Year 1960 - Part 17: The Funeral of Former President Hashim al-Atassi

Friday the 2nd: The Patriarch of Russia

Alexy, Patriarch of Russia, tall in stature, radiant in countenance, handsome in appearance, visited the region, and I received him at the airport on the government's behalf. Every Orthodox Christian in the country seemed to be at the airport that day.

I had met him in Moscow, during a Syrian parliamentary delegation's visit to the Soviet Union, and, since those days, I have admired his own character and his fine conduct.

We were told at the time that he was a prince of the ruling house, who had come to love communism and embraced it, alongside his own embrace of the Orthodox faith, of which he is the supreme head.

He spoke French fluently, with real mastery of both pronunciation and grammar.

I often found myself wondering: to what extent do Soviet citizens still believe in Orthodoxy?

We once visited the famous Kiev Monastery, and the visit seemed to have been arranged in haste, for we found not a single monk there. When we asked where the monastery's own monks were, we were told they were out working in the monastery's own fields, since, as they put it, "we have no idle men here who do not work. Whoever wishes to eat must work, be he a monk or a member of the Central Committee itself."

On the state's behalf, I held a luncheon for the Patriarch and the members of his delegation the day after his arrival, at the Sharq Club, the finest restaurant in the capital at the time.

I seated beside him "the sheikh of the Muslims," the Grand Mufti Abu al-Yusr Abidin, and the well-known Damascene scholar Sheikh Bahjat al-Bitar.

The three of them exchanged "esteem" through an exchange of smiles alone, for he knew no Arabic, and neither of the other two knew any language but Arabic.

The situation was an awkward one for me, and, to lend the reception a certain warmth, I found myself acting as translator between them, though I took the liberty of adjusting and altering my two companions' own questions, and summarizing the Patriarch's own answers for them, brief as they already were.

What troubled us most of all was this loud slurping of drinks. Some of the guests overdid it slurping their juice, and others went even further slurping their coffee.

My own relief at the reception's end far outweighed any satisfaction I took in fulfilling my duty as host. Why was this? Why?

The Patriarch returned my visit at my own office the following day, and it was a truly enjoyable session for me.

In the course of our conversation, recalling some of his own memories of the Tsarist era, the Patriarch told me that "my own colleague, the Tsar's Minister of Finance, was named Witte, a man of wide renown across that sprawling empire."

Saturday the 3rd

The governor of the Indian Central Bank, Mr. Iengar, visited me at my office today. He told me of himself that he had once been an army officer, and that he had received orders from his own superiors to arrest the leader Jawaharlal Nehru, back when Nehru was in the opposition, and that he had carried out the order and arrested him.

Nehru held no grudge against him for this "deed," and later appointed him governor of the Central Bank.

I asked him, as a friend of his own country: do you have anyone in mind to succeed Nehru?

He answered: fate has granted India but a single man, named Gandhi.

India will see no one to match him for the next two hundred years. He confirmed that a Hindu extremist had assassinated him, for calling for equality between the Muslim minority and the Hindu majority.

He added that Nehru was, without doubt, a great man, but not of Gandhi's own stature, and yet there was no one in the country now to match even him.

As for the future, it remains shrouded in uncertainty.

My friend and fellow student at the University of Paris, Dr. Ezzat Tarabulsi, governor of the Syrian Central Bank, held a luncheon for the Indian Central Bank's governor.

One of the ladies invited, wife of a senior official at our bank, was wearing an Indian sari, and our guest, wishing to pay her a compliment, praised the sari and asked her whether "saris" were woven and sewn in our own country. She answered: no, but she had bought it "from the Taj Mahal."

The guest fell into a puzzled silence, for the Taj Mahal is, in fact, the tomb of the wife of one of the Muslim Mughal sultans, built for her within the famous mosque he had erected in her own memory.

The restaurant's own musical ensemble played a soft, plaintive piece, of the kind they call "chamber music," and among the players was a young boy, performing skillfully on his instrument. I praised him, simply to find something to say, and the "cultured" lady quickly offered her own display of sophistication, saying: yes, he is skilled indeed, if only he did not imitate the musician Grace Kelly.

Grace Kelly is, of course, the Princess of Monaco, who had, only days before, presented her husband with a baby boy, heir to the principality's own throne, and the press had made much of this occasion. I sensed that her own irritated husband could not quite hide his discomfort at his wife's foolish, reckless remark.

