426
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
Dashnags—whose members in Jerusalem had played so despicable a role only a few months ago, who had been beating
churchmen1 and murdering critics throughout the Middle
East. The Dashnags had had their world headquarters in Berlin, but had now moved them to Beirut. If these Armenian
cutthroats here ever discovered my presence I could be sure of
a trouncing, if not worse. Thus I was forced to live under
cover even among my own people.
I wondered if Hourani would betray me. I wondered what
Dr. Imam had done when he discovered I had taken French
leave of Damascus. What had Farhan Bey done on discovering my absence from Amman? To be safe, I decided to move
out of my hotel, telling the clerk that I was returning to Egypt
by way of Syria and Jordan. To make this more plausible, I told
him to forward my mail in care of our embassy in Cairo. I
moved in with friends, and lived with them instead of at
hotels where my movements could be traced. I took uncommon precautions to remain anonymous. The danger of losing
the documented record of my findings and adventures haunted
me as I made my rounds from one group to another—now
Communist, now ultra-Fascist, now anti-Zionist.
A cable from home awaited me at the embassy. It warned
me that the identity of Charles L. Morey had been discovered
and that American, British, and Arab nationalists were trying
to find my whereabouts. The cable was two weeks old. I
hoped they hadn't followed me here.
Beirut was the home of political madmen. One whom I met
was Antun Saadeh, fuehrer of the Syrian Social Nationalist
Movement. Saadeh envisioned an Arab empire stretching from
Turkey to the Red Sea, from Lebanon to Persia. This super
pan-Arab dream dwarfed King Abdullah's British-supported
Fertile Crescent project of adding Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to
his Trans-Jordan holdings. Both men were murdered later—
victims of ambition.
1
One of the many such victims was Archbishop Mazlumian, 78-yearold Primate of the Armenians in Athens, Greece, whose beard was shorn off
by members of the Dashnag, followed by a beating of the aged dignitary.