Before These Memoirs - Part 35: A Chance Street Meeting With Salah al-Din al-Bitar and His Political Revelations

A Chance Meeting with Salah al-Din al-Bitar on the Street

For some time now, we "Nasserists" had been thinking of visiting Mr. Salah al-Din al-Bitar and Mr. Michel Aflaq, to congratulate them on their own bold unionist course in the newspaper Al-Baath, and to build a firmer relationship with them.

Al-Baath's own articles carried bitter campaigns against the ethnic-chauvinist secessionists, colonialism's own agents, and the turncoat hirelings wearing false medals of honor. We watched for them eagerly, and read them with real pleasure. It is a genuine misfortune that our own movement has no newspaper to speak in our name, which is why we have nothing to fall back on but submitting memoranda, issuing statements when the occasion arises, or making declarations in our own name, or in the name of any one of the five of us.

It is worth noting that the government withdrew the licenses of both Al-Baath and Al-Wihda al-Arabiya.

It brought a public case against Salah al-Din al-Bitar on the charge of defaming the Minister of Agrarian Reform, and he was sentenced to a month in prison. He did not appeal within the legal period, and the sentence became final.

A similar public case was brought against Mr. Nazih al-Hakim, for publishing the freedom fighter Nabih al-Azma's own statement addressed to Nazim al-Qudsi, and he was sentenced to six months in prison.

On top of this sentence, the "spitting flames" of the profiteering press sprang into action, hurling the foulest curses at Mr. al-Hakim, accusing him of bribery and treason. The public prosecution never once moved against these slanderers.

For this regime moves in only one direction, treating the whole world as its own to pick and choose from as it pleases, and I do not know of a single thing it holds against the union era that it does not itself do as well.

We used to hold two things against the Baathists:

First, that they attacked Abdel Nasser personally.

Second, that they fiercely attacked the union era's own supposed dictatorship.

This morning, on my way back from Dr. al-Sawwaf's clinic, where he had taken an X-ray of my own stomach, I ran into Mr. al-Bitar entirely by chance, near al-Ma'moun secondary school. Age had visibly caught up with him, and he walked with slow, heavy steps, his eyes fixed on the ground, his hands clasped behind his back.

I called out to him: Mr. Salah. I placed my hand on his shoulder and asked him: aren't you supposed to be in prison? He looked at me and smiled, saying: let them come and get me. We made our way to our colleague Ratib al-Husami's house, on the main street that officially bears the name Jalaa Street, though no one calls it that, known instead, popularly and universally, as Abu Rumaneh Street.

Mr. Salah spoke with the freedom of a man no longer afraid of having a fresh case brought against him, saying:

1. President Abdel Nasser was never able to tell his own friends from his own enemies.

2. Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer had once proposed to Mustafa Hamdoun and Abdel Ghani Qanout that the three of them govern Syria together, once al-Sarraj had been removed, but the two of them refused the offer.

Comment: our own confirmed information says that it was in fact the Baathists who asked Abdel Nasser to form a three-man committee of Aflaq, al-Bitar, and al-Hourani to govern Syria, a farcical proposal the President rejected outright, telling them: if the three of you are going to govern Syria yourselves, then why exactly am I President of the Republic at all?

Mr. Salah said that transferring Akram al-Hourani to Cairo and stripping him of his own powers was what drove them to stand in solidarity with him and resign from the ministry.

3. Of the Yemeni revolution, he said it had smashed the nests of Arab and Syrian reaction alike, branding the Syrian government foolish for recognizing the revolution in form while scheming against it in secret, throwing up obstacles in its own path, perhaps hoping to help the Saudis strangle it, defending their own necks in the process.

4. Of Akram al-Hourani, he said he was now utterly bankrupt, with no one left beside him but power itself, so that should power ever abandon him, or he abandon it, he would simply die.

He launched a fierce attack on him, for supporting the secession strikes the nation at its very holiest of sanctities.

Comment: it is well known that Mr. Salah's own signature appears on the secession's own petition, alongside Mr. al-Hourani and the pillars of reaction, men such as Ma'mun al-Kuzbari and Ahmad al-Sharabati.

He cited al-Hourani's own bankruptcy as proven by his cooperation with the Muslim Brotherhood, the capitalists, the Communists, and the People's Party. He said it was proof enough of this bankruptcy that he had paid a visit to Awad Barakat (Minister of Economy) and Ma'mun al-Kuzbari, once they were released from detention.

These two politicians represent economic reaction in its starkest form.

5. Mr. Salah believes union with Egypt will not return anytime soon, since the colonial powers, taken by surprise as they once were by its announcement in 1958, will now fight desperately to resist its restoration, since it would mean, for them, the end of their own influence, and "the dissolution of Israel," as he put it, into a great power stretching along the shores of the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean, an arrangement the Soviet Union would never accept, nor would the West, nor its own lackeys, states such as Turkey, Iran (in the days of the Shah, since deposed), the oil-rich Arab states, and Jordan.

