The 9 March Government - Part 2: Nasser's Telegram, the Huge Damascus Demonstrations, and the First Stage of Union Talks

Whoever is deceived by this world, know that I

have worn it through, and worn its very garments thin.

Two days later, Dr. al-Qudsi called me by telephone from the presidential residence, asking me to visit him. I left my own work and went to him, and after a brief exchange with the guarding officer, went in to see him.

He was entirely ordinary in both his words and his manner, and praised me, though I cut him off, telling him: I am not unaware of your own sincerity and integrity. You made your own choice, and walked a different path. I never wished this choice upon you. He repeated his earlier request, that I do everything within my own power to help secure his departure to any foreign country, giving me his firm pledge that he had sworn off politics for the rest of his life.

Fulfilling his own wishes, however, lay beyond my own real power.

"The National Council for the Leadership of the Revolution," of which I was not a member, since our own share in it was represented instead by Mr. Nihad al-Qasim and Mr. Ratib al-Husami, had arrested Dr. al-Dawalibi and some of the ministers and officers, holding them at Mezzeh prison. They likewise arrested the army commander Zahreddine, followed by Dr. al-Qudsi himself, placing both of them in a wing of the military hospital in the Mezzeh district.

Nor was I able to secure permission from Colonel Ziad al-Hariri for Mrs. al-Dawalibi to visit her own husband in detention, to reassure herself of his own safety, after rumors spread that he had been killed.

As for Khaled al-Azm, he took refuge in the Turkish embassy, housed within a building he himself owned and lived in one of the apartments of.

On my own way to visit al-Qudsi at the presidential residence, on the far side of the Barada River, opposite al-Azm's own building on its near bank, I saw crowds of young men pelting al-Azm's house with stones, demanding he be brought to account.

The police stood between them and the building itself, out of respect for the embassy's own diplomatic immunity.

Sunday the 10th

I sent the following telegram to President Abdel Nasser:

To His Excellency President Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of the United Arab Republic

Cairo

"With eyes brimming with tears of joy and delight, and the voices of the honorable masses roaring beneath my own office window, demanding decisive action to restore the sacred union, I address Your Excellency with my own deepest thanks and sincerest esteem, for your own gracious concern for me on the day the ethnic-chauvinist secessionists' own aggression fell upon me, praying to God Almighty to watch over the great pioneer of Arab nationalism with His own eye of care, and to preserve you as a treasure for our own nation, whose own standing you have raised in the eyes of the world, keeping for you, in my own heart and in the hearts of my brothers, His Excellency the members of the Presidency Council and the Council of Ministers, the most honored of memories and the greatest of respect."

Damascus, 10 March 1963. AbdulWahab Homad

There was no exaggeration at all in speaking of these roaring crowds. Their own numbers defied description, chanting for union and for President Gamal Abdel Nasser, raising his own portraits and the flags of the United Arab Republic.

I found myself overcome with emotion, watching these citizens, whose mouths the secession had gagged, spreading fear and terror among them. I took up my own pen and sent the telegram to the President.

The Minister of Information barred it from being sent, on Mr. Salah's own instruction. But once I learned of this ban, I contacted him myself, and he was forced to send it, and to have it broadcast on Syrian radio. Once it reached Cairo, both Voice of the Arabs and Cairo radio broadcast it many times over.

When I returned home, a popular demonstration came to greet me, its own numbers beyond my ability to estimate.

It stretched from the Central Bank, at the very start of al-Shahbandar Street, where I live halfway down, all the way to the street's own end and the beginning of the Sheikh Muhyiddin ibn Arabi quarter.

I refrained from appearing on the balcony to greet the demonstrators, so as not to find myself obliged to deliver a speech to them, in a state of emotion that left my own breath caught in my chest.

I wished the pillars of the secession could have seen with their own eyes these overflowing crowds, gathered not by any intelligence order, nor bused in by state vehicles to mislead domestic and international opinion alike.

The National Council for the Leadership of the Revolution sent a telegram to President Abdel Nasser, congratulating him on the Syrian movement's own victory, telling him: "We have washed away the shame of the secession."

The President answered the telegram the following day, saying "he considered this day one of the finest in history, a victory for the cause of union." Abdel Qader Hatem announced Egypt's own support for Syria, warning against any interference in its own affairs, and Algeria and Iraq both voiced their support as well.

The "new revolution's" own footing now stood on solid ground, secure and confident.

Wednesday the 13th: Discussions on Union Begin

Mr. Salah al-Bitar, head of the Council of Ministers, called the ministers to an urgent session, to discuss the question of union, in preparation for forming a Syrian delegation to travel to Cairo, to negotiate with President Abdel Nasser and agree on the new shape the coming union would take.