Was it not her own husband's right, that she hold her tongue, rather than embarrass him so? Had she not heard, back in primary school, what Zuhair once said in his own Mu'allaqa?

What drew "world" attention to the birth of Prince Albert was that his own mother had been a world-famous American actress, celebrated for her beauty and her fine acting, and that, with this birth, she had saved Monaco's own throne, keeping it within the Grimaldi family, for without her, the principality would have been extinguished, reverting instead to French territory, under the terms of an old treaty concluded between the two countries.

Tuesday the 13th

World radio stations carried news of the savage massacre carried out by the French brutes in their "colony," or, as they call it, their three "departments," of Algeria.

Settlers and army, hand in hand.

What set the settlers' own clock of hatred ticking was General de Gaulle's visit to Algeria, during which he spoke of it as "Algerian Algeria."

The talk had always, until then, been of "French Algeria."

The Algerians understood this visit as an attempt by the French President to forestall a seventh discussion of "the Algerian question" at the United Nations General Assembly.

The General expressed his own hope that it would not be placed on this year's own agenda for the Assembly, "to leave him sufficient time to study it and devise a solution for it."

The Algerians did not believe him, and marched in demonstrations in the cities of Algiers (the capital) and Oran, only for the French armed forces to attack them, backed by French settlers, opening fire upon them with their own weapons.

Radio reports put the number of dead at a thousand martyrs.

They fell, wrongly and unjustly, defending their own right to reclaim their homeland. And yet every cloud has its own silver lining, for the French generals who had opposed de Gaulle's "peaceful" leanings fled Algeria, fearing arrest and trial.

The ill-omened General Salan fled to Spain.

Followed by the criminal Lagaillarde, leader of the exploitative settlers. The Algerians fear the French military in Algeria may yet stage an armed coup against de Gaulle.

Wednesday the 14th: A Visit from Ahmad Abdel Karim

The former, resigned minister Ahmad Abdel Karim visited me today.

The purpose of his visit was to request that his advance (against a retirement pension not yet finalized) be raised from 1,000 lira a month to 1,100 lira, since he was building a house, and the extra hundred lira would be of great help to him. I approved the additional sum, since his own eventual pension would exceed it in any case. This minister is a fine example of the honorable ministers who left government still in need of an extra hundred lira a month. He took the occasion to retell the story of his own dispute with al-Nafouri on one hand, and with the President on the other.

I already knew the story, having witnessed its own main episodes myself. The new version of it was that President Abdel Nasser had surprised them, at a central cabinet meeting, by announcing that UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld had written to Foreign Minister Dr. Mahmoud Fawzi, informing him that Israel intended to divert the course of the Jordan River, and that the United Nations would not permit either side of the dispute to launch military attacks. It was therefore in the Arabs' own interest to work to make use of the river's water themselves, so that Israel would not have it all to itself, and Hammarskjöld proposed reviving the American Johnston's own plan.

But Abdel Nasser felt that the UN Secretary-General ought to sponsor this plan himself, since the Arabs did not wish to hear the detested name of Johnston mentioned a second time.

Ahmad Abdel Karim said: I objected to the very principle of sharing the water with Israel, given the unacceptable political implications it carried, and said we were capable of preventing the Jews from diverting the river's water by armed force (and he repeated this explanation to me at length).

But Abdel Nasser flew into a rage at Ahmad Abdel Karim, asking him: does this mean you are accusing me of something? I want to remind you that the First (Syrian) Army is weak and militarily incapable. Abdel Karim answered that he had, in the past, personally prevented Israel from this diversion, alone. But the President said to him: and Damascus, would it not raise the white flag the moment Israeli bombs began falling on it?

This is a well-known story, one the special committee the President had formed at an earlier session had already settled, its own finding, with Ahmad Abdel Karim himself a member of it, being that the Republic was not prepared to enter a war with Israel under the present circumstances.

It seems to me that the new dispute, which stirred up this old ledger again, arose because the Egyptian executive Minister of Municipalities, Muhammad Abu Nasir, presented the Council of Ministers with a report on the state of municipalities in the Southern Region, while Ahmad Abdel Karim, the central minister, presented a separate report of his own. Abdel Nasser asked Abu Nasir to read his own report first, passing over the central minister in doing so, and, once he had finished reading, Ahmad Abdel Karim asked to read his own report, but the President told him: the two reports say the same thing, the only difference between them is length, thereby, in Ahmad's own words, belittling the central minister's more detailed report.

