The Pillars of Hercules

The fighting in southern Lebanon and the strafing of Beirut made me reconsider my jaunt along the Lebanese coast. I called the American Embassy in Damascus and asked for information. By way of response I received an invitation to a recital at the ambassador’s residence. On this particular Arabian night, the performance was given by a visiting American band, Mingo Saldivar and His Three Tremendous Swords. Saldivar, “The Dancing Cowboy,” played an accordion, Cajun and Zydeco music, jolly syncopated country-and-western polkas. At first the invited guests—about a hundred Syrians—were startled. Then they were amused. Finally they were clapping.

Afterwards, I found the ambassador talking animatedly in Arabic to a tall patrician-looking Syrian. I introduced myself and asked my question.

“Don’t go to Beirut,” the ambassador replied. “Not now. Not with your face. Not with your passport.”

The American Ambassador to Syria, Christopher Ross, a fluent Arabic speaker, is a highly regarded career diplomat, and an amiable and witty man. He is also a subtle negotiator in the delicate peace talks involving Israel and Syria. The sticking point was the Golan Heights. This large section of eastern Syria was captured by the Israelis in 1967 and has been occupied by them ever since—and partly settled—something that quite rightly maddens the Syrians. In this connection, Ambassador Ross saw a great deal of President Assad, had been to Assad’s bunker and would have been a fund of information for me, except that he skillfully deflected all my intrusive questions.

“I think the ambassador is right—stay away from Lebanon at the moment,” the tall man said. He was Sadik Al-Azm, from an ancient Damascene family. His professorial appearance—tweed jacket, horn-rimmed glasses—was justified, for he was a professor at Damascus University. He was noted as the author of an outspoken defense of Salman Rushdie.

“That seems rather a risky thing to have done in a Muslim country,” I said.

“What do I care?” he said, and laughed out loud. “This is a republic, anyway. Even our president defended Rushdie!”

“It doesn’t worry you that Syria is crawling with Iranian fundamentalists?”

“What do they know?”

“They know there’s a fatwa, they idolize Khomeini,” I said. “It seems to me they’d like to stick a knife in your guts.”

“The Iranians you see here haven’t read anything,” Professor Al-Azm said. “They haven’t read what I wrote about Rushdie, and they certainly haven’t read The Satanic Verses. I’m not worried. In fact, I am updating my book at the moment for a new edition.”

“Fearless, you see?” Ambassador Ross said.

“What do I care?” the professor said.

“I think this phrase ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ is misleading,” the ambassador said. “I call it ‘political Islam.’ ”

He went on to say that he felt it was related to many other movements that in my opinion were now actively obnoxious in the world—the Christian Coalition, the Moral Majority, the Pro-Life assassins, and so forth. The militant moralizers in the United States who represented a new Puritanism were ideologically similar to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Party of God. Ambassador Ross did not say so, but it was logical to conclude from this that the Reverend Pat Robertson and the Ayatollah had a great deal in common.

In Syria and elsewhere, unexpectedly, political Islam was growing. More people—many of them young—wore veils, fasted at Ramadan.

This severely orthodox reaction had something to do with the waywardness of governments and the crookedness of politicians. Instead of working within the system, people were adopting a religious scourge, which was a simpler remedy involving denunciation and murder. It was perhaps understandable, but I found it depressing.

I wandered away while the ambassador was challenging Professor Al-Azm on another recondite matter, and I fell into conversation with a Syrian, Mr. Hamidullah. After a while I asked him about the cult of Basil.

“Father-President groomed him for leadership,” Mr. Hamidullah said.

“Isn’t an election usually a more reliable way to pick a leader?” I asked.

“In your country, maybe. But Syria is much different. Here it is necessary to have a golden formula to govern.”

“I see,” I said. Golden formula? I said, “And President Assad has the golden formula.”

“I call it the Secret Key,” Mr. Hamidullah said. “Without it, Syria cannot be governed. Father-President was passing this on to his son. He knew that when he died the next leader would need to have the Secret Key.”

“And this Secret Key is necessary because—”

“Because this country is so difficult!” he said. “We have Druses, Alawites, Christians, Jews, Shiites, Assyrians. We have Kurds, we have Maronites. More! We have Yazidis—they are devil worshipers, their God of Bad is a peacock. We have—what?—Chaldeans! How to govern all of them? Secret Key!”