The Second Year of the Union - Part 12: An American Diplomat's Drunken Anti-Union Remarks and the Voyage Home via London and Hamburg

Saturday the 3rd

As agreed with Ambassador Mustafa Kamel, he came to visit me at the hotel, and I attended the dinner reception he held at the embassy.

At this reception I was introduced to a number of American figures:

Loy Henderson, Deputy Under Secretary of State,

Robert Murphy, who had become one of the leading knights of Middle Eastern policy,

and Jones, head of the Middle East desk.

I was seated at the main table, beside Mrs. Black, Loy Henderson, and Abdul Khaleq Hassouna, Secretary-General of the Arab League, who spent his time vacationing from one country to another, and Dr. El-Kaissouni's wife, the "Arab" ambassador, and the director of the American bank (I do not recall whether his name was Mr. Wolf).

My wife was seated at the other main table.

From Ambassador Kamel's own conversation, I gathered that, were it not for him, the sky might well have fallen upon the earth, and that whatever progress had been achieved in Egyptian-American relations was owed entirely to his own strong ties with the senior men of power in Washington.

This may well have been partly true, for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry is generous toward its ambassadors, so that they can be generous in turn, and win esteem, respect, and good connections for themselves.

This was a position our own Syrian ambassadors, before the Union, never enjoyed, for they generally lacked the qualifications required, and, besides, the Foreign Ministry's own budget allowed for very little beyond salary and basic expenses.

I recall being on an official trip to a European country, when this "ambassador doctor" came to me offering to "sell" me, at an attractive rate, the dollars I was carrying, on the black market, so that I could then buy whatever "gifts" I liked "for next to nothing."

When I asked him how I would then answer the customs officers when leaving his country "laden and burdened" with goods, without having exchanged, through the bank, the equivalent sum in foreign currency, he said: sir, everything can be arranged.

Strangely enough, the exchange rate he quoted me for the dollar was less than half the going black-market rate, meaning he wished to "trade" for his own benefit as well, splitting the difference between us.

Instead of this ugly practice shrinking with time, it grew a great deal worse. I heard that ambassadors would ask an official visitor whether he had funds set aside to hold a reception in his own honor. I would not rule out that the head of our own delegation used the delegation's own representation budget for this very reception, and had the invitation been extended simply "in honor of the delegation," it would have been far more fitting and proper. But it was extended instead "in honor of El-Kaissouni and his wife."

An incident I had not expected occurred at this reception. I was speaking with one of the Egyptians from the Arab embassy when Mr. Jones approached us, a glass of liquor in hand, and, without either of us being introduced to him first, as is customary on such occasions, addressed his words to the "Arab" counselor, speaking to him in fluent French, saying that the union of Egypt and Syria would prove a disaster for Egypt, that it was unnatural so long as the sea separated the two countries, and their temperaments and tastes so different, and that Egypt would remain Egypt, the land of the pyramids and the pharaohs, while Syria would return to being the Syria it had been before the Union, sinking back into its own troubles and difficulties.

The Egyptian's face began to redden, and he showed a clear discomfort that did not escape the head of the Middle East desk at the State Department, who quickly realized the mood was not suited to this kind of talk, and that there stood between him and the man he was addressing an uninvited complication, namely myself. He asked me: are you Syrian? I told him: yes, and a citizen of the United Arab Republic. He began to apologize, saying he was a heavy drinker, and that once drunk he could no longer keep a rein on his own tongue, and that his own department had often "reprimanded" him for improper conduct arising from his drinking.

I told him: I know full well that this is the true nature of your country's own policy, and there is no need to apologize. But why do you find such differences between Egypt and Syria, merely because a sea separates them, while you find no such astonishing differences within your own American nation, made up of a hundred different nationalities, sharing no common origin at all, differing in religion (Jews, Muslims, and Christians), in nationality (from Japanese and Chinese to Black Americans and Native Americans), and in color (white, black, yellow, and red)?

I found no use in continuing the conversation with him further, for they think in Israeli terms, breathe Israeli air, and move entirely within the Israeli cage. Anyone thought to threaten Israel's own safety is counted their enemy, one who must be brought down, and the United Arab Republic was the sole source of this perceived threat.

Sunday the 4th

We took the train from Washington to New York.