Mr. Ahmad closed his own account by saying: we resigned because the President wanted to turn Syria into a mere "department," over which he alone would steer the course of foreign policy.

I remarked to him: this is nothing new to us at all, for the provisional constitution we ourselves approved is that of a presidential system, and the President explained, at the very first cabinet session held after the Union, in the presence of all the ministers, Ahmad Abdel Karim and al-Nafouri among them, the rules by which the new Republic would be governed, insisting that he alone would steer foreign policy.

He cited the powers of the President of the United States as his own precedent, and no one objected to him at the time, since the people had voted for a presidential constitution, and the ministers had been chosen on this very basis.

Ahmad Abdel Karim himself among them, and ourselves as well. So what, exactly, is the reason for stirring up a "problem" the constitution itself had already settled, one the people had approved by general referendum?

Thursday the 15th

The regional government was invited to Cairo to attend the "Festival of Science," and the "scholar" ministers traveled there, but I excused myself from taking part in this gracious event, held back by prior commitments concerning the people's own pending affairs.

Sunday the 18th

The government took part in the funeral procession of President Hashim al-Atassi, former President of the Syrian Republic, in the city of Homs. May God have mercy on him, he was a singular case of patriotism and integrity. He was widely thought to belong to the People's Party, though this was not actually true. This rumor may well have attached itself to him because his own son, Dr. Adnan, and his nephew, Mr. Faidi, were members of this party. Even so, we always regarded him as our own spiritual father. It was said of him that he favored union with Iraq, but I never once heard this from him myself, neither in cabinet sessions nor in private conversation.

The country used to turn to him in its own hours of crisis, as it did after the fall of Husni al-Za'im's regime, calling on him to take up the reins of government, and he answered the call.

And as it did again after the fall of Shishakli's regime, calling on him once more, and he answered again, taking up power temporarily and forming a cabinet that laid the foundations of order and democracy. When his own son Adnan was arrested on a charge of conspiring against the state's own safety, and sentenced to death by the special military court headed by Afif al-Bizri, his own health declined sharply.

He used to summon me to his home, his son's own home in Damascus, to entrust me with carrying his letters to President Abdel Nasser.

I carried them faithfully each time, until God inspired Abdel Nasser to release the detainees "for health reasons," transferring them to Cairo and setting aside monthly salaries for them, thereby "soothing" their own hearts, and exposing the arbitrary judgments of the exceptional judiciary for what they truly were.

I recall of this great departed man that, when he was head of state during al-Hinnawi's coup in 1951, he insisted that I take up the Ministry of Education, passing over Muhammad al-Mubarak, since he "held a certain leaning" (Islamist) that not everyone might be comfortable with, whereas I, in his own words, was "beyond any doubt as to my own convictions or my own moderate leanings."

Al-Mubarak was angered by this, and the President asked him to leave the session.

But he later made amends with him, once he accepted the Ministry of Agriculture instead, and accepted me as Minister of Education in his place. Salah al-Din al-Bitar told Dr. Abidin Hamada that he and his own Baathist brothers had intended to take part in the late al-Atassi's funeral procession, but had decided against it, once the government itself announced it would take part. They did not take part, but no one ever noticed their own absence. One wonders how great a gap their absence would truly have left, had the government itself not taken part in this painful occasion.

The earth received a noble body, one that had weathered ninety-five years of time, a noble face among the honorable, upright faces of this nation, the face of Faisal's own prime minister in 1920, a man who held the presidency of the Republic on several occasions, and head of the Syrian delegation that negotiated the country's own independence with the mandatory power, securing a treaty that would have enshrined this independence in 1936.

Had France not gone back on its own commitments, to please Turkey with the Sanjak of Alexandretta, and to accommodate the Jews and their own designs on Palestine.

Tuesday the 20th

How much American diplomats talk, and how little their own government actually does for the Arabs.

The new American consul general, who had replaced Mr. Reams, visited me today. I noticed he spoke French with complete fluency, and he told me his father had been a painter, and that he had lived in Paris for seven years with his family, before securing a post first in Morocco, then in Algeria. From his lengthy conversation, I drew two conclusions:

The first: his own resentment toward the Arabs, for downplaying America's own role in halting the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt in 1956, even though it was, in truth, a decisive one.

