Rayyan Al-Shawaf
The Order of the Forsaken Empire

Dear Edward,

It is with the greatest joy that I write you this belated though no less appreciative acceptance of your kind invitation. Chelsea and I should be absolutely delighted to spend the weekend with you and Audrey at your country cottage. You will I trust forgive the lengthy delay in my response; I have of late been besieged by all manner of disagreeable obligations. In fact, it was an instance of the latter that bade me make the journey down to London this week past, a trip the object of which rekindled a host of faded memories of my early teaching days. Though not immune to the detail-effacing influence of Father Time, yet certain of these recollections might in some meagre way prove useful to you, particularly in light of your recent request that I provide you with information and advice on what shall hopefully be a long and illustrious career in the field of overseas pedagogy.

* * *

THE PURPOSE IMPELLING this reclusive dinosaur to emerge from his hibernation and embark upon an expedition into the heart of chaos and anarchy was the occurrence of a funeral. The unfortunate focus of the ceremony was a man I knew many years ago (and one with whom I shall doubtless soon have occasion to become re-acquainted). Zahed (or 'Zed', as his wife and friends apparently called him) Ayoub, a sixty-something resident of East London, once was a pupil of mine at Stuart Grammar School in Alexandria, Egypt. Zahed and fellow pupils Ammar and Sadeq were upon my counsel expelled from Stuart for conduct unbecoming gentlemen in the winter of the academic year 1956-57, my last in Alexandria.

It was a strange and difficult time. Even the retina-perforating Egyptian sunlight could not blind us to the fact that the sun finally was setting on us. Yet even in the midst of all the tumult, and as we bore witness to the soaring popularity of a new and ferocious xenophobia in the country, the faculty of Stuart soldiered on determinedly. This was no mean task, as our duties were hardly restricted to correcting peculiarly Egyptian solecisms and confronting rampant and deeply entrenched accidie. Indeed, the situation amongst the pupils was one of turmoil and mass confusion-even as that of the country itself-with misbehaviour ever on the increase. Though all native applicants to Stuart were as a matter of course carefully vetted, this is not to say that our system did not admit of the occasional error or misjudgement. Compounding matters was the fact that the heady days during and after the 1956 débacle served to educe the worst in many of our lads; in brawls amongst themselves and in acts of collective insubordination, a number of otherwise promising types gave activity to the most primitive of instincts. Indeed, at times they were no better than the canaille outside, hardly a testament to our tireless civilising efforts.

In respect of Zahed's lot, I cannot say for certain whether they were all of them fully cognisant of the seriousness of that which they were presently to undertake. What we did discover was evidence of premeditation and careful planning. Whilst it is not my custom to be overly harsh, neither have I ever subscribed to that foolishness which holds that lenience is the better part of discipline. As one who had suffered all three of them many a puerile indiscretion (the week previous, for example, I had come upon them smoking in the lavatories, yet chose to mete out a relatively light punishment), I nevertheless considered this transgression to be of a far more pernicious nature, born of the usual Arabic penchant for enfantillage though it may have been.

I had obtained an exemption from the assembly to be held at the end of the day, the last before Christmas holidays. The headmaster had granted me the exemption over a week earlier, as I had already made arrangements to leave the school and make for the port immediately following my last class. I intended to sail for England where I would spend the bulk of the holidays (and celebrate my thirty-first birthday) before heading back to Egypt. My pupils I had duly informed of my plans as soon as they had been confirmed, explaining that I should not be able to accompany them to the assembly.

On the appointed day, after I had completed my lecture, I dismissed the class, instructing them to head without delay to the assembly hall. I remained to pack my books and papers. Fewer than five minutes later, having left the classroom with my possessions carefully arranged in my briefcase, I was startled by the sight of three boys scurrying towards me along one wall of an otherwise empty corridor.

"Mr. Jarvis, sir, sorry, but we'd like to be allowed to speak with you. please," panted Ammar.

"What are you doing here? Do you know the punishment for such disobedience?" I replied testily.

"Yes sir, it's just that we'd like to give you something before the holidays. This is our only chance."

From the start I was reluctant to humour them (Timeo Aegyptios et dona ferentes!), but I suppressed my misgivings in favour of a more forbearing attitude.

"Very well, lads, but I grant you only two minutes, after which you shall return to the assembly in progress. Also, I shall be obliged to report this infraction after the holidays."

We re-entered the classroom and they closed the door. I sat in my chair, facing them. Ammar and Sadeq then ambled over very casually and before I knew it had pinned my arms behind the back of my chair, murmuring apologies all the while. A plainly nervous Zahed hastily produced a roll of masking tape from a pocket and sealed my mouth shut, muffling thereby a mixture of indignant cries and stern warnings. From another pocket he extracted a length of rope, with which he proceeded to tie my wrists together behind the back of the chair.

