An Overlooked Syrian Writer
In September 2001, Syrian writer Abdul Salam al-Ojeili published a novel called The Most Beautiful Girl (Ajmaluhunn, in Arabic). Though al-Ojeili was a respected figure in Syrian and Arab literary circles, the book did not make a significant splash, positive or negative, when it came out. The attacks of September 11 were dominating people’s attention in the Arab world just as in the U.S., and it was al-Ojeili’s fortieth book. It was to be his second-to-last novel before his death in 2006. But having been published in an otherwise disastrous month for relations between the West and the Islamic world, the novel is a striking read in its contrast to the events that surrounded its publication.
The story of The Most Beautiful Girl is of a Syrian man traveling around Europe for the summer, who finds himself in a brief but intense romance with a young Austrian woman. She shows him around Vienna and the Austrian countryside, and their frequent visits to monasteries prompt recollections from the Syrian, a seemingly non-religious Muslim, about his only previous contact with a nun. She was of Syrian parentage but raised in France and came back to do anthropological research in her ancestral country. Mysterious circumstances led to the nun’s death, and the man reveals the story slowly over the course of his romance with the Austrian girl. In the end, he returns to Syria and the love story seems doomed to end, but upon his return he realizes he has met the love of his life. He sends a letter back to Austria proposing marriage. Her reply informs him that their romance was life-changing for her as well, in that it prompted her to become a Carmelite nun.
A story of romance between an Arab man and a European woman, with strong Catholic themes, was a return to a familiar topic for al-Ojeili. Relationships between Arab men and European women are a recurring theme in al-Ojeili’s fiction. One of his earlier works of fiction, a novella called The Sidewalk of the Black Madonna (Raseef al-’Adhra’ al-Sawda’) published in 1960, features a young Iraqi man, Abbas, and his brief romance with Maria Lina, a Swedish blonde who recently converted to Catholicism from Protestantism. Their conversations in the cafes of Paris focus on the theme of God, and whether God is Love, as Maria Lina contends, or God is Knowledge, per Abbas. Maria Lina tells Abbas that “the glossy appearance of mechanized Western civilization, built on reason and culture, leaves behind a trail of worry and misery and spiritual crises that can only be cured by seeking refuge in a spiritual angel such as that offered to humanity by Catholic doctrine.”
Abbas’s argument that the path to God is through knowledge echoes a recurring theme in Islamic thought, made for example by nineteenth-century scholar Mohammad Abdo, that Islam is the religion of science and scholarship while Christianity is the religion of spirituality and mysticism; in other words, Islam is a logical religion while Christianity relies on the acceptance of doctrine that defies logic. The Iraqi man in al-Ojeili’s novel, Abbas, makes the case less forcefully, and less completely, than Mohammad Abdo, but he is nonetheless building on a long intellectual tradition in doing so. By the end of the story, they both come to see the wisdom of the other side—Maria Lina realizes that God is knowledge just as He is love, and Abbas realizes that God is also love—but as Abbas confesses his love to Maria Lina, she tells him she is leaving Paris to join a Catholic labor movement in northern France. Once again, al-Ojeili’s Arab protagonist loses his European love to Catholicism. (The Syrian critic Georges Tarabichi offers another explanation of the dynamic at work here, in his consequential book Heresies published in 2006, where he names The Sidewalk of the Black Madonna in a list of Arabic-language novels where an Arab male protagonist beds a female European, thereby giving the metaphorical Arab East the conquest of the metaphorical European West it has been unable to achieve in real life.)
While these romances between East and West featured heavily in al-Ojeili’s fiction, the relationship between the East and West more broadly was also a recurring theme in al-Ojeili’s nonfiction. He traveled the world, but his feet were planted firmly in his native Syria, and more specifically in his native Raqqa. Less than a decade after his death, his native city became ISIS’s de facto Syrian capital. His personal library miraculously survived the U.S.-led air campaign to retake the city in 2017, but the rest of the city was not so lucky. Al-Ojeili would no doubt be heartbroken if he could see his city now. His name is closely tied to the twentieth-century history of Raqqa, but he would hardly recognize the place today. When ISIS was burning the contents of Raqqa’s only bookstore—since reopened—the flames probably engulfed some of al-Ojeili’s volumes.