The moment we stepped out of the station, we saw a great demonstration of Poles, raising banners, one of which read: twenty million Poles under the yoke of slavery ask for your help, Americans. They were protesting the communist regime in their own country.

We returned to the Waldorf Astoria.

Our consul general, Dr. George Toameh, took us to the United Nations headquarters, crouched like a great matchbox on the bank of the Hudson River.

We happened to hear a speech being given by the Greek delegate on the problem of the island of Cyprus, whose northern part Turkey had occupied, and he did not forget, may God reward him well, to speak also of the "Palestinian tragedy," which had remained unresolved for so many long years, and which, if it found no just solution, would leave the Middle East forever without stability.

Two things caught my attention:

The first was the great number of empty seats, their occupants either absent from the hall altogether or off in the cafeteria, as delegation members at such conferences tend to be. As a rule, they arrange with a photographer to take their picture in some "dignified" pose, or while delivering a few words on some topic or other, then return home to publish it in a newspaper (paid or unpaid), beneath an editor's own caption declaring that he had "moved heaven and earth in defense of his own country's interests and those of the oppressed nations," and that he had secured the "friends'" agreement to make rivers of honey flow through their lands.

I know of two countrymen of ours, whom I once found myself at a conference with in Belgium, who arranged with a photographer to take their picture sitting solemnly in the hall, and I did not see them again until the conference's closing session, for they had gone off shopping, and returned home with a copy of the "resolutions" in hand.

There was not a single person left who did not tell me of their persuasive oratorical powers, and of the role they had played in shaping the conference's own policy.

The second thing was the presence of a delegation representing the state of "Nepal," seated behind a placard bearing its country's name, a country I had not even known to be independent. The General Assembly had, only days before, rejected the People's Republic of China's own membership in the United Nations, a country two hundred times greater than Nepal, in both area and population.

Such is the logic of American power: it grants sovereignty to whomever it wishes, and strips it from whomever it wishes.

Tuesday the 6th

We took tours of the park and of the Black neighborhood of Harlem, and spent the longest part of our time at the Museum of Natural History.

It is truly astonishing, and stirs a sense of awe in the soul.

In one of its wings stood groups of elephants, large and small, mounted on their feet in their natural size, as though scattered through a living African forest.

And this enormous, monstrous snake, where could they possibly have found it?

And this hanging skeleton of a dinosaur, said to have lived on earth millions of years ago, how had they managed to lift the vertebrae of its spine, each one the size of one of the great stones of the Pyramid of Khufu? And I, who had always thought the very existence of dinosaurs on earth a mere "old wives' tale."

Wednesday the 7th

I attended today, at the Hall of Justice, an "Anglo-Saxon" trial taking place before me for the first time, for I know criminal procedure only in the Latin style (the French one especially), the style applied in our own country.

Among us, the presiding judge is the driving force behind the trial's own proceedings.

He is the one who questions the witnesses, the private plaintiff, and the accused.

He alone may allow one of the parties to put a question through him.

But the "Anglo-Saxon" presiding judge (in England and America) sits silently, watching, while the parties to the case are the ones who take the active role.

Should some violation of the law occur, the judge intervenes to rule on it.

The criminal case we watched was a stabbing case. Two young Black men had gambled, and one lost, and asked the winner to give back the dollars he had lost, but the winner refused, so he stabbed him in the belly with a sharp knife.

The public prosecutor questioned the accused as a witness, and had him swear an oath.

Administering an oath to the accused would, in our own judicial practice, be grounds for a mistrial.

Our consul general told me that the Jews had threatened to kill Ahmad Shukeiri, the delegate of Palestinian origin at the United Nations representing an Arab state there, because he had delivered a fierce speech against their criminal conduct in Palestine.

The American government assigned him a special police guard, in a country home to nearly four million Jews, all of them American citizens, "concentrated" in New York City, and loyal to "Israel."

Thursday the 8th: Leaving the United States

We left the United States aboard the enormous American ocean liner "United States," to cross the Atlantic between New York and Southampton, in the south of England. This "city" floating on the waters of the Atlantic Ocean weighs fifty-five thousand tons, and is cooled by powerful air-conditioning units.

Its lounges are very spacious.

It has three cinemas, running almost continuously.

One may enter them whenever one wishes, free of charge.

Our own cabin had a window onto the sea, with a bathroom and two beds, just as in the finest hotels on dry land.