Zahed shuffled his feet nervously. I sensed that it had been determined that he should speak, but he was not yet ready. Sadeq and Ammar, standing on either side of me, compensated for their friend's silence. It was Ammar, if my memory serves me correctly, who began. This Ammar had always been consumed with contemporary politics. More avid than his peers in devouring all the reports of daily political events to be found in newspapers and on the radio, he also imagined himself a keen political observer, presumptuously offering 'better alternatives' to 'unwise decisions' made by Her Majesty's Government. Now he launched into a diatribe about the prevailing political situation in the Middle East since the messy termination of the Suez Crisis, and what he assumed to be British plans for Egypt.

"We know what this assembly is about. yes we do! We know what's going to be said, and just how it's going to be said, and we're here to tell you that we're against this gradual surrender, this slow death! And we seek your assistance-sir-because we know that you share our view," he added quickly.

I should in this context explain that the aforementioned assembly had been convened with the express purpose of discussing the ongoing 'crisis in the Middle East'. The repercussions of our clumsy and ill-fated attempt at revanchisme were everywhere manifest, and it was widely believed that the British presence, including institutions and schools, was on its last legs, the nationalisation of Suez having consecrated the rabidly xenophobic Gamal Abdul Nasser as sole and absolute sovereign of this barren desert land. Under immense US and UN pressure, our government (together with that of France) had some time earlier ceased all military activity and consented to withdraw our forces by Christmas Eve. Ammar, with his family's long-standing ties to the United Kingdom, was understandably terrified of the consequences of this reversal and, impertinent as he was, never missed an opportunity to upbraid Her Majesty's Government for their (admittedly ill-advised) war alliance with the nascent state of Israel, mortal enemy of the Arabs.

“Eden made a mistake, a major tactical mistake, and now we're all paying the price! There were other, better ways to confront the nationalisation of the Canal. I kept on saying that he should be careful. And then, after he decided to go in militarily, he shouldn't have included Israel. Why Israel? The United Kingdom has ruined its reputation for nothing!"

He continued for a time in this vein as I sat watching him impassively, having by now grown accustomed to the surprisingly difficult task of breathing exclusively through my nose.

"Trust me, believe me, giving in to these so-called nationalists is a bad idea. It'll only whet their appetite for more. You mustn't crumble. Yeah, there've been mistakes. Like I said, the thing with Israel will be difficult to justify, yeah, very difficult to justify. You see, it'll be used by the other side as proof of British deceitfulness, supposed British deceitfulness, but Britain-Great Britain-has withstood far greater challenges than this!'

Sadeq then interjected, "And you must stand with us, sir, in the face of attempts to abandon us. Together we can fight these defeatist policies. We won't just accept being left behind. We will not be shut out of history!"

Sadeq was similar to Ammar in certain important respects, though different in others. Of a like robustness both in build and attitude, he also-more than Ammar-seemed constantly to harbour a certain frustration wont to express itself in violent outbursts directed at other pupils. Like his good friend, Sadeq closely followed developments on the international political scene, but his main interest lay in history, both Western and Islamic, and especially the role of religion in society (and if all three lads were quite Laodicean in such matters, it was Sadeq who always was the most uncompromising in his secularism). He continued his harangue.

"Mr. Jarvis, you aren't old and weary like the others. We're convinced that you have what it takes to confront-and overcome-the dangers that threaten us all. There, in that assembly, they're paving the way for retreat. Yes, we know! They've been influenced by the socialists and communists and nationalists! They're saying in fancy words that things have possibly become too difficult to bear, and that Great Britain might be forced to give up her historical possessions. And what does this mean? It means abandoning all of us who have worked with her to promote her values. Don't give in to this! Resist!"

By now I was as you might imagine quite enraged, and would fain have administered the appropriate corporal punishment myself-and without delay! Yet the histrionic display of which I was the unwilling audience had not yet finished; Zahed, who had at first been reluctant to speak, now stood ready. Ammar and Sadeq took note and eyed him expectantly.

Slight in stature, of a nervous disposition, and in general rather frail-looking, the bespectacled Zahed did not boast the physical attributes of strength and fitness so obvious in his partners-in-crime. Yet he was quite dogged in his opinions and rarely relented when under pressure by his peers. Perhaps this was because he knew himself to be more widely read and studied than they (I should not venture to call him erudite, but his knowledge was both deep and far-reaching). Indeed, he was my most intelligent and able pupil, being particularly well-versed in our classics, and capable of producing thorough exegesis of Shakespeare. He had from the start clearly been accorded centre-stage by Sadeq and Ammar, though he had chosen to defer his turn until later. Now, expecting the peroration, I fixed my gaze upon him. Zahed had overcome his unease and, as Ammar and Sadeq straightened up beside me, met my gaze and launched into an evidently rehearsed declamation.

