Chapter 10, Part 6: A Hundred Days in al-Shishakli's Detention

The dawn visitors knocked at the door of my house in Damascus at half past one in the morning of 29 November 1951. When they came in they cut off all telephone contact. I remember that the officer leading them, Sami Jum'a, behaved very courteously toward me; he allowed me to put on my clothes in the presence of his soldiers. Then they put me in a closed military vehicle. In one corner of it was a person I could not make out at first, but I soon recognized him as the People's Party deputy and my colleague at the Faculty of Law, Rizqallah Antaki.. On that bitterly cold night the vehicle took us to the headquarters of the military police in Damascus.[1] Through the opening of the vehicle I could hear the muffled, broken barking of stray dogs tormented by the frost.

A diplomatic car was also standing in front of my house, watching the progress of the coup.. I learned later that it belonged to the French Embassy. There I learned that al-Shishakli had pounced on civilian rule and arrested a large number of politicians, among them the members of the government. Dr. al-Ajlani was in pajamas and barefoot.. because they had dragged him out of his bed.

In the morning they moved us to the Air Force Officers' Club opposite Mezzeh Prison.. The detainees were many. Among them, from the People's Party, were Rushdi al-Kikhya, Nazim al-Qudsi, Ahmad Qanbar, Maarouf al-Dawalibi, Ali Bouzo, Shakir al-As, Muhammad al-Shawwaf, Hani al-Siba'i, Abd Allah al-Tamir, Rizqallah Antaki, Abd al-Latif Sibahi, Abd al-Aziz al-Hallaj and myself. Arif al-Turqji of the "religious", and Zaki al-Khatib, Abd al-Rahman al-Azm and Husni al-Barazi of the independents.

Our food came from outside the detention center.. they said from the Orient Club, because of a friendship between its owner and the men of the government.. And fruit came in heaps from a Damascene notable named Ahmad Ilush.. He was arrested "because he defied the authorities".

We stayed there no more than two weeks.. after which they moved us to a wing of the military hospital in Mezzeh.

We were given one room for every two detainees.. Dr. Antaki was my roommate. Abu Karim was one of the most charming and light-hearted of men.. but our problem together was that he liked to sleep early and wake early, and I was the opposite.. I slept late and woke late. That was irksome for us both.. And because he was a heavily built man, his snoring disturbed all the detainees in the neighboring rooms.. We could find no solution to this human problem.

In the detention center there was a radio set on which they let us hear only the news of Damascus.. So we knew nothing of what was going on in the world, apart from some news that reached us as scraps of paper or word of mouth, for Rushdi al-Kikhya or Abd al-Rahman al-Azm or others.. We passed it around at lightning speed, because contact among us was not forbidden.. and set about analyzing it to divine our future and "the future of the world" from it.

Al-Shishakli visited us twice, and talked to us and we to him.. He was pleasant in his conversation. He apologized for our detention, saying it had been for security reasons.. and instructed the officer of the guard to see to our comfort.

One evening the officer Shihada Abd al-Haqq, who was one of the pillars of the regime as far as we knew, took me aside and hinted that al-Shishakli wished to release me. But it would be better for me to write him a note containing a request for release.. I answered him that I had not begged him to bring me here, so it was not fitting for me to beg him to let me out.

In this detention center life ran on monotonously. It was often extremely boring.. But a constant feeling of frustration and oppression never left us: that we did not have the right to direct our own will.. Anyone who says that he "sleeps on one side" in prison is either a person who has lost all sense of dignity or one who is outbidding others.. For a detention center, however "comfortable", remains the place where a person cannot enjoy his humanity or his feeling of being alive.

Long ago Hugo said of prison that it has a musty smell.. We noticed that the times when our spirits were lowest were those between five and seven in the evening.. Perhaps the reason was the food served to us at midday, mostly starches, part of which turned into gases pressing on the heart and lungs... But perhaps the reason was that the day had passed without anything new reaching us from "the world".

The officer of the guard allowed me to bring some books from my library. It was a generous gesture on his part, because I immersed my time in research and writing.. and wrote part of my book on criminal procedure, while my roommate Antaki was writing his book on civil procedure.

Our life in this "grave", as some of us called it, was not without amusing incidents at which we laughed as children laugh.. Had one of us recorded them and then written them down, they would have made one of the most delightful books of literary anecdotes.