6. He said the President of the Republic had promised to travel to Cairo, to meet President Abdel Nasser, since the Syrian country remained unstable, teetering on the very edge, unable to find its own footing without an understanding with Egypt, but that Maarouf al-Dawalibi had stopped him.

He summoned Mr. al-Bitar and asked him to undertake this mission himself, but al-Bitar refused the assignment, telling al-Qudsi: it would be too transparent a game. Why not ask Rushdi al-Kikhya to make this trip instead? He is, at the very least, an honorable man, never known to have supported the secession, and never once spoke a word against union.

Mr. Salah added: Dr. al-Qudsi is playing a dangerous game, but a transparent, dishonorable one, one unworthy of both his own office and his own past.

Khaled al-Azm wrote in his own memoirs[1] that France had offered Syria a financial loan, insufficient for its own needs, and discussed the matter with President al-Qudsi, who asked him: "What do you think of my making a trip to see General de Gaulle?" Al-Azm answered, no objection at all. He summoned the French ambassador and raised the matter with him, and the ambassador contacted his own government. Fifteen days later, he informed al-Azm, with real regret, that "President de Gaulle's own schedule this summer is so packed with appointments that he has no sufficient opportunity to receive President al-Qudsi and speak with him."

And so it was that "the friends of the Syrian regime" kept slipping away from it.

Among its own neighbors, not one remained willing to "befriend" it, except Lebanon.

But Rashid Karami, among the most fervent of Lebanon's own politicians for union and for Abdel Nasser, resisted every one of Khaled al-Azm's temptations and threats, and his own insistent pressure on Lebanon to distance itself from supporting the Nasserists.

Lebanon's own Muslims had always found in Syria a source of support. Once Syria grew too weak to sustain them any longer, they turned instead toward Cairo, and found there a warm chest to rest their own heads against.

It is no wonder, then, that the secession failed to establish good relations with Lebanon, especially since Mr. Khaled al-Azm, the Prime Minister, was himself the very one who severed economic ties with Lebanon in the early 1950s, earning himself the title "the father of economic secession." And now, today, he threatens it with even harsher measures still.

Friday the 26th

The UN Secretary-General, U Thant, addressed an appeal to both Presidents Khrushchev and Kennedy, asking them to accept lifting the blockade of Cuba for two or three weeks, halting Russian arms shipments, and discussing the point of dispute calmly, with due appreciation for the grave consequences of any hardening of positions.

The world knows that Kennedy, the American President, is a young man of extraordinary energy and firm will.

He is the first Catholic ever to reach the presidency of the United States, benefiting from his own family's powerful financial standing, and from the climate of tolerance prevailing among religious communities in America. The world likewise knows Khrushchev's own stubbornness, whenever he sets his mind on achieving some political goal for his own country, one he takes real pride in for its formidable nuclear strength.

American President Richard Nixon wrote the following about Khrushchev in his own book Leaders:[2]

"Among the leaders I have met, I have found none to rival Khrushchev, in his own possession of humor, intelligence, quickness of mind, a stubborn sense of purpose, and a firm will to reach power."

He is the man who built the Berlin Wall, the first wall in history whose purpose was not to keep enemies out, but to keep his own people in. He is the man who crushed, with real brutality, a people's uprising against Communist rule in Hungary, an act I myself condemned in 1956, calling him the Butcher of Budapest.

He is the man who set about placing nuclear missiles in Cuba.

He is the man who launched a great offensive push into black Africa and the developing world, attempting to seize the Congo through their own influential client, Lumumba, who enjoyed their own protection. He is the man who began the vast buildup of Soviet strategic nuclear weapons, which flipped the balance of power from one to fifteen during the Cuban missile crisis, giving the Soviets a significant advantage at the time.

He is the man who exposed Stalin, permanently fracturing the unity of the Communist movement in the process. He is likewise responsible for the greatest setback Communism has suffered since the Second World War, namely the rift between the Soviet Union and Communist China.

He is well known to have taken off his own shoe in the UN General Assembly hall, while Mr. Macmillan, Britain's Prime Minister, was delivering a speech, and pounded it on the table, in full view and hearing of every country's own representatives, amid a wave of astonishment and disapproval.

Nixon says of him: "He was a crude bear in human form."

He was known, too, for his own hurtful, cutting sense of humor.

It is told of him that when he paid an official visit to the Queen of Britain, they introduced him to Prince Philip, the Queen's husband, and he asked: and what does he do during the day? Britain laughed at this rather indecent joke.

And the world laughed along with it.

Saturday the 27th

The world's radio stations speak, in real terror, of the fear of a war that would spare nothing and no one. Khrushchev addressed an appeal to President Kennedy and to UN Secretary-General U Thant, saying his own country would agree to remove the nuclear missiles from Cuba, missiles operated by Russian officers and therefore incapable of being used arbitrarily, if the Americans agreed, in turn, to remove their own missiles from Turkey.

We felt real relief, and waited for Kennedy's own answer. His answer, when it came, was terrifying. He insisted on the removal of the Russian missiles from Cuba, with no removal of American missiles from Turkey in exchange, and said he would invade Cuba himself if the Soviet Union did not withdraw its own missiles from it at once.