"Sir, we are honoured to be able to recognise your distinguished service. Indeed, in commending you for your noble work we should like to take this opportunity to express our hope that you continue your efforts in support of our great empire. Even if, as we have come to suspect, our other mentors are tempted to turn their backs on us, we have confidence that you personally will not renege on your commitment to what you have created and nurtured. We may not be recognised as such, but we are an empire, Mr. Jarvis. We may be nameless, but we're certainly not delusional. We're all over the globe, right, and we're English, French, German, Dutch and more. And we shall remain, for we can't simply be wished out of existence. We shall continue to cherish the great wealth of knowledge we have attained, even if those who gave it to us now question its truth. And we pledge to guard this knowledge for the benefit of future generations."

Sadeq no longer was able to contain his enthusiasm. "Yeah, we'll be like Ireland!!" he defiantly proclaimed, one arm extended in the air demonstratively with the other akimbo. When I looked at him quizzically, he explained, somewhat defensively:

"Why not? Just as Ireland during the Dark Ages guarded the knowledge of Europe, which, you know, created continuity and. made possible the waking up. I mean the re-awakening. of the continent. later. our empire will do the same for the West today. Yeah, you know, the West might betray itself and go against its own knowledge, and the East might fight it, but we'll keep that knowledge safe for the future!"

Here I should add that this amusing exaltation of Ireland and its exaggerated role in preserving the Western heritage almost certainly was due to the rantings of a colleague who taught in the history department. A Londoner of indeterminate origin (he steadfastly claimed to be of Scottish parentage), this man's influence upon Sadeq was considerable, the latter quite taken with him.

Sadeq quieted down and my attention was re-focused on Zahed, standing erect with inflated chest. This was to be the coda.

"And so, in recognition of. in recognition of your achievements, and as a token of our gratitude and friendship, and an indication of our continuing confidence in. your continued loyalty. we wish to present you with something."

Again nervously reaching into one of his cavernous pockets, the ever-resourceful Zahed fished out what appeared to be a very crudely fashioned badge of some kind, with a purple ribbon affixed to it. As Sadeq and Ammar each placed a hand on my shoulder, Zahed held this thing aloft, looking exaggeratedly-indeed ridiculously-solemn. I marveled at their predilection for ceremony.

"Mr. Aldrich Jarvis, we hereby award you the order of our great empire!" Zahed pompously declaimed, as he awkwardly tried to pin the hideous thing on the lapel of my jacket.

Summary expulsion from Stuart Grammar School was their reward for such wanton delinquency. The headmaster sought my opinion in the matter of their punishment, to ascertain whether or not I felt as strongly as he did about the incident. I unhesitatingly recommended expulsion, and he immediately concurred. The level of their contrition was hardly commensurate with the gravity of their trespass, and the headmaster and I in any case considered their sin to be of the inexpiable variety. That they should take leave to behave in such a vile manner with a member of the faculty reflected an impudence that cannot under any circumstance be tolerated.

In one respect at least the infuriating ordeal turned out to be a felix culpa. The expulsion of Zahed, Sadeq and Ammar served to jolt the remainder of the pupils, including the most unruly (who had been encouraged in their various designs by the general chaos following the war), into an almost complete submission. Chary of offending any teacher lest they suffer the same fate as their former colleagues (the headmaster made clear his intention to further expel all problematic elements), the pupils began to exercise much more caution in everything they did. I was most content. Accuse me of Schadenfreude if you wish, but take note of the power of example. Seeing their schoolmates (senior classmen all) hang their heads in shame and be forever barred from school premises left an indelible impression on all pupils at Stuart. This is not to say, of course, that I did not take pity on the three boys. To the contrary, I sensed most acutely their confusion and helplessness. Like fatherless children, they were without any true sense of direction or purpose. Yet callowness must never be allowed to justify unlawful and immoral activity.

That year was by previous agreement to be my last in Alexandria; I had been in Egypt for over a decade, having arrived as a teacher shortly after the Second World War. As it turned out, Stuart itself was not to exist for much longer; the rising tide of Arabic sacro egoismo soon ensured that everything in Egypt, not just Suez, would be nationalised. Most of the faculty began leaving of their own volition, aware that the end was nigh. A few remained a year or two longer until the state relieved them of their posts. Stuart was transformed into just another Egyptian school. A mere two years after my departure there occurred Egypt's Anschluss with Syria, out of which was born the short-lived (it broke up in 1961) United Arab Republic, of which Nasser became undisputed Fuehrer.