Abdul Salam al-Ojeili was born in Raqqa in 1918. He completed his primary education in the city, then completed secondary school in Aleppo as there was not yet a secondary school in Raqqa. He studied a degree in medicine at the University of Damascus, and returned to his hometown to practice, becoming one of only two doctors in the city at the time. In 1946, the French mandate governing Syria ended and al-Ojeili was elected to represent Raqqa the next year in the first parliament after independence. He briefly took leave from parliament along with two other MPs to fight alongside the Palestinians against the creation of Israel, an experience that left him disillusioned with Arab political culture. Shortly after his return, Syria’s brief experiment in democracy ended in a coup led by Hosni al-Zaim in 1949, and al-Ojeili declined to run for the new elections that were called after the coup. He later wrote that al-Zaim’s coup was a Pandora’s box that made it impossible for future Syrian leaders to govern democratically, as the fear of military coup was always hanging over their heads. Instead of running again for parliament, al-Ojeili went home to Raqqa and alongside his medical practice he established himself as a notable writer inside Syria but also in the larger Arab literary world.
In 1958, Syria decided to unite with Egypt, creating a single country called the United Arab Republic under the leadership of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Naser. Though al-Ojeili supported the union, he worried that the two countries were rushing into the decision and argued that a five-year transition period should precede the full unification of the two countries. His word of caution was not heeded, and the unification was quickly enacted. In reality, Syria became a colony of Egypt’s under Abdel Naser, and the union was ended by a Syrian coup in 1961, and the aftermath would once again bring al-Ojeili onto the Syrian political scene. His name was floated as a possible candidate for prime minister after the break with Egypt. In the end, he served in one of the several governments formed between 1961 and 1963, before the Baath Party launched a coup that practically established the political regime that governs Syria today. During his stint back in government, Al-Ojeili was varyingly minister of culture, foreign affairs, and media over the course of about six months in 1962, then retired from political life to return once again to the practice of medicine in Raqqa.
Al-Ojeili was the giant of Raqqa’s literary scene. He certainly achieved more fame than any other writer from his native city, though, incredibly, writers from Raqqa have made the short list of the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction the last two years: in 2019 al-Ojeili’s niece Shahla al-Ojeili (also spelled Ujayli) made the list for Summer with the Enemy and in 2020 Khalil al-Riz made the list with The Russian Quarter. Mr. Ojeili’s 1974 novel Hearts on the Wire (Qulub ‘ala al-Aslak) was named one of the 100 best Arabic-language novels of the twentieth century by the Union of Arab Writers. But while other writers from Raqqa speak highly of Mr. al-Ojeili, they hint at a criticism that his writing did not focus on the social issues plaguing his native city. Al-Ojeili’s writing does indeed feature more love stories about European women than it does stories about his fellow Raqqans, but a notable exception exists in his novel The Submerged (al-Maghmuroun), which presents a stark picture of social contrasts in modern Syrian society.
The Submerged was published in 1979. It is the story of two young idealists, Nada and Othman, working on the plan to relocate villagers whose homes will be submerged by the impending construction of the Tabqa Dam. Nada comes from the Damascus elite and was educated in Beirut (an important status symbol), but is committed to working among the country’s poor around Raqqa to create a new society. Othman is the son of a poor tribesman in the area, and his parents are among those who will lose their homes when the dam’s construction is complete. The plan to move residents just beyond the water’s new reach is upended, however, by Damascus, where larger political calculations force the residents to move to the country’s far northeast in the guise of the national interest. The novel presents the villagers as the victims of this political maneuvering, but it is interesting that al-Ojeili does not mention what actually constituted that ‘higher national interest.’
The ‘submerged’ were moved to the northeast of Syria as part of the Arab belt, a plan by the Syrian government to settle Arabs along the Syrian-Turkish border, thereby dividing the Kurdish population of Syria from the Kurdish population of Turkey, and reducing the risk of a pan-Kurdish rebellion that could see Syria lose its most lucrative land, where agriculture and oil provide much of the country’s natural resources. Alongside this forced demographic change, many Kurds were also stripped of their citizenship and became foreigners within the country, a status passed down to their children and grandchildren until 2011 when the decision was reversed by Bashar al-Assad in an attempt to prevent Kurds from joining the budding rebellion against the government.