Mr. Salah presented a draft ministerial statement, meant to serve as the starting point for both the coming political and governmental work. I recorded, on my own private papers, sitting through the ministerial session itself, a summary of what passed in this first round of discussion, to serve as my own reference, should I need to return to it. Here it is:

Dr. Abdel Halim Suwaidan, Minister of Agriculture (an independent, and a unionist)

He noted that the proposed draft statement did not focus sufficiently on the question of union, even though the people cared about it above all else, and said it contained far too many details, nearly giving its own readers the impression that this government had come simply to last. He demanded the statement speak of the three liberated countries, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, on equal footing.

Dr. AbdulWahab Homad (of the United Arab Front)

I backed Dr. Suwaidan's own remarks, and added that it was necessary to give the question of union a clear shape, one showing plainly what kind of union we actually wanted.

I reminded the ministers that Egypt's own government had put forward a unionist proposal, in answer to the one Dr. Bashir al-Azma's government had itself proposed, and stressed that we had to remember we had once been in union with Egypt, that it knew us and we knew it. This prior reality carried real weight in our own thinking, and should not be allowed to slip from view.

I then took up what Dr. Sami al-Jundi had demanded, establishing popular courts to try the "traitorous" secessionists, and said: we are a civilized state, and I myself am a professor of law. It is not right for the phrase "popular courts" to even pass our own lips, for it can only mean bloodbaths breaking out in a sea of darkness, a dangerous direction, foreign to both our own traditions and our own people's own customs. We have already lived through many previous coups, without a single one of them descending into bloody battles or violent reprisals. We have our own courts, fully capable of holding every wrongdoer to account for his own wrongdoing.

Mr. Shibli al-Aysami (Baath Party)

He said: we cannot, at this stage, define the shape union will take.

But we must hasten to form delegations to travel to the liberated countries, to reassure our own people that union is indeed being seriously studied. I told myself: these words are laced with hidden traps.

Mr. Ahmad Abu Saleh

He said: I lean toward beginning unionist negotiations with Cairo first, given that we once formed a single state with it. I felt real relief at these words, and told myself: praise God, for I was the one who had nominated Abu Saleh for the ministry, and here was my own good faith in him already bearing fruit.

Mr. Abdel Karim Zohour

He noted that discussing the shape of union at this stage was dangerous, citing what had happened in Iraq over the past years. Haste, he said, has no place in political work.

Mr. Nihad al-Qasim (of the United Arab Front)

He supported moving swiftly toward establishing union, and demanded the statement give Egypt priority, "even if only in wording."

Al-Aysami answered him, objecting to giving Egypt any such preference, since it was wrong to favor one liberated country over another.

Mr. Hani al-Hindi (leader of the Arab Nationalists)

He said: the masses demand the return of the United Arab Republic, since they condemn the secession and do not consider it a legitimate era at all. And if Iraq is dealing with internal problems that might delay its own accession to the union, we would be committing a grave wrong against these very masses, were we to delay restoring union ourselves.

He criticized the proposal Iraq had put forward, since it confined the process of unification to political and military leadership alone, a doctrine we could never accept.

He therefore demanded the restoration of union exactly as it had been with Egypt, with Iraq retaining the right to join whenever it wished. He believed we should ask Iraq to move toward this union within a reasonable period. He also demanded firm deterrent measures against the secessionists and the Communists, who had thrown themselves behind the secessionist era.

Mr. Abdel Karim Zohour

I do not know for certain whether he still belonged to the Baath Party, or had resigned from it, charting his own unionist course instead, one that set him apart from Akram al-Hourani and his brothers, who had embraced the secessionist era and defended it fiercely.

He said: when the Syrian-Egyptian union was established in 1958, Baghdad was not yet liberated. Today, Baghdad has been liberated, and circumstances have changed. We have all heard that a demonstration of a million Iraqi citizens took place in the Iraqi capital, in support of the Iraqi revolution, and, by extension, in defense of the Syrian revolution itself. He did not believe any special circumstances existed in Iraq to justify delaying union talks.

He noted that the former union no longer existed, and that it had contained errors we must now avoid. It was the nation's own right, over us, that we set aside "doubt-mongering" entirely.

Dr. Jamal al-Atassi

He said: he believed union talks should be tripartite, between Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, and should begin quickly, and conclude quickly as well.

Dr. AbdulWahab Homad

I took the floor again, and said: I had spoken earlier of a "hypothesis," and would like to clarify it. We accept setting out from a tripartite union, a direction that pleases and delights us. But should these negotiations, God forbid, stall on account of their own tripartite nature, we demand plainly and openly that a bilateral Egyptian-Syrian union be established instead, studied swiftly.

It seemed to me that several of our own brothers shared this same view, though they were reluctant to entertain the possibility that the tripartite talks might actually fail. We, for our part, asked ourselves: what if the tripartite talks do fail?