Over the years an extensive alumni network has kept me apprised of the activities of former pupils. This is how I am today able to relate to you information concerning the very different trajectories of Zahed, Ammar and Sadeq after their expulsion.

Ammar very craftily re-invented himself as a nationalist, becoming an ardent proponent of that farrago of half-baked ideas and crackpot theories known as 'Arab socialism'. For all its dangerous leftist intimations, this turned out to be pure nationalist zealotry (despite his alliance with the Soviet Union and his peasant's hatred for the landed nobility, Nasser did not flinch from persecuting home-grown communists by the thousands and herding them into concentration camps). Relying on his first-hand knowledge of the 'Imperialist-Zionist educational system' implanted in Egypt by nasty foreigners such as ourselves, and represented by the likes of Stuart, which he had the extreme misfortune of attending, Ammar was able to catapult himself into the government's ministry of education. Rising steadily in its ranks, he came to play an integral role in overseeing the nationalisation of all foreign schools, consistent with the requirements of that exceedingly chauvinistic nationalism enshrined by Nasser as state policy. From the late fifties to the late sixties he led a very comfortable life as an establishment writer and government official, entrusted with the task of purging Egypt of any and all traces of the evil foreigner and turning the country into one big gulag presided over by Nasser. In his writings on Western-and especially British-influence in Egypt, my sources tell me that he was obsessed with the lingering effect of foreign education, arguing that the Egyptians and Arabs should remain forever vigilant, guarding against attempts to contaminate their noble culture and make them more amenable to peace with Israel and domination by the West. Of especial importance to him was the idea of Western cultural-as distinct from outright political-domination; he claimed that the former, being insidious, was more difficult to combat, but that it posed the greater danger, geared as it was towards making Arabs ashamed of Arabic culture and history. With others, he helped identify a good number of intellectuals in Egypt as 'anti-revolutionary' and as lackeys of the imperialist West, thus sealing their unhappy fate.

Now Nasser's pharaonic reign, though popular with the frenzied masses of rural fellahin and plebeian city-dwellers, nevertheless was characterised throughout by a bitter struggle between the ostensibly secular Arab nationalists in power and their Islamic fundamentalist adversaries. Barring the common denominator of virulent anti-Westernism, these two groups constantly were at loggerheads, never more so when it came to the issue of governance and law. The nationalists, though not wholly dismissive of religion, firmly subordinated its role to their new creed, whereas the fundamentalists insisted that the only legitimate rule is that which derives from Islam. Perhaps the latter's most compelling theorist was a man by the name of Sayyed Qutb, mentor to an entire generation of Islamic revolutionaries. A commanding orator and prolific writer, Qutb preached that nationalism, a Western import foreign to the lands of Islam-where the Islamic religious bond had always held sway and united people of different ethnic backgrounds-should forthwith be rejected as a heresy by the Egyptian people. If Egypt were to be true to herself, she would have to return to Islam, her only authentic identity, and fight the divisive Western notion of nationalism. Qutb and his supporters entered into open warfare against what they considered a Westernised, infidel state (Qutb even compared it and its rulers to the much derided pagans of pre-Islamic times), along the way murdering a not insignificant number of Copts for good measure. They were met with a campaign of internment in concentration camps, torture and often execution. Qutb himself was hanged in 1966 for treason. During the peak years of this conflict, Islamic fanatics assassinated many a government official as part of their jihad against the state. Though this trailed off after their insurgency was crushed in the mid-sixties, certain isolated attacks continued for some time, and even intensified in the immediate aftermath of the disastrous Six-Day War in 1967, which served to re-embolden the Islamic current. Viewing Egypt's defeat as proof positive of Arab socialism's bankruptcy, and seeking to avenge the 'martyrdom' of prominent leaders, the Islamic assassins escalated their attacks. In 1967 or '68 Ammar was killed in one such incident. In his capacity as arguably the most prominent government hack, who in his front page newspaper column had repeatedly branded Qutb a traitor and called for his death, Ammar had earned the enmity of all literate Islamic fundamentalists. After Qutb was indeed executed, Ammar's own violent demise became virtually assured.