For al-Ojeili, though, while the Arabs being forced from their homes are presented as the victims, there is no questioning the supposed national interest in the move. He was an ardent Arab nationalist, and despite the noticeable Kurdish minority in his native Raqqa, there is almost no mention of them in any of his writings that I have come across. While in parliament al-Ojeili was approached by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din Bitar to join the Baath Party, he declined to do so, wanting to remain an independent, but recognized that their Arab nationalist views were aligned with much of his political philosophy. Despite the absence of any criticism of the Arabization policy in The Submerged, al-Ojeili does indeed criticize the government for moving people far from their home without any consideration to their lives and livelihoods. The plan ultimately ends the romance and planned wedding of Nada and Othman, who are divided about whether to follow Othman’s parents to the northeast. The unlikelihood of the relationship between an educated Damascene girl, courted by a Lebanese businessman throughout the novel, and a simple Bedouin tribesman seems too much to overcome, though al-Ojeili wrote later that he was surprised at how many people read a class struggle into the story. He says that was not his intention, though it was indeed my impression as well when I read the novel.
As in his fiction, the divide between the East and the West is a recurring theme in al-Ojeili’s nonfiction. He did not, however, approach this relationship from a place of animosity. He had a strong sense of Arab identity, but was very open about the many problems in Arab society in his day. He also had much good to say about the West. Of Arab social problems, the lens of medicine provided him unique insight into issues that others overlooked or avoided. For example, in 1959 he gave a speech in Aleppo in front of an organization of scientists and researchers, entitled ‘Learners and Scholars’ (al-Muta’alimoun w al-’Ulama’), in which he outlined a particular medical phenomenon in Syria, where a law was passed in 1953 to require a blood test before marriage to prevent the spread of syphilis. The test to be used was the Wasserman Reaction, as was standard in Europe at the time, and which Syrian health officials wanted to be used in their country as well based on international guidelines. Al-Ojeili says he stood against this law, because the Wasserman Reaction, if used in Syria, would come out positive on anyone who suffers from bejel, a non-sexually transmitted form of syphilis that is, according to al-Ojeili, very common among the Bedouin tribes of the Euphrates Valley where he worked. Bejel, he said, did not carry the same risks as sexually transmitted syphilis, and it would not make sense to ban marriage for those with the disease in order to prevent complications for their offspring. But it does still register positive on the Wasserman Reaction.
Al-Ojeili’s point in telling the story is that despite Arabs’ success in any number of academic and scientific fields, they still seek to apply solutions found in the West without thinking about whether it makes sense to do so in their own countries. The reason, he says, is a lack of the spirit that makes a true scientist. “Our doctors are skillful, our engineers are capable, and our teachers of science are qualified, but something is missing, something which is the true spirit of science: originality and innovation and curiosity and scientific adventure. As craftsmen we may be skilled, but we are not artists; we are imitators, not innovators; we are learners, but we are not scholars.” This sort of social criticism was a constant theme in al-Ojeili’s writing. Having traveled extensively in the West, he was well aware that his people were behind the global curve. Despite that, he was proud of being Arab, and was not an advocate for some sort of Westernization to solve his people’s problems, nor did he advocate rejecting the West. He was also keenly aware of the social problems in the West, but he approached them from a place of sympathy rather than animosity.
Al-Ojeili told a particular anecdote, tongue-in-cheek, several times in essays and in his political memoirs that is demonstrative of his attitude towards his Arab identity. After the coup that ended Syrian-Egyptian unity in 1961, and during the political chaos that ensued, al-Ojeili’s name was suggested by those who carried out the coup as a possible prime minister, unbeknownst to him. After the Baath Party took power in 1963, al-Ojeili’s commitment to the Arab cause, and particularly the cause of Arab unity, was called into question by the judge Fareed Aqeel who was prosecuting Haydar al-Kuzbari, one of the coup’s orchestrators. Aqeel asked al-Kuzbari who he had intended to put in power after the coup, accusing him of wanting to install his relative Maamoun al-Kuzbari. Haydar Al-Kuzbari denied the claim, saying he intended to put Arab nationalists like al-Ojeili in power, among several other names. Aqeel asked, accusingly, what relationship al-Ojeili had to Arabism, implying that he was not really Arab because of his political positions.
