with me may well have been for exactly such a conversation. We could never bring ourselves to believe that Abdel Nasser would ever stoop to such base conduct, so at odds with his own convictions, especially if we ourselves were the intended targets.

These are nothing but sick delusions, ones the fearful and the ill-intentioned work tirelessly to spread among the people, for purposes only they themselves truly know.

Among these purposes: driving us out of the country. This is exactly what the intelligence officer hinted to Ratib during their own conversation, "to ensure our own safety."

Wednesday the 15th

Far from this troubling political atmosphere, we heard a remarkable piece of scientific news: that the (friendly) Soviet Union had sent into space a craft carrying the cosmonaut Nikolayev, followed by another craft, piloted by the cosmonaut Popovich. The first orbited the earth 61 times, the second 45 times, and both still ride the saddles of their own steeds, galloping through the unknown void, sleeping well, eating well, and enjoying good health.

President Kennedy, President of the United States, acknowledged that the Soviets had gotten the better of his own country in this race.

In the manner of chivalrous knights, he sent a warm telegram of congratulations to his own "bitter friends." Our own Syrian newspapers seized on this news, splashing it across their front pages, but only to remind their readers "of the hollow rockets launched by the agent Nasser," as one of these obscene, paid-for papers put it.

Today, Mr. Issam al-Attar, Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, finally broke his own long silence. The newspapers published remarks he made at a press conference, in which he launched a fierce attack on Bashir al-Azma's government, accusing it of having become a mere vehicle for the Communists, since it supported them and handed them sensitive posts within the state.

These same newspapers gave him no quarter, attacking him in turn and accusing him of "serving Abdel Nasser by dividing the ranks closed behind the era."

A friend told me that Maarouf al-Dawalibi stood behind this campaign, having managed to direct a large number of religious figures to Sheikh Makki al-Kattani's own summer residence in Zabadani, where they decided to demand the government's dismissal, and the restoration of Dr. "Abu Muhammad," Sheikh Maarouf himself, to the head of the government.

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Endnotes:

[1] It has since become known to anyone following political events that Israel (the so-called, as we used to call it) possesses a nuclear reactor at Dimona, a gift from the French government, out of spite toward the Arabs and toward Abdel Nasser, who had been assisting the Algerian revolutionaries in their own war of liberation. Ben-Gurion himself acknowledged this modest "gift" in a conversation with American President Kennedy in 1961. See Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Emotions of War, Emotions of Peace, Book 2, July 1996, p. 114.