by Adel Beshara
Internally, Sa’adeh remained woefully unhappy with Fayez, but he took no further action for the time being. He did not want to intimidate Fayez anymore than he had and he preferred to postpone the matter until he returned home. However, things did not transpire as Sa’adeh wished. The pressure of political circumstances, beginning with the issue of a warrant for his arrest upon his arrival in the country on March 2, 1947, and the building tension of an approaching election, forced Sa’adeh to shelve the matter. The Lebanonist affair, which flared up in May 1947, deferred the matter even further.
Towards the end of August, Sa’adeh swung the lever in Fayez’s direction. Though still the Party’s Dean of Information, Fayez’s public appearances had become fewer and he wrote considerably less after Sa’adeh’s return. During the Lebanonist affair, he observed the proceedings from the sidelines and went about his business quietly and without drawing attention to himself. Likewise, he watched the confrontation between Sa’adeh and the government from a safe distance. He was more an onlooker than a participant. The once outspoken and fiercely confident Fayez suddenly turned uncharacteristically quiet and pensive. His voice seemed to disappear in the cacophony of voices and emotions generated by Sa’adeh’s presence.
Fayez’s case came up after Sa’adeh carefully scrutinized his writings and found them dangerously awry from the Party’s central ideology. Particularly, Fayez’s brazen attempt to remold Sa’adeh’s teachings into an existentialist context despite some serious and inherent contradictions between them and the Party’s official ideology caught Sa’adeh’s attention. At least three issues troubled Sa’adeh, and he quickly confronted Fayez about them:
Fayez’s emphasis on the concept of human individualism despite earlier warnings to desist.
Fayez’s prioritization of essentially existentialist ideas over his own doctrines in Party literature.
Fayez’s application of existentialist ideas not only in the bulletin of the Cultural Department, but in almost all of his inter-party publications.
When confronted by Sa’adeh, Fayez conceded to the “charges” but argued, in self-defense, that since the Party did not advocate a philosophy of its own, then his conduct, correspondingly, could not be deemed to violate the sanctity of its national program. Sa’adeh retorted with great virulence that this was not necessarily the case. He told Fayez that a “philosophical outlook” was embedded in the Party’s principles, and that, had he studied and pursued them with the same ardor as existentialism, it would have become apparent to him. Fayez remained stubbornly unconvinced. This triggered a series of long discussions and debates between the two men. One session took place under the pine trees of Sa’adeh’s hometown of Dhur Shweir on a warm August night and lasted thirteen hours, but it failed to break the deadlock.11
With the conflict with the Lebanese government still unresolved, the exchange between the two men was kept under the strictest secrecy. Only a few Party officials were privy to it. However, the longer the exchange dragged on, the worse it became for everyone. It irked those who saw it as an inappropriate use of valuable resources and time. One such person was Fayez’s secretary, Shawki Khairallah. He wrote Fayez an impassioned letter appealing to him to drop the issue out of consideration for the general national cause:
For the sake of the idea (cause) which is more important than him, you, me, and any person…
For the sake of the mission that is under threat of persecution in this serious stage…
For the sake of the nation, for which alone we worked and will continue to work and for which we will die…
For the sake of the values we believe must prevail in the land…
In the name of every grain of sand in this inspiring land and every stubborn rock in its mountains…
In the name of every mighty eagle in its skies and hurricanes, and every sullen tormented face…
In the name of every sigh coming from the infinite depths in the chests of the oppressed…
In the name of Palestine, the land of struggle, where injustice, hate, and struggle materialize, and where we must exert all our efforts for the sake of the truth…
In the name of every child born without a safe certain future…
In the name of every robust forearm in the mountains and valleys that builds and constructs, carrying on, for thousands of years, the most ancient mission known to civilization…
In the name of every homeless child, every orphan, every hungry belly, and every unlettered person…
In the name of the mighty ones who remain silent and steadfast throughout the days and the unknown soldiers in these broad profound social depths in every village, every cave, and every school and laboratory…
For their sake and in their name…
…I beg you to stop discussing the matter now and to agree with him (Sa’adeh) even if only in principle, until we see what transpires after this phase.
I beg you to do so and to at least believe in him. Try, no matter how much it costs, to keep the ranks unified and to silence the gloaters and to foil the plots of those who fish in murky waters.
Despite this powerful appeal, nothing changed. Fayez continued to pursue the issue with vigor at a heavy cost to his image and reputation. Party members and neutral officials, long captivated by his oratory skills, were deeply irritated by his obstinacy during a political confrontation that demanded every ounce of his strength and intelligence. They expected to see him on rostrums and in newspapers leading the charge against the government instead of behind the scenes fighting with their beleaguered leader over a philosophical principle. Later, Sa’adeh would bemoan, perhaps in an indirect reference to Fayez, that the confrontation with the government was left almost entirely to him, while those he expected to step up and speak out in his defense remained reticent.
