Charles Glass - Tribes with Flags - Adventure and Kidnap in Greater Syria

TRIBES

WITH

FLAGS

Adventure and Kidnap in Greater Syria

CHARLES GLASS

Dedication CONTENTS Title Page Dedication Frontispiece Epigraph New Introduction by the Author PART ONE 1The Legacy of Alexander 2The Army of the Levant 3The Last Ottoman 4Minarets and Belfries 5No-Man’s-Land PART TWO 6Six-Star Brandy 7Where Armies Failed 8A Consular City 9The Survivors and the Dead 10The Village of a Pasha 11The Road PART THREE 12The Old City 13Meleager’s World 14This Bad Century 15Queen of the Desert 16Provincial Loyalty 17Enemies of the Goddesses PART FOUR 18Excursions 19A Blood Feud in the Mountains 20Foul is Fair 21The Ghetto 22Monks and Martyrs 23The Family and the Plain 24The Slumber of the Dead 25Disrespectful Dancing 26The Last Day PART FIVE 27The Black Hole 28Recalled to Life About the Author Also by Charles Glass Copyright About the Publisher

For Julia, Edward, George, Hester,

Beatrix and Fiona

and to the memory of Mouna Bustros

Detail from “Syria”, Tallis’ Atlas, 1841

Epigraph CONTENTS Title Page Dedication Frontispiece Epigraph New Introduction by the Author PART ONE 1The Legacy of Alexander 2The Army of the Levant 3The Last Ottoman 4Minarets and Belfries 5No-Man’s-Land PART TWO 6Six-Star Brandy 7Where Armies Failed 8A Consular City 9The Survivors and the Dead 10The Village of a Pasha 11The Road PART THREE 12The Old City 13Meleager’s World 14This Bad Century 15Queen of the Desert 16Provincial Loyalty 17Enemies of the Goddesses PART FOUR 18Excursions 19A Blood Feud in the Mountains 20Foul is Fair 21The Ghetto 22Monks and Martyrs 23The Family and the Plain 24The Slumber of the Dead 25Disrespectful Dancing 26The Last Day PART FIVE 27The Black Hole 28Recalled to Life About the Author Also by Charles Glass Copyright About the Publisher

“A man may find Naples or Palermo merely pretty;

but the deeper violet, the splendour

and desolation of the Levant waters

is something that drives into the soul.”

James Elroy Flecker

Beirut, October 1914

CONTENTS

Title Page TRIBES WITH FLAGS Adventure and Kidnap in Greater Syria CHARLES GLASS

Dedication

Frontispiece Detail from “Syria”, Tallis’ Atlas, 1841

Epigraph

New Introduction by the Author

PART ONE

1The Legacy of Alexander

2The Army of the Levant

3The Last Ottoman

4Minarets and Belfries

5No-Man’s-Land

PART TWO

6Six-Star Brandy

7Where Armies Failed

8A Consular City

9The Survivors and the Dead

10The Village of a Pasha

11The Road

PART THREE

12The Old City

13Meleager’s World

14This Bad Century

15Queen of the Desert

16Provincial Loyalty

17Enemies of the Goddesses

PART FOUR

18Excursions

19A Blood Feud in the Mountains

20Foul is Fair

21The Ghetto

22Monks and Martyrs

23The Family and the Plain

24The Slumber of the Dead

25Disrespectful Dancing

26The Last Day

PART FIVE

27The Black Hole

28Recalled to Life

About the Author

Also by Charles Glass

Copyright

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION CONTENTS Title Page TRIBES WITH FLAGS Adventure and Kidnap in Greater Syria CHARLES GLASS Dedication Frontispiece Detail from “Syria”, Tallis’ Atlas, 1841 Epigraph New Introduction by the Author PART ONE 1The Legacy of Alexander 2The Army of the Levant 3The Last Ottoman 4Minarets and Belfries 5No-Man’s-Land PART TWO 6Six-Star Brandy 7Where Armies Failed 8A Consular City 9The Survivors and the Dead 10The Village of a Pasha 11The Road PART THREE 12The Old City 13Meleager’s World 14This Bad Century 15Queen of the Desert 16Provincial Loyalty 17Enemies of the Goddesses PART FOUR 18Excursions 19A Blood Feud in the Mountains 20Foul is Fair 21The Ghetto 22Monks and Martyrs 23The Family and the Plain 24The Slumber of the Dead 25Disrespectful Dancing 26The Last Day PART FIVE 27The Black Hole 28Recalled to Life About the Author Also by Charles Glass Copyright About the Publisher

Twenty-five years ago, I traveled by land through what geographers called Greater Syria to write a book. The journey began in Alexandretta, the seaside northern province that France ceded to Turkey in 1939, and meandered south through modern Syria to Lebanon. From there, my intended route went through Israel and Jordan. My destination was Aqaba, the first Turkish citadel of Greater Syria to surrender to the Arab revolt and Lawrence of Arabia in 1917. For various reasons, my journey was curtailed in Beirut in June 1987. (I returned to complete the trip and a second book, The Tribes Triumphant, in 2002.)

The ramble on foot and by bus and taxi gave me time to savor Syria in a way I couldn’t as a journalist confronting daily deadlines. People loved to linger over coffee and tea, play cards, and talk.

Many of the civilian members of the Baath Party, whose founders claimed to believe in secularism and democracy, deserted its ranks when the party took power in 1963. They rejected the militarization of the party, which kept power not through elections but by force of the arms of its members within the army. Among those who left the party was the father of Rulla Rouqbi. I met his daughter a few weeks ago at the hotel she manages in Damascus. Faissal Rouqbi had died in April 2012, and this explained why the attractive fifty-four-year-old was dressed in black. A vigorous supporter of the revolution that began in Syria a year earlier, she believed hers was the same struggle her father had waged against one-party military rule.

“I was questioned twice by the security forces,” she told me in the hotel’s coffee shop, which looks out onto a busy downtown street. “They did it just to show me they know what I am doing and they are here.” She said that, because young dissidents gathered in her coffee shop with their computers, the police cut the hotel’s WiFi connection. Nonetheless, several young people were there discussing the rebellion—much as their forefathers did in the old cafés of the souks that the French destroyed to put down their revolts—over strong Turkish coffee or newly fashionable espresso.

The rebellion against tyranny was by 2012 turning into a sectarian and class war that threatened to destroy Syria for a generation and drive out those with the talent, education, or money to thrive elsewhere. Neither side spoke of conciliation. The endgame for each was the destruction of the other. Foreign backers appeared, as in Lebanon from 1975 to 1990, to encourage confrontation in their own rather than Syrian interests. Nothing had changed since Britain and France occupied the Ottoman provinces of Greater Syria during World War I.

A glimmer of hope came from the economist Nabil Sukkar, formerly with the World Bank. “The opposition is not going to retreat,” he told me in Damascus. “The stalemate could last to 2014.” Bashar al-Assad’s term of office was scheduled to end in that year, when, Sukkar believed, he could stand down without losing face or having his Alawite community punished. He continued, “For [Kofi] Annan to succeed, there has to be compromise from both sides. The regime must stop killing, and the opposition must stop smuggling [arms]. And foreigners must stop sending arms. Then there can be a cease-fire and a transition government.” However unlikely that seems today, it could work if Russia and Iran compel the regime and the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar push the opposition to achieve it. Otherwise, Syrian will fight Syrian—just as the Lebanese did—in what the respected Lebanese journalist Ghassan Tueini called “a war for the others.”