Husni al-Barazi used to mock the duty officer, raising his finger to ask permission to go to the lavatory by saying "Dastur". It was an expression we used when we were small in primary school, a legacy of the Ottoman era.. Once he went too far and made fun of his cousin al-Shishakli in front of the duty officer. The "reward" from "the aunt's son to the uncle's son" was swift: fifteen days in solitary confinement.. But he used them to lose weight, pretending to be on hunger strike.. When he came back to us he came back without his "paunch".. putting himself forward "to start a new family".

Nor did he forget his "pursuits" of Zaki al-Khatib in the corridor, and he went back to them. Zaki al-Khatib no longer "dared" to venture out for a stroll, for fear of al-Barazi's quick and "ill-mannered" hand.

The "sweetest" joke happened with Dr. al-Dawalibi.. One evening al-Dawalibi criticized "the regime" rather sharply.. The officer left the gathering angrily and ordered Professor Maarouf to keep to his room. Since he used to call me "our professor", because he had enrolled at the Faculty of Law for a few days before going to the Military College.. some of our brothers hurried to ask me to hasten to placate him, for fear that some harm might come to al-Dawalibi in those snowy nights.

Until then al-Dawalibi had not come to terms with "the loss of the premiership". Indeed he went on regarding himself as the legitimate Prime Minister throughout al-Shishakli's rule, on the grounds that he had submitted his resignation to the President of the Republic but the President had resigned before accepting it. When al-Shishakli's regime was overthrown and al-Atassi returned to the presidency, he issued a decree accepting al-Dawalibi's resignation, especially since the Chamber of Deputies had passed a law declaring al-Shishakli's rule illegitimate.

I went in to the officer and found him actually writing a report.. The night was bitterly cold.. and if he took any measure against the professor, his health might suffer..

I began to humor my "pupil".. until he accepted my "intercession" and folded up the report. And I found the moment right for a joke.. In the morning I went in to Professor al-Dawalibi and told him: the officer orders that you must not leave the room.. Then I went to the officer and gave him to understand that the professor was tired.. and asked him to send his breakfast to his bed.. When the soldier came in to him with the breakfast tray, we heard Professor al-Dawalibi shouting in great anger, accompanied by words we could not make out. I feared the consequences.. and rushed to him.. begging him to calm down.. and that the whole thing was just a joke. He was standing on the bed, shaking with visible nerves.. The officer asked the reason for the shouting, and I told him: we teachers sometimes suffer attacks of nerves for which we know no reason.. They may be one of the "requirements" of the profession, which is what al-Jahiz said in his book about our brothers the teachers..

Had it not been for this officer's gentleness, we would have "gone to perdition".. amid the snow falling beyond the windows.

I hope that no one will judge this "conduct" of ours while sitting behind a plush desk in front of a cozy stove.. for judgment on conduct must be drawn from the circumstances surrounding it.

I still see this brave officer today.. He became one of the most brilliant officers in his military specialty.. Then the hand of politics reached him, and he was removed with many of his colleagues.. from the army into the diplomatic service.. The army lost them and diplomacy did not gain them.

I once asked him: why did you "leave the army"?.. He smiled and said: through politics.. And I understood his meaning: whoever wants to reach power "rides" on the backs of supporters as greedy as himself. Once things go his way.. he bites them.. and then it becomes easy for someone else to bite him and pick him off.. This is the rule of nature. And that was our tragedy. Coups had become "nature" in our officers. They were the "heroes", and they were the "victims" too..

The author of Kalila and Dimna tells that a scorpion begged a frog to carry him swimming to the other bank of the river. The frog hesitated, fearing the scorpion's treachery.. He reassured her that he could not betray her, because he would die too.. When they were in the middle of the river, he stung her, and she felt the poison running through her veins and began to sink in the water.. She asked him: why have you killed me and killed yourself?.. He said to her as he drowned: nature, frog.. nature.

How sweet it would have been to me if I allowed myself to set out the memories of those hundred days we spent as al-Shishakli's "guests". But the occasion has no room for "literary" memories. Fortunately the literary art has not been deprived of an author who plunged into the events of history and kept company with the writers who were thrown into prison and composed fine poems there. A selection of them was made for us by Abd al-Aziz al-Khalfi, who called his book "Udaba' al-Sujun" (Writers of the Prisons)[2] and dedicated it "to the reviver of national hymns in his Rumiyyat, to the prisoner of the Byzantines and the emblem of loyalty in his sacrifices, to the quintessence of conquerors and the genius of the Banu Hamdan, Prince Abu Firas al-Hamdani".

Here is a little of what the author selected, which I quote out of a wish to change the political "mood" and lighten the serious "atmosphere"..