To complicate matters, Fayez’s attitude hardened further when Sa’adeh amended some sections of the Party’s principles and general program. Three particular amendments were introduced:
Syria’s national boundaries were redefined to include Iraq and Kuwait in the east and Cyprus in the West.
The aim and program of the Party were reworked slightly to accommodate a social philosophy.
Sa’adeh did not consult the Party’s high councils before introducing these amendments: as undisputed leader of the Party, he was vested with the legislative and executive powers to act independently of them. For Fayez, though, the amendments amounted to a blatant misuse of personal powers. He quickly seized on the opportunity to extend the dispute beyond the bounds of existentialism. Sa’adeh’s “leader principle” was called into question and the Party’s constitution was invoked to undermine any thoughts of “absolute power”. This sparked a long discourse during which Fayez touched on previously uncontested matters of authority, rights, and constitutional powers.
At the height of this discourse, Fayez left for the Gold Coast (today’s Ghana) on a Party mission. Sa’adeh tried to send someone else, but the head of the Party’s branch in the Gold Coast, unaware of the internal controversy, insisted on Fayez. Fayez’s intellectual energy and speaking ability were deemed vital for the success of the mission in a social landscape dotted with divisions and political landmines. Apparently, Fayez’s performance on the mission was exemplary, but on his way there, he engaged in bizarre behavior. He wrote two quixotic letters to an imaginary lover and carelessly had them published in the bulletin of the Information Department (of which he was in charge). The first letter, entitled “To the one silent soldier”, sparked a wave of confusion in the Party as members debated among themselves whether the “soldier” in question was Sa’adeh. The second letter was less ambiguous and more direct. Its explicit poetic tone and expressions of unbridled passion quickly dispelled the fleeting thought that they might be about Sa’adeh. For example, Fayez wrote:
Between you and me are miles, seas and clouds, and yet, despite all that, I am with you and you are with me in a union that distance cannot undo and in a condition that farness cannot
dissipate … I almost can hear two whispers, one that frightens me and the other alarms me. The first is the echo of a faint humming emanating from a natural weakness in you and me. It is the whisper of despair rising to challenge the faith in you and the confidence, bliss and hope, and to thwart as well the determination and perseverance you have shown…
The letters infuriated Sa’adeh. It was not so much the poetic nature of the letters that aggravated him, but Fayez’s use of an internal Party bulletin to promulgate a very personal and intimate matter. For Sa’adeh, the letters served as a sober reminder of Fayez’s earlier transgression when the Party’s cultural bulletin was used as a platform for existentialist ideas. The present transgression was just as, if not more, serious. It flew in the face of political exigencies, made a mockery of the cultural standards on which the SSNP had prided itself, and most importantly, vindicated the muted suspicion in the Party that Fayez regarded the cultural bulletin as a private enterprise rather than a party publication with a broad readership.
What was Fayez thinking? What could possibly have prompted him to use a political party publication for intimate contemplations? Did Fayez intend to intimidate Sa’adeh, and if so, why? There are no clear-cut answers to these questions because Fayez remained tight-lipped about the whole affair. If intimidating Sa’adeh was the intended objective, then Fayez clearly succeeded, but to his own detriment. The letters proved to be the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’. Sa’adeh’s response was swift and decisive. He abolished the “Bulletin of the Cultural Department” and replaced it with the “Official Bulletin of the Social Nationalist Movement”. An internal Party missive committing the new publication “strictly to Party affairs” was circulated to members to contain any potential fallout. That missive indicates the aura of doubt and skepticism that had begun to form around Fayez:
During the Leader’s absence [in exile], the Party’s reality, cause, and message, which the Leader had established and defined in his wide-ranging teachings, suffered from significant oversight. As a result, major deviations from this basic fact developed in the high echelons of the Party in politics and at various Information, cultural and purely administrative levels and the Social National Movement … descended to the nadir of a perspective that considers the Movement a sheer number of individuals who randomly joined a regulated corps thought to be fit as a current for the various tendencies and goals no matter how conflicting they are with each other and with the national social doctrine.12
In another indirect swipe at Fayez, Sa’adeh infused the new bulletin with elaborate statements of his own philosophical vision. His opening article in this regard, “The Group and Society”, can easily be construed as a sort of repudiation of Fayez’s thesis of existential individualism:
Our ideology believes in a basic and total human reality, which is the social reality par excellence: the group, society, and community. Social life is imperative for human existence and necessary for its survival and continuity. Society is perfect human existence and total human reality. Moreover, supreme human ideals cannot possibly exist and be effective except in society. Society is the sole direction of all values and it is their source and their aim.13
The following passage is decidedly even more anti-existential:
Social life cannot be determined electively by individuals living without or outside society. Social life is also not a social contract whereby individuals choose to live together and decide to form a society or agree to the terms of the social contract by choosing to stay within the society. Never. Social life is nothing of the sort. It is not a selective phenomenon.14
With energy and focus, Sa’adeh then turned to Fayez’s writings and carefully highlighted where they violated the Party’s constitution and teachings. The passages cited for this purpose came largely from Fayez’s National Resurrection and more specifically from his essays “al-Hadaf” (The Objective) and “al-Qawmiyyah al-Ijabiyyah” (Positive Nationalism) in the monograph. Infused with a subtle existentialist spirit, both essays accentuated the “individual person” as the centre of all human actions and focused upon the subjective, personal lives of individual human beings rather than on society as an objective reality. Thus, they contradicted the most fundamental roots of the “society first” concept for which the SSNP was conceived and prepared.