The management did not forget to supply us with a copy of the Torah, though only in English.

A traveler may request any food he wishes, at any time at all, without paying any extra charge.

Tea receptions are held for the travelers daily.

The musical group, made up of five players, performs for long hours, to put the passengers at ease.

Nothing is lovelier or more magnificent than the sight of white birds following close behind us, along with crowded groups of dolphins, hoping to feed on whatever "scraps" the ship threw overboard.

The ship's own crew was never stingy with them, adding generously to what came off the dining tables.

What has stayed in my mind, among the sights of such waste, is that when my wife and I ate breakfast at the (American) hotel, they would fill our table with every kind of toast, bread rolls, biscuits, butter, jam, and fried or boiled eggs, all of it wrapped in cellophane, and we would rise from the table with almost everything untouched exactly as it had been laid out. The waiter would then come with a large basket, sweeping into it everything, open or still wrapped, to be thrown into the garbage bins. This was a source of real astonishment and disapproval for us as well.

Tuesday the 13th

The ocean liner dropped anchor at the English port of Southampton, its own nerves settling once it entered what the French call "la Manche" and the English call the English Channel.

We boarded the train bound for London at five in the afternoon, reaching it in about two hours.

From the station we telephoned the Imperial Hotel to reserve two rooms for us.

What struck us most was this open indecency in the streets, among the young men and women, loitering about in their scandalously short skirts, smoking cigarettes in the middle of the road, and trading obscenities without the slightest embarrassment.

These were distressing sights, ones we had not witnessed in the United States.

We had the chance to visit Westminster Abbey and the gardens of Buckingham Palace, the royal residence, and watched the Queen's Guard in their red uniforms and towering black hats, standing at attention like statues, while "tourists" gathered around them to take souvenir photographs, without so much as a flicker of an eyelid from the guards.

We were amused by the speakers of "Hyde Park," saying whatever they pleased without fear of intelligence reports or criminal liability for libel or slander.

Saturday the 17th

Our destination was Hamburg, which we reached in the evening by plane.

This city had tasted, from American and British bombers, an aerial bombardment beyond description, in retribution for what the German air force had earlier inflicted on English cities, in the days of Nazi triumph at the start of the Second World War.

After these few short years, the traces of this destruction were on the verge of vanishing altogether, for towering buildings, thriving markets, and magnificent streets had risen up from among the ruins, and the German economy had grown strong, and would go on to become the strongest economy in the world.

This phenomenon was explained as owing to Erhard, the Minister of Economics, who had visited us in Damascus in the mid-1950s, and whom they call the "father of the economic miracle," and also to the dissolution of the army, making do with an ordinary police force instead, and to directing the funds once spent on armament toward building factories and modern housing on the ruins.

An Arab resident of the city advised us to visit the Sankt Pauli quarter, and the worst thing we saw there was young women sitting naked in the display windows of houses of vice, like so many pairs of shoes laid out for buyers.

It is truly a thing to make the soul recoil.

And under the banner of women's liberation, these young women's own dignity is degraded merely to earn the price of food and shelter, indeed the dignity of the entire human race is degraded along with it.

An expert on this city assured us that the number of cabarets in it stood at around 425.

We said to ourselves: why not see one of them "in the flesh"?

We spent an evening whose "performances" were pleasant and entertaining.

I will not speak of the "nudity" on stage, which is a disgrace to women in this Western world, though they do not see it as such at all, having grown accustomed to this way of life and immersed themselves in its repugnant pleasures.

And yet they hold our own civilizational "backwardness" against us.

A curse upon this "civilization," which has ended up in a state where a child no longer knows his own father, and which has come to grant a child of adultery, or one born out of wedlock, the very same inheritance rights that the Greatest Lawgiver reserved for legitimate children alone.

Sunday the 18th

On to Rome, "for all roads lead to Rome," as the Latin proverb says, and from there, home.

We took off aboard the giant American "Pan American" plane, but were taken by surprise when it turned back to Rome, one of its engines having failed and shut down, just as had happened to us at the very start of the trip.

We reached home at night, and woke our son and daughter, and filled our lungs with the fragrance of our own country, the breath of autumn refreshing the spirit and easing the soul.

I felt that I had become capable of resuming my own activity, after this work had very nearly exhausted my strength entirely. I returned to taking up my ministerial duties, in the very best of health and spirits.