The Pillars of Hercules

Hussein, Ali’s son, was the grandson of Mohammed, and was beheaded in the year 680 by an army of the Omayyad caliphate at the Battle of Karbala in Iraq. It was a violent and dramatic story which involved Hussein witnessing the slaughter of his wife and children, surrounded by a hostile army, besieged, urging his horse onward, and at last apologizing to his horse as—helpless—Hussein is decapitated.

“And those sweet lips, that the Prophet himself kissed—peace and blessings be upon him!—were then brutally kicked by the soldiers—”

A great shout went up from the passionate pilgrims, and a tiny Smurf-like woman shrouded in black handed a wodge of tissues to the mullah. He blew his nose and continued.

“They kicked Hussein’s head like a football—!”

“Waaaa!”

What startled me was the immediacy and power of the grief. It was more than pious people having a good cathartic cry. It was like a rehearsal for something more—great anger and bitterness and resentment, as though they had been harmed and were nerving themselves to exact revenge. The howls of their grieving Muslims had the snarl of a war cry.

Assad was a dismal individual but, impartially intolerant, at least he could claim credit for keeping religious fanaticism in check. He had persecuted the religious extremists with the same grim brutality he had used in suppressing political dissent. It was perhaps his only real achievement, but he was characteristically ruthless, which was why the massacre at Hamah claimed so many lives. That was the trouble with dictators: they never knew when to stop.

This subject came up at lunch the next day with some Syrians I had been introduced to. It was one of those midday meals of ten dishes—stuffed vegetables, salad, kebabs, hummus, filled bread, olives, nuts and dumplings—that lasted from one until four and broke the Syrian day in half. But one of the pleasures of Syria was its cuisine, and the simplest was among the best. Each morning in Damascus I left my hotel, walked three blocks and bought a large glass of freshly made carrot juice—twenty carrots, fifty cents.

“Oh, yes, this is definitely a totalitarian state,” one man said. “But also people here are civilized. We are able to live our lives.”

How was this so?

“I cannot explain why,” another said. “There is no logic in it that you as a Westerner can see. But in the Arab world such contradictions are able to exist.”

“We allow for them,” the first man said. “It is very strange. Perhaps you would not be happy here.”

“Are you ever afraid?” I asked.

“There are many police, many secret police. People are very afraid of them.”

“Do people discuss Assad?”

“No one talks about him. They do not say his name.”

I said, “So what we’re doing now—this conversation—it’s not good, is it?”

They all smiled and agreed. No, it was not a good idea. And, really, in a totalitarian state there is nothing to talk about except the obvious political impasse.

“Do you think I should go to Beirut?” I asked.

“You know the Israelis are shelling the south?”

“How would that affect me?”

“Many of the fundamentalists have retreated to Beirut. They associate Israel with America—after all, America allows this to happen. They might accuse you of being a spy. It is not a good time.”

“What would they do to me?”

“Kidnap or—” The man hesitated.

“Shoot me?”

Out of delicacy, they were not explicit, but I had the distinct feeling they were saying, “Don’t go.” They lived in Syria. They visited Beirut all the time—it was such a short distance to travel, no more than sixty miles, and of course the border formalities.

“The last time I was in Beirut—just a few days ago,” one of them said, “Israeli jet planes were flying over the city, buzzing the rooftops, intimidating people, breaking the sound barrier—and windows.”

I was losing my resolve. That made me linger in Damascus. One of the happiest experiences I had in Damascus was at the house of a man named Omer, the friend of a friend. Omer was a Sudanese cement expert who worked for the Arab Development Corporation. He lived with his attractive Sudanese wife and three children in an apartment block about a mile from the center of Damascus.

We were drinking tea and eating sticky buns when he summoned his eight-year-old son, Ibrahim, to meet me. The boy did not speak English. He was tall for his age, wearing rumpled blue buttoned-up pajamas. He looked solemn, he said nothing, he stood and bowed slightly to show respect.

Then, without a word, he went to a piano in the corner, and sat, and played “Theme With Variations” by Mozart. It was plangent and complex, and sitting upright on the stool, the boy played on, without a duff note. In that small cluttered apartment I experienced a distinct epiphany, feeling—with Nietzsche—that “without music life would be an error.”