Before These Memoirs - Part 37: Sabri al-Asali, al-Dawalibi, and al-Kuzbari's Failed Bid to Unite the Secessionist Parties

Friday the 14th

From your own mouth to the gates of heaven, old friend!

Today Brigadier General Amin al-Nafouri, Minister of Agrarian Reform, declared to the press: "Syria can shatter any Israeli aggression entirely on its own, even if backed by colonial assistance."

He was answering, with this "fiery" statement, Egypt's own offer to come to Syria's aid, should Israel attack it.

The newspaper Al-Alam (the moderate one) welcomed the assistance offered by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Abdel Karim Qasim's own regime, offers that amounted to nothing more than empty words, while it went to extremes cursing Abdel Nasser over his own serious, generous offer.

It is true, as the poet says, that "those capable of shame have already died," leaving behind only those whose lives serve no purpose at all.

Tuesday, 18 December

Every few years, "the veteran politicians" come out with the same tiresome tune, calling for the unification of the country's own political parties.

These past few days, I have read three separate statements, from three senior party figures.

The first, Mr. Sabri al-Asali, a remnant of the collapsed National Party, declared to the press: "efforts are now underway to form a party bringing together the great majority of the sons of the Syrian Arab Republic, across every one of its provinces."

The second, Dr. Maarouf al-Dawalibi, who has thrown his lot in decisively with the reactionary right, embracing the secession heart and soul, declared, in turn, "perhaps in the name of the People's Party, revived after its own dissolution," that a real, constructive program of action was now needed, from the various bodies, whatever their own differing systems.

The third, Dr. Ma'mun al-Kuzbari, who resembles the legendary phoenix, burning to ashes only to rise again alive from beneath the sand, declared that "efforts continue toward forming a new party bringing together nationalists, People's Party men, and independents alike."

The Muslim Brotherhood, through their own spokesman, blessed this new party.

According to the newspapers, the leaders of this new call are Sabri al-Asali, Maarouf al-Dawalibi, Rashad Jabri, Ma'mun al-Kuzbari, Irfan al-Jallad, and Afif al-Solh, with fresh recruits Dr. Adnan al-Quwatli, Dr. Rashid al-Daqar, and Judge Muhammad Abidin joining their ranks.

The question is: what exactly do they hope to achieve by forming this party? The real problem is not gathering individuals into a single organization, but rather how willing the country will actually be to accept these very faces, the ones who supported the secession and stained themselves with its own repulsive color.

I know every one of these politicians personally, some through the circumstances of political work, others from my own days teaching alongside them at the Faculty of Law. My own conviction is that this party, should it ever actually form, and it may well form, will be nothing more than a ship bound for shore, its own passengers gathered together in its salons, threatened by one single danger, the crashing of the waves amid the storm, until the moment it finally reaches the water's edge, at which point every passenger goes his own separate way, toward whatever destination he was actually seeking all along.

I hold out no hope, then, for a party such as this, especially since, should it ever form, it will only work to entrench the secession, and isolate Syria from the active Arab forces around it.

It is the misfortune of those working to form it that the era they are trying to revive and inject with stimulants has already entered its own final death rattle, and will not be long in breathing its last, unmourned by anyone.

The active forces working out of sight can already hear the heartbeats of the unionist citizens, and beat in tune with them, exchanging trust for trust, and stand ready to strike this cardboard structure down with their own heavy pickaxes.

This is what we have been told, and what we have heard, from the mouths of those skilled at swimming in the depths.

I happened to meet Mr. Rushdi al-Kikhya, who took a most honorable stand against the secession, refusing to support it and withdrawing from political work altogether, and we had a long conversation about the country's own deteriorating conditions. I asked him whether he had discussed the general situation with President al-Qudsi, and he said: not in any real depth. I asked him again: does the President sense the water already running out from beneath his own era's chair? Al-Kikhya grew alert at this question, and asked me eagerly: do you have information about something being plotted against him? I did not answer him directly, for fear my own words might be a kind of playing with fire, but he understood exactly what I meant, and may well have hoped that something would happen before very long, exactly what his own knowing smile, so skillfully composed, seemed to suggest.

Monday the 24th

Tonight, at midnight, Christians celebrate the birth of God's own prophet Jesus, peace be upon him. As is their custom, they devote themselves to worship in churches and at home, and eat turkey, a tradition whose own history I do not know.

Yet the halls and salons of the hotels will be packed with other night owls, eating, drinking, and dancing until the hours of dawn, before finally leaving, swaying left and right, drink getting the better of them, their own legs failing them as they make their way out. On a night such as this, it is fitting to recall Ibn al-Farid's own verse:

We drank, in remembrance of the Beloved, a wine

that intoxicated us before the vine itself was ever created.

They say to me, describe it, for surely you

know it well. Indeed, I hold real knowledge of its every quality.

Pure, yet no water; subtle, yet no air;

light, yet no fire; spirit, yet no body at all!

The government chose this very day to repeal the old emergency powers law, replacing it with a new one, confining the circumstances under which a state of emergency may be declared to only two: a state of war, or the emergence of a situation threatening one.

A state of emergency is to be declared by decree, issued in the Council of Ministers, and presented to the chamber of deputies for discussion at its own first session thereafter.

A good deed, worth noting and giving credit for.

Tuesday the 25th

The newspapers came out carrying two rebuttals, one from Prime Minister Khaled al-Azm, the other from Minister Amin al-Nafouri.

The titles of both rebuttals give away exactly what they contain: "A Reply to the Tyrant Abdel Nasser's Speech." The President had delivered a speech that stripped the era of its own clothing, laying its own shameful nakedness bare for all to see.

Thursday the 27th

Among the popular songs is one sung by the popular singer Omar al-Zaenni.

The occasion was that Beirut's streets had become so choked with cars that pedestrians could barely find their way through, prompting the Lebanese government to summon experts from France and Belgium to propose practical solutions to the traffic crisis. The experts offered a whole series of solutions, only for it to become clear that the real flaw lay not in the wording of the law, but in the conscience and conduct of the people themselves.

Which is why al-Zaenni sang, addressing Beirut directly:

O little Beirut, my dear,

nothing at all can help you here,

not a French doctor, my dear,

nor a Belgian engineer.

Such is the way of the Arab states, whose own quarrels never truly settle. Whenever conditions grow dire enough, "men of goodwill" bestir themselves to seek reconciliation.

Today, an Algerian delegation arrived, headed by Mohamed Khider, to take the pulse of the Syrian regime's own leaders, gauging the likely success of an Arab initiative his own country was sponsoring, aimed at mending fences among the Arabs and cooling their own simmering disputes.

Such attempts have been made time and again. Mediations may well succeed for a while, but the flames are never long in reigniting.

And Israel watches, and mocks. It hears our own chants of "driving them into the sea." Is the ultimate purpose of religion merely to trim one's own mustache, O nation whose own ignorance has become the laughingstock of every other nation?

In the midst of these efforts, news broke of an attempted coup in Tunisia, and suspicion quickly turned to Abdel Nasser.

If only he really had done it, to free the Arabs from that "greatest of freedom fighters" who chokes the very breath from the Arabs, and from the good, gentle Tunisian people, the beloved Bourguiba.

Yet we lived long enough to witness his own regime overturned after all, and to see him placed under house arrest, "with all due honor and respect."