The poet Ali ibn al-Jahm said:

They said, "You have been imprisoned." I said, "My prison
does me no harm; what Indian sword has never been sheathed?
And the sun, were it not hidden
from your eyes, the Pole Star would not shine.
And prison, if you have not entered it for some base deed,
is in this world the best of welcoming abodes:
a house that renews a noble man's honor,
where he is visited and does not visit, and is praised."

And Abu Mihjan al-Thaqafi said:

Enough of sorrow that the horses dash off with the lances
while I am left bound tight in my fetters;
when I stand, the iron wears me down, and doors
are shut behind me that deafen the one who calls;
I was once a man of great wealth and many brothers,
and they have left me alone, with no brother.

And Abu Firas al-Hamdani, in prison, composed his splendid poem when he heard a dove moaning on a tree standing in front of the window of his cell in the land of the Byzantines:

I say, as a dove moans near me:
O neighbor, do you know my plight?
Does a captive laugh while a free one weeps,
and the grieving keep silent while the carefree lament?
I had more right than you to tears for my eye,
but my tears are precious in misfortune.

And among the finest things said behind bars are the words of al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad, king of Seville, whom Yusuf ibn Tashfin took captive and imprisoned with his daughters in the prison of Aghmat, where he died in the year 488 AH, said on a feast day:

In times past you rejoiced at the feasts;
now the feast grieves you, a captive in Aghmat.
You see your daughters in rags, hungry,
spinning for people, owning not a thread;
they tread the mud with bare feet,
as though they had never trodden musk and camphor.
Whoever spends the night after you in a kingdom that delights him
spends it deceived by dreams.

Even I "composed poetry" in detention.. but it was humorous "poetry", for teasing.. and for killing the monotony of time, which passed very heavily. There is no need to criticize its rhymes and its art.. for I am not unaware of its faults.. But I wanted to set it down as I said it, "warts and all".. for remembrance and as a lesson.

Hani al-Siba'i had aspired to ascend to the ministry. When he won it at noon in al-Dawalibi's cabinet, the coup tore it from him at night, and in detention he caught a severe cold. These two lines fell to his share:

And Hani lost his glory at nightfall,
though at noon "Maarouf" had made him minister;
calamities left him with "colic", and his
"dasturs" are both hidden and exposed

Professor al-Dawalibi had made his famous statement to the journalists that the danger to the Arabs came from Zionism and not from communism, and time has proved his foresight. Here we are, witnessing the dissolution of the communist regimes in their very cradle. But the danger of Zionism to Arabism and Islam is still growing. I reminded him of it with the following:

And the sheikh in his crimson robe and turban,
Lenin wrapped in perfume and brocade;
the nights turned on him, wearing
a garment of treachery that no falsehood could hide

God gave Nazim al-Qudsi a blazing intelligence and captivating good manners.

But in his political conduct he holds to caution, so as not to fall into error.

And caution sometimes leads to hesitation in decisive situations. So I teased him with these two lines:

And Nazim, there is none among us like him,
girt with gentleness, in love with goodness;
it troubles him that time should make his position plain,
and the solution has two faces: rejected and familiar.

Ahmad Qanbar was a man of few words, inclined to keep to himself. It troubled him greatly that the constitution on which we had pinned our hopes of driving the state forward had become no more than a doormat. So I said of him:

And leave Abu al-Hawl in the silence he takes refuge in;
these rumors do not rock him;
had time been fair, intellect would not have gone to waste,
but this is Damascus, and the world has its turns

Shakir al-As was distinguished by his deep thinking and calm nerves.. but if he was provoked he erupted like a volcano. So I said of him:

And leave the rage of this al-As asleep,
for if it wakes, proud Arabs are roused to anger

Faydi al-Atassi was known for his astonishing command of both Arabic and French, in vocabulary and pronunciation, even though he was not a specialist in Arabic literature and had not studied at a French university... He liked to talk to me in French, and I felt he was more capable than I in both.. His roommate told us that he dreamed one night and began talking aloud in his sleep about literature with the philosopher Rousseau, and reproaching our Prime Minister, Hasan al-Hakim, for the resignation he himself had caused, God have mercy on him. So I said:

How blessed is Faydi when at dawn
Rousseau visits him and Popov trades verses with him!
He shot "al-Hakim" with an arrow of his eloquence,
as a missile pierced the heart of that lion

But the cabinet "flew away" and threw the doors of the unknown wide open.

An Arab ambassador gave Ali Bouzo a rosary of wooden beads, and the brothers used to tease him that he had "taken a payoff".. He was never known to be one of those who "take payoffs", even though he loved the good life.

