Before These Memoirs - Part 32: Dr. Sami al-Jundi's Account of Being Held Thirty-Six Days in a Prison Latrine

Friday the 5th

For some time now, I had been thinking of visiting Mr. Nabih al-Azma at his own home.

First, because I live on the very same street he does.

Second, to thank him for his own strong support of the memorandum we submitted to the President of the Republic. The man received me with his own familiar warmth and overflowing energy, in spite of his own seventy-five years.

Nabih al-Azma is a politician known for his own ardent patriotism, and for his own active part in the war in Libya, fighting to free it from the yoke of Italian colonialism. He oversaw the founding of the National Party in the early 1950s, and led it for a short time, before falling out with its own senior members, veterans of the national struggle, and resigning to withdraw into his own home.

He was among the most fervent advocates of Arab unity, never one to compromise or bargain on the question of union. The moment we broadcast our own letter to Dr. al-Qudsi, he rushed at once to support us.

For this very support, which he signed alongside Prince Bahjat al-Shihabi and the thinker and man of letters Izzat Darwaza, I decided to disturb his own solitude.

The moment I asked for an appointment, through his own son, our friend Hisham, he set a time for me. He received me in his own pajamas and dressing gown, since it was no longer easy for him to put on his everyday suit.

Without any preamble or introduction, he launched straight into speech. He spoke of his own ministry in the days of the Syrian Kingdom, under the crown of King Faisal I, and of how France betrayed Syria, when General Gouraud occupied our country in spite of every treaty and international covenant.

He launched a fierce attack on President Shukri al-Quwatli, holding him responsible for the homeland's own disasters, for having failed to conduct himself well in the presidency.

He reproached him bitterly for supporting the secession, wondering aloud, as he spoke, how a man once titled "the First Arab Citizen" could ever support tearing two regions apart. He said of Syria that it was a country that had worked for fifty years toward union, a union that had, in fact, come to pass, so how could the "secessionists'" own patriotism ever bear, before God and before history, the responsibility for this filthy massacre?

He criticized Nazim al-Qudsi bitterly as well, saying he had telephoned him the very day my own car was blown up by his own state's men, and found his answer, "that he had heard nothing at all of this story," deplorable. His voice would rise whenever he grew agitated, then settle back into calm, before rising once more.

He spoke of what he was thinking of doing, saying: I am an Arab and a Muslim, and I feel my own responsibility before God and before my homeland, which is why I have decided to issue a statement in the newspaper Al-Baath (published in those days), exposing the crimes and betrayals that have been committed. My own conscience will find no rest until the day I see this statement printed in the press.

When his son remarked to him that no good could come of such a statement, he flared up at him and said: I will issue this statement, and then let them hang me if they wish, or throw me in prison. I cut the visit short, so as not to further tax his own great heart with these repeated fits of emotion, and asked myself: what kind of faith is this, so mighty and thundering, in union itself?

How far removed this is from the faith of the deceivers, who strangle a union already brought into being, for better and for worse, in all its virtues and all its flaws, and feel no shame at all in raising the false banner of "comprehensive union." Even so, he did direct a gentler reproach at Abdel Nasser, for having "smuggled Abdel Hamid al-Sarraj" out of the secessionists' own prison, and holding him up as a great national leader.

It seems he does not much care for al-Sarraj, and lays a portion of the blame for the secession at his own feet.

Saturday the 6th

Our friend Ratib al-Husami told us that the Saudis had offered him, through an agent of theirs, 150,000 Syrian pounds, in exchange for freezing his own activity against the secession, on condition he not attack Egypt or criticize the union era.

Ratib stands beyond any suspicion in his own conduct.

He sent the agent away, but only after giving him a "lesson" in ethics first.

News circulated of two Syrian aircraft diverting to Cairo, while on their way to the Yemeni border, carrying Syrian weapons meant for Imam Muhammad al-Badr, out of spite toward Abdel Nasser's own support for al-Sallal's movement.

Several states have already recognized al-Sallal's regime, among them the Soviet Union, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Sudan.

In the evening, we visited Dr. Sami al-Jundi, released after four months in prison, on the charge of smuggling out Colonel Jasim Alwan.

We found the well-known dentist (Sami al-Jundi) barely able to stand on his own two feet, thanks to his own "good treatment." He told us they had not given him so much as a single aspirin for ten whole days, and had held him, as he put it, for thirty-six days in the latrine.

It is a real misfortune that the intelligence men never change their own methods.

Every new era that comes along keeps them on, benefiting from their own "fruitful" expertise and experience. What is strange is that the secessionists' own propaganda focuses so heavily on "the era of dungeons and intelligence" during the union.

But why, then, do you command others to good conduct while forgetting yourselves entirely?

It seems clear that so long as "the secret police" exist at all, injustice will remain just as horrific as ever.