The second: his saying, "I cannot reveal everything just now, but I will tell you that President-elect Kennedy has made a great many promises to the Jews. But he is keeping in store for you, the Arabs, a very pleasant surprise."

Kennedy was assassinated nearly three years later, in 1963, and we never learned what this pleasant surprise was meant to be.

How true the French proverb rings: "a flood of words in a desert of ideas."

Wednesday the 21st

I had submitted to the President and to the Council of Ministers a detailed report on the Syrian region's own financial situation, noting that the ordinary budget's deficit stood at 60 million lira, and explaining the reasons behind this deficit, owed to the drought and dryness striking the region, and to the abolition of customs duties on foodstuffs especially, so that they would remain affordable for society's own weaker strata.

I proposed detailed solutions to remedy this deficit, but ruled out the inflationary solution, borrowing from the Public Debt Fund and putting paper currency into circulation without any corresponding backing in gold or strong foreign currency.

Dr. Abdel Moneim El-Kaissouni came from Egypt to study this situation with us.

His own staff, having studied the real situation together with our own officials, convinced him that the deficit stood at only fifteen million lira, and he submitted his own report to the President on this basis.

The difference between the two reports was thus a very large one.

For this reason, I set about submitting a far more detailed report to the President, showing him, with precise figures, that the Egyptian officials had failed to properly grasp what our own, more competent and scrupulously honest officials had actually told them, seizing instead on whatever pleased them, perhaps out of a wish to "gladden" the President by making the deficit seem far smaller than the scale I had described in my first report, and pressed again in my second.

We conducted our own affairs by what the figures themselves told us, even when what they told us brought me no pleasure, indeed some real embarrassment, for they are a mouth that never errs in speaking the truth.

Thursday the 21st: Algeria's Day of Victory

This is a joyous day, one of the Arabs' own rare, happy days.

For on this day, the General Assembly voted, finally, on a resolution recognizing struggling, valiant Algeria's own legitimate right to self-determination, though it required that the Algerians themselves declare their own wish for a general referendum, to be held under its own supervision. I doubt a single Algerian could be found to cast a dissenting vote. The soil of their own country has been stained with blood, and the land of a million martyrs was not named so in vain.

I immediately telephoned Algeria's own representative in Damascus, my friend Mr. Muhammad al-Ghusairi, and congratulated him on this great gain achieved for his own country and for the Arab nation.

Sunday the 25th: Cabinet Sessions in Aleppo

The Council of Ministers decided to hold a series of sessions in the provincial capitals. It began with sessions held in the provinces of the Euphrates and the Jazira. I was excused from taking part in these, given the sensitive and demanding nature of the Ministry of the Treasury's own work. But I made a point of taking part in the government's own work and sessions to be held in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib.

I brought my wife and children along with me, since we have a home of our own in the place of our birth. The government's own work continued for a full week. We settled every matter requiring a ministerial decision, and reviewed the "National Union's" own requests with every reasonable measure of goodwill.

But something happened, at one of the National Union's own sessions, running until three in the morning, that we had never expected at all.

The two lawyers, Ahmad Abu Saleh and Aref Jazmati, members of the National Union in Aleppo, launched an ugly attack on Taama al-Awdallah, Minister of Municipalities, and criticized the conduct of Minister Ahmad al-Hunaidi as well.

We found ourselves wondering: why this repugnant conduct?

These were the very two men al-Sarraj himself had chosen to occupy the forefront of Aleppo's own political "leadership."

Yet they proved themselves well below the trust the new era had placed in them. I had a lengthy conversation with the two of them, in which I made clear that they had done their own city a disservice, drawing on whatever standing I hold as their own professor and fellow Aleppan.

But, as the saying goes, upon whom, O David, are your own psalms to be recited?

Against this "tense" Aleppan episode, the Engineers' Syndicate in Damascus, by contrast, elected Nour al-Din Kahhaleh its own president, he being with us in Aleppo at the time.

This is exactly the difference between rigid thinking and flexible thinking, between the two cities.

The two ministers accused Abdul Hamid al-Sarraj of having incited these two "nationalist" leaders against them, and al-Sarraj swore he would never again chair a single session of the Council of Ministers, hinting at resignation.

But he went back on this decision once in Damascus, and calm waters returned to their own course once more.