When recounting the incident, al-Ojeili tells a story of a man and his wife traveling outside their country. At the border, the official examines the photos and expresses the doubt that the woman is the same as in her photo. The border guard asks the man if this is indeed his wife, as al-Ojeili recounts in his memoirs: “I’m not convinced. Prove to me that this is your wife in order for me to allow you to travel. The man replied to the official: Please, sir, prove to me that this isn’t my wife and I’ll give you anything you want! Just as I said at the time: I wish Fareed Aqeel could prove that I am not an Arab, so I can rest from these concerns, and I will give him anything he wants!” Al-Ojeili was a constant critic of his own people, but always as an insider, as an Arab, and never as a defector to the West like some other writers and intellectuals. In the modern world of emigration, one can indeed simply move to the West and leave “these concerns” behind, a choice al-Ojeili did not consider.
Writing in 1988, another essay by al-Ojeili in many ways encapsulates his skeptical but sympathetic approach to the West, to modern society, and to medicine. He recounts that more than twenty years prior, so presumably in the 1960s, he was traveling in Germany and ended up in Dusseldorf. He was at a commercial warehouse there, and was surprised at an offer made by the warehouse: For the price of ten marks, customers could enter a room of dishware and break as many dishes as they wanted. There was a significant line waiting to enter, all men, and al-Ojeili approached the female attendant to ask what this was all about. He was impressed by how well-versed the attendant was in the psychology behind this, that men in the modern world were subjected to levels of stress that they had no outlet to deal with, and suffered increasing rates of stomach ulcers as a result. They couldn’t, she explained, beat their wives, which might provide an outlet in backwards countries, so they paid ten marks to come break dishes instead. The dishes were defects sent from the factory, and the broken pieces were collected and recycled back into production, so there was little waste in the endeavor.
Al-Ojeili chose to recount this incident twenty years after the fact because he had just read a study that showed over the previous ten years, the gap between men and women suffering from stomach ulcers had closed significantly. Ten years before al-Ojeili’s writing in 1988, men were four times as likely as women to have stomach ulcers. By 1988, according to al-Ojeili, they were only twice as likely. Responding to a female reader who had criticized something he wrote about women’s equality, he then responded: “Take, ma’am, this example of equality of stomach ulcers, what would you like me to say to you in this regard? Should I congratulate you for it, or have pity on you and lament this?” He continues to say, in a manner that encapsulates the spirit of his writing, “And to be certain if I had the opportunity to say this to that reader, I would not do so as an insult. I would say it with sorrow for the girls of her gender, and for men as well. Sorrow for humanity in general, where the brawl and competition of this age for the material needs of life has driven us to bring about evil onto ourselves…” One hears often in the Middle East a criticism of the West for its materialism and decline of social contact and social ties. It often comes with a dismissive tone. But al-Ojeili’s tone was sympathetic. He respected much that he saw in the West, and in the example of ulcers, he took no delight in the fact that Western women, and a few in the Middle East, were going to bring about their own demise by bringing upon themselves the ulcers that men were already experiencing.
Al-Ojeili’s writings are a treasure trove of insights on Syria’s conflict today, often hidden unexpectedly in a seemingly benign story. Almost anytime I write about Syria, I can find an anecdote told by al-Ojeili that sheds light on the particular issue at hand. As an American and a Catholic reading al-Ojeili now, I think his primary value lies in breaking down the false dichotomy between the inevitability of a clash of civilizations on one hand, and the notion that cultural or even civilizational differences are not real at the other extreme. If we are to rebuild a healthy relationship between the West and the East, or between Christianity and Islam, al-Ojeili provides an example of what that can look like. It doesn’t require either side to be less than true to its history and identity, nor does it require either side to pretend that differences don’t exist, even if it is not always clear what the lines are between the two sides. A truly healthy relationship might exist between two civilizations who respect their own history, and the other’s, good and bad. If we are willing to listen, al-Ojeili and those like him on both sides might show us the way.