Sadeq's trail leads somewhere else entirely. He eventually surfaced in Australia, to which his family apparently immigrated shortly after his expulsion from Stuart, but before the latter was seized by the state (decidedly fortuitous, as this means that they would have left before the circumstances obtaining in Egypt became positively untenable for the Westernised elite). In the seventies Sadeq achieved notoriety as an agitator for an extreme right-wing political party active in the anti-immigration cause and staunchly opposed to the 'Asianisation of Australia'. Either in Sydney or in Melbourne (I do not recall which) he apparently distinguished himself as a spokesman and ideologue-of-sorts for this outfit, writing a regular column in its weekly or monthly organ. Representing the 'intellectual' wing of a party whose members generally spent their time parading about in silly pseudo-military uniforms, Sadeq took great care to emphasise that they were not opposed to immigration per se, only the uncontrolled influx of people who adamantly refused to assimilate into Australia's culturally Western society. The party, he maintained, was not racist, as its values were cultural and not inherent in any specific race. Though first formulated by Westerners, these values were capable of being adopted by all. Touting himself (naturally) as the exemplary assimilated immigrant, he lamented successive Australian governments' failure to compel hordes of immigrants (and Aborigines) to discard their backward ways and fully assimilate, pointing specifically to the incompatibility of Western cultural values with those of many of the new entrants. He reserved his harshest criticism, however, for many of the immigrants themselves, especially Moslems from countries such as Indonesia, Pakistan and India, whom he accused of threatening Australia's cultural integrity and trying to subvert its values.

In a striking example of irony the Bard doubtless would have appreciated, Sadeq was set upon one night by a gang of bald-headed youths who were affiliated to his party but neither knew who he was nor cared for nuanced distinctions between race and culture. The severe beating to which he was subjected left him a cripple. Thereafter (the attack occurred in the mid-eighties) he faded into obscurity. A few days after the incident, when the details had become known, one of the major newspapers in Melbourne or Sydney published a lengthy profile of Sadeq and his activities thitherto. Included in the profile was an article-or segment thereof-he had originally published in his party's newsletter. In it he claimed that those colonials, like him (-naturally), who had attended Western schools in the colonies, were the true inheritors of Western civilisation, as they had drunk from a pristine fount even as Westerners themselves were being poisoned by socialism, communism and now something called 'postmodernism'. On no account, he warned, should sanction be given to the assault-by everyone from leftists to Moslems-on the classic literary canon, the very basis of Western civilisation. Equally dangerous was the indiscriminate glorification in contemporary Western societies of all things Oriental and 'ethnic'. He then proceeded to affirm that during these tumultuous times, when Western civilisation was besieged on all fronts-not least in the heart of the West itself-those men and women who had studied at Western schools in former colonies and protectorates were a veritable Ireland in a new dark age.

It remains only to relate to you what became of the recently deceased, who had for the past few decades been living in London. After completing his secondary school studies at another institution in Alexandria, Zahed, whose family were part of the sizeable Levantine community in Egypt, enrolled in the American University of Beirut (formerly the Syrian Protestant College- founded by American missionaries-did you know?), where he read English literature, graduating with a Master's degree in the mid-sixties. He remained in Beirut, to which his parents also repaired when Nasser's economic policies began to take their toll on the community, until 1970, when he immigrated to Britain and settled in London. Albion was kind to Zahed; despite an obdurate conviction that he was somehow entitled to yet more, he did find time to benefit from our munificence. Indeed, but for him, the conclusion to the story of the three stooges who presumed to award their English instructor an 'order' (the ridiculous symbol of which I promptly shredded and discarded) might have been somewhat dour. After a whimsical period during which he rather ludicrously sought to become instructor of English literature at a university, Zahed deigned to accept a job he initially was too supercilious to even consider: teaching elementary Arabic as an elective at a state secondary school. This was in the early seventies, when the first stirrings of multiculturalism induced certain schools to inaugurate courses in Eastern languages. Save for a baffling (and abortive) attempt to return to Beirut with his English wife in 1975 (the outbreak of civil war that year sent them scampering back), he stayed with this job until the end.

In the early seventies, shortly after arriving in the UK, Zahed made contact with me through a third party-an alumnus of Stuart-asking if I would accept his apologies and be willing to become 'friends', but I refused in no uncertain terms, hardly wishing to have anything to do with the perpetrator of a crime of which I was the victim. Every few years, he would through the good offices of our mutual acquaintance reiterate this request, and on each occasion my response remained unchanged. When, after receiving a telephone call from his wife informing me of his death (cancer, I believe) and his wish that I attend the funeral, I met her, a rather dowdy lower-class woman with an atrocious Cockney accent, she told me that he had always spoken highly of me and of his deep regret for what he had done. She also relayed to me his dying wish that I address the mourners, telling them of what it was like at Stuart in the old days (you will find that they are very sentimental and nostalgic people-the Arabs). This I did, to his widow's eternal gratitude, thus closing the