At the end of the session, we learned that five union-era ministers, Akram al-Dairi, Jadou Ezz El-Din, Jamal al-Sufi, Ta'ma al-Awdallah, and Ahmad al-Hunaidi, all of whom the secession had exiled to Cairo, had returned to Damascus that very morning, along with some Syrian ambassadors and unionist officers, among them Rabah Sharif and Akram Safadi, and the broadcasters Abdel Hadi al-Bakkar and Tawfiq Hasan. Yet Syrian security authorities sent them straight back to Cairo, without even allowing them to disembark from their own plane.

We raised the matter with Mr. Salah, who denied having any knowledge of this incident. We told him: should this story prove true, we demand a full explanation of the circumstances surrounding it. We also raised the fact that Egyptian newspapers had been barred from entering Syria, "on the pretext that they focused too heavily on the popular demonstrations." Dr. Jamal al-Atassi was, at the time, Minister of Information.

Afterward, Mr. Salah took me aside, and showed me a list of some ten names of Foreign Ministry employees, asking whether I agreed to their dismissal, so that he might present the list to the Council of Ministers at its next session.

I was struck to see the poet Omar Abu Risha's own name at the very top of this list. I asked him: why not approve it right now?

Abu Risha had once written a scathing poem lampooning President Abdel Nasser, after he ordered his own transfer from his post in India, where he had been enjoying Nehru's own company, to a post as ambassador in Vienna. I had heard this poem from a friend, though I do not know whether he ever published it or not.

I do not know why this transfer displeased him so, given that he had once composed verses of longing for this same beautiful Austrian capital, gliding with such enchantment and aristocratic grace along the banks of the Danube, writing:

Paris, I shall never forget your own charms,

nor the maidens of Vienna.

When we returned to discuss the list at the next session, Mr. Salah struck Abu Risha's own name from among those to be dismissed.

I returned to my own office, and found there his own collected poems, "From Omar Abu Risha: Poetry," published in 1947. I read in it, from the very days we were at war with Israel, verses cursing the men of the national era, under the title "O People," among them the following:

O people, do not complain of the harm

done to you, nor prolong your own lament over it.

Had your own hands not first been wounded,

we would have bound your wounds ourselves.

You chose the men of your own affairs,

and pinned your own hopes for reform on them.

Only to find them loosening, over their own base worldly gain,

the very sash meant to bind you.

How many times did they break faith with you,

drinking, with your own blessing, your own share of rest?

Does your own chest still bleed from their own wounds,

even as you hand them your own weapon?

How I grieve for you! Is this truly how

you fold your own wing over such a thing?

This "gifted" poet is the very same man who later praised Colonel Adib al-Shishakli, who suspended constitutional life and seized power for nearly four years.

Even so, I consider him a genuinely innovative poet. He wished to renew ties with me in 1970, inviting me to his own son's wedding, to the daughter of a Kuwaiti poet. But the ceremony was called off, for a reason I no longer recall, and I never saw him again after that. God rest his soul.

Thursday the 14th

The Syrian delegation formed to negotiate with President Abdel Nasser on the question of union traveled to Cairo. The delegation was made up of:

Lieutenant General Louai al-Atassi, head of the National Council for the Leadership of the Revolution.

Nihad al-Qasim (of our own Front).

Abdel Halim Suwaidan, Minister of Agriculture (independent).

General Rashed Qatini, deputy army commander.

Mr. Abdel Karim Zohour (Minister of Economy), the delegation's own sole Baathist.

General Ziad al-Hariri (Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces) and leader of the coup.

Lieutenant Colonel Fawaz Muharib (member of the National Council for the Leadership of the Revolution), one of the well-known unionists.

And Lieutenant Colonel Fahd al-Shaer (member of the National Council for the Leadership of the Revolution).

The Iraqi delegation was made up of:

Ali Salih al-Sa'di, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior.

Lieutenant General Salih Mahdi Ammash, Minister of Defense.

Talib Shabib, Minister of Foreign Affairs.

And our friend Dr. Abdel Rahman al-Bazzaz, Iraq's ambassador in Cairo.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser headed the Egyptian delegation (the delegation of the United Arab Republic, which had kept its own name even after the Syrian region's secession), made up of:

Abdel Latif al-Baghdadi, Vice President of the Republic.

Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, Vice President of the Republic.

Kamal El-Din Hussein, Vice President of the Republic.

Ali Sabri, head of the Executive Bureau.

Amin Howeidi, Egypt's ambassador in Iraq.

Abdel Majid Farid, Secretary-General of the Presidency of the Republic.

The three delegations held five meetings, known as the First Stage talks, between 14 and 16 March 1963.

On the evening of 16 March, the Syrian delegation returned to Damascus.