Damascus's own merchants rushed to hoard goods and corner the market, chasing after handsome profits. Food prices rose, the Syrian pound's own value fell, along with share prices. One wonders, had the worst come to pass, whether a single merchant of al-Buzuriyah market would have survived to enjoy his own ill-gotten gains.

Sunday the 28th

The world's radio stations speak of peace efforts faltering, and of the danger of a devastating war breaking out. Statements are repeated that the United States remains determined to invade Cuba, since the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles facing its own eastern coast exposes it to the risk of annihilation, and it will not accept being sacrificed on the altar of world Communism.

Khrushchev repeated his own offer, saying he stood ready to accept a settlement with America guaranteeing the safety of (American) Turkey and (Soviet) Cuba alike.

It is worth noting that some Russian ships broke through the American blockade of Cuba, without any American ship intercepting them. Other ships changed course toward a safe harbor, while still others slowed down, remaining in "international waters," waiting to see what the coming hours would reveal.

Signs of a real breakthrough came that evening.

Around seven o'clock, I tuned in to London radio, and it was already carrying to the world the glad news of Khrushchev's acceptance of removing the missile base from Cuba, and his acceptance of a pledge Kennedy had made on his own country's behalf, that it would refrain from invading this Communist island, just as it pledged to withdraw its own missiles threatening the Soviet Union from its base in Turkey, and from Greece as well.

Khrushchev is truly, as they say of him, a practical man, one with little patience for deep Communist philosophy.

It is told of him that he once said: "Were Marx, Lenin, and Engels to rise from their own graves, they would mock the bookworms," meaning the theorists who cling so tightly to the party's own teachings, quoting old sayings instead of studying modern society and developing the theory through creative advancement. Those who have studied the Soviet Union closely credit him with a tireless pursuit of economic prosperity.

This sober stance of his spared humanity a certain annihilation.

For the record, I note that America still occupies a huge military base on the island of Cuba, the Guantanamo base, one it continues to occupy to this very day.

As the old saying goes: international treaties are shackles placed only on the hands of the weak.

Wednesday the 31st

The Deputy Public Prosecutor before the State Security Court, presided over by Judge Ahmad al-Rashed, issued a new decision charging five officers, among them Major Nouri Kabbawar of Aleppo, and seven non-commissioned officers, with conspiring against the safety of the state, referring them to this same court to be tried alongside sixteen of their own colleagues for taking part in the Aleppo movement that erupted in the wake of the 28 March coup. Every indication suggests that the accused have not been afforded the legal guarantees needed to defend themselves freely.

I know nothing but good of Ahmad al-Rashed.

I knew him as a fellow student at the Law Institute, when I first enrolled there.

I likewise heard him praised once he became a judge, around the same time I became Minister of Justice.

But the public prosecution before the military court, and the two military judges sitting alongside him, do not share the impartiality and integrity the court's own president possesses.

It is worth noting that the lawyers of Captain Ibrahim al-Ali and his colleagues withdrew from the court, abandoning the task of defending their own clients, submitting a reasoned memorandum explaining the dreadful conditions under which they had been forced to carry out their own heavy duty of defense.

The impudence of the general security men reached such a point that they resorted to letting the air out of the tires of the lawyer Mustafa al-Sabouni's car, while a columnist for the "illustrious" newspaper Al-Nasr called for letting the air out of the cheeks of Dr. Muhammad al-Fadel, professor of criminal law who succeeded me as head of the Department of Criminal Law and defense counsel for the unionist defendants, and out of the "national puffery" Dr. Mazhar al-Sharbaji and the lawyer Hasan Murad, among the finest of the Nasserist toadies, had supposedly dressed themselves up in.

Thursday, 1 November, corresponding to 4 Jumada al-Thani

My family in Aleppo contacted me at dawn this day, to tell me that my mother's health was failing. I traveled to our city, arriving at half past two in the afternoon.

My mother was still fully aware of everything around her. I called for her own doctor, my dear friend Dr. Hussein Jalabi, who came and carried out an examination, then drew me aside to tell me her pulse was steadily weakening. I held her close to my own chest. She remained fully aware of everything, so much so that she told me: my identity card is in this drawer, take it, so you won't have to trouble yourselves searching for it later.

At a few minutes past seven in the evening, she joined her own Creator, whom she had loved and served with true devotion her whole life. I pray that He loved her too, for her own righteousness and the nobility of her own soul.

No pen could ever do justice to any mother's own claim on our love and reverence.

This is exactly what I felt, holding her in my own arms as she drew her final breath. God, grant her the Paradise she loved, and which she worked toward with such sincerity.

I will say no more.

I feel, even now, as though tears are searching for some way through my own eyelids, thirty-three years after writing these very lines. How great a mother is. Every mother.

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Endnotes:

[1] Vol. 1, p. 392.

[2] Translated by Khidr Ibrahim, Dar Hassan for Printing and Publishing, Damascus, 1986, p. 243.