The promulgation of such ideas jolted Sa’adeh into action. He drew up an elaborate statement outlining the facts and issues as he saw them and handed it to Fayez on his return from the Gold Coast. It was not so much a letter, as an ultimatum. In it, Sa’adeh bluntly asked Fayez to observe the following directives:
Put an immediate and full stop to any reference to teachings of Berdyaev and Kierkegaard, which until now have not been formally submitted to the Party’s councils and the Leader for consideration and assessment.
Confine your duties strictly to the Social National movement and only to those dimensions that give concrete expression to its reality or perspective.
Fayez’s reaction to the letter was somewhat muted. He conceded that a strong note of existentialist fervor had permeated his writings, but he argued in self-defense that it was harmless and legal. He reiterated his previous argument that, since the Party does not espouse a philosophical position, promoting an existentialist worldview does not contravene its objectives or the functionality and application of its program. Sa’adeh reacted with caution and modesty. He asked Fayez to brush up on the Party’s ideology and to reconsider carefully the negative aspects of his “untamed ideas”. Fayez was instructed to report back, but was granted an extended amount of time to do so.
On December 4, 1947, Sa’adeh gave the Party’s high councils a lowdown of the situation. He assured them that the matter was being attended to with the utmost urgency and care, and he instructed them to give Fayez room to consider his options. The briefing was more about preparing them for the worse than about anything else. It indicated both how delicate the situation was and of how far Sa’adeh was prepared to go to retain Fayez. Losing Fayez immediately after the losses already incurred from the Lebanonist affair had the potential to split the Party wide open, and Sa’adeh had to consider this possibility very carefully in view of Fayez’s popularity inside the Party and the philosophical complexity of his case. Intellectual differences are, largely, more convoluted than political differences, and thus more difficult to explain or predict. Also, the after-effects of an intellectual controversy can be wide ranging and progressively debilitating, especially when it comes to one’s reputation.
Two days later, on December 6, 1947, Sa’adeh heard that Fayez was whipping up a frenzy against him. Surrounded by several important figures in the Party (Yusif al-Khal, Ghassan Tueini and Fuad Suleiman), all of whom were philosophically formed in the spirit of the Charles Malik School, Fayez had apparently spent the previous evening exhorting his supporters, who had come to bid him farewell, to stand up to Sa’adeh. Abdullah Qubersi, a senior Party official and a personal friend of Fayez, later recalled:
Fayez turned up at my house near al-Kabushiyyah Church in Hamra Street accompanied by Yusif al-Khal and Fuad Suleiman. They were intent on convincing me that Fayez was right and Sa’adeh was wrong … The trio tried to persuade me to stand by Fayez and to defend him … on the grounds that Sa’adeh’s attitude contravenes the principle of intellectual freedom in the Party.15
A lawyer by profession, Qubersi suddenly found himself between the hammer of his leader (Sa’adeh) and the anvil of his friend (Fayez). Not wanting to lose either of them, he proposed a compromise under which Fayez would suspend all intellectual discussions with Sa’adeh and use the extra time to ponder matters (Fayez was preparing to leave for the U.S. to study for his PhD). In return, Sa’adeh would refrain from taking any further action against Fayez.
Both Sa’adeh and Fayez pledged their support. The following day, December 6, Qubersi went to bid Fayez goodbye. To his astonishment, he found him in a grumpy mood angrily defending his views and urging others to rebel against
Sa’adeh: “I stood up and told the comrades: those of you who believe in Syria and Sa’adeh follow me and those who believe in Fayez can stay. I remember only two remained and the others walked out with me … Then, from the nearest phone, I called Sa’adeh and told him that Fayez had ditched his pledge”.16 On December 7, Fayez was expelled from the Party and a notice of his expulsion was quickly circulated to Party members to contain any potential fallout.
Fayez responded swiftly to the news of his expulsion. On December 10, the highly respected Beirut daily, an-Nahar, carried a hard-hitting front-page response from him declaring the “demise of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party”.17 The tone of the response was biting. Fayez accused Sa’adeh of:
Deviating from the Party’s aim and program.
Breaking his oath.
Abrogating the “Contract” on which the Syrian social Nationalist Party was founded.