And a dark rosary of desert arak wood
given to Bouzo, while the face of goodness is eclipsed

Nor did I forget "the master" Rushdi in this teasing, and I mentioned him kindly in these two lines:

Holding every thread in his fingers,
Rushdi, with a wolf and a sheep in his palm;
the father of noble deeds, whom no temptation tempts,
holds fast to self-denial, renowned for nobility

And I recalled the companionship of detention and its nights, which were sometimes pleasant:

Companions for whom the world and its joy
were in a forest, its good all delay and putting off

This line alludes to the two officers charged with guarding us, who used to bring us happy news every morning, but what they said evaporated as the sun's rays slipped away behind the hill that crouched on the western side of the detention center.

Rushdi, God have mercy on him, used to ask me to read this teasing again.. and he would laugh heartily..

My roommate was Dr. Rizqallah Antaki, professor of civil procedure at the Faculty of Law. He, God have mercy on him, was one of the sweetest and wittiest of men in joking. One evening "Sayyid Awi" took hold of him, and he made me witness that if he was released that week he would be "circumcised" as Muslims are.. But fate was kind to him, and he did not win this "blessing"..

Al-Shishakli released me after three months and a few days. One of the officers accompanied me to his office at the general staff. He received me warmly and began apologizing for the detention of our liberty, explaining it by necessities that circumstances had imposed on him.

After that he began releasing the detainees one after another, choosing the night to receive them in his office at the general staff (which was at Bawwabat al-Salihiyya), and after apologizing to each of them, he had one of the officers take them home.

A few days after my release he dismissed me from the university, along with Professors Maarouf al-Dawalibi, Rizqallah Antaki and Munir al-Ajlani, "because we refused to take the oath he had imposed on officials not to engage in any political activity and forbidding membership of political parties".

I decided to practice law in earnest.. so I moved with the family to Aleppo.. and opened a law office there.. Because of the few cases that came into the office, I had a great deal of spare time, which I spent in the company of the late Rushdi.. He would visit me at my office or I would visit him at his house. Or we would meet at the al-Sabil café.. and we usually walked to al-Sabil on some of those beautiful Aleppo evenings.

A number of party members used to meet at one of our houses.. Hamid Hamid Pasha, Abd al-Latif Sibahi, Dr. Mustafa Isa and Mustafa al-Attar.. Dr. al-Qudsi met with us from time to time.. But one day he surprised us by saying that he no longer wished to engage in any political activity, and that he did not want "to involve us in something he did not want for himself, and so he would stop seeing us.. And he did stop.. for almost the whole of al-Shishakli's rule.. though he did attend the Homs conference. Ahmad Qanbar also withdrew, without announcing anything.. Dr. al-Dawalibi left the country for the unknown and made Beirut his base.. From there he worked "to bring down the regime". He and the group he worked with were said to have planned to invade Syria with Syrian-Iraqi forces.. the invasion to begin with the occupation of a position in eastern Syria by a force opposed to the regime.. which would then call for help from the Syrian forces "encamped" on Iraqi soil.. as a kind of legitimate cover for the operation.. But the invasion came from within.. though years later..

Al-Dawalibi was later criticized for his "contacts" with Iraqi politicians and military men.. He defended himself by saying that those contacts were an emergency dictated by the political need to be rid of the dictatorship..

We took a different view of the matter.

It should be noted that Dr. Fadil al-Jamali wrote a letter, published on 29 March 1985, in which he spoke of Iraq's support for the Syrian politicians who took refuge in Lebanon in al-Shishakli's days.

This letter said that Dr. al-Dawalibi visited Baghdad secretly in 1953 and met him as Prime Minister, and al-Dawalibi proposed to him that the Iraqi government place a number of Iraqi soldiers at his disposal so that he could enter Syria with them as a conqueror. But "we did not wish to drag the Iraqi army into the matter, to avoid international complications and to spare bloodshed". Professor Maarouf left us for Lebanon.. "and we charged Salih Jabr with traveling to Beirut to be in contact with our brothers the Syrian politicians and to give them the material and moral help they asked of Iraq".[3]

But al-Dawalibi strongly denies the story of his trip to Iraq.

Endnotes:

[1] This headquarters was an old building standing in the southwest corner of what is now the square of the University Directorate. It was demolished and a modern maternity hospital built in its place.

[2] Dar al-Katib al-Arabi, undated. But some of the writers whose names he mentions are still among us, such as the poet Sulayman al-Isa, who composed his poem in "the lock-up".

[3] From an article by Ghassan al-Imam in the London-based newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, issue of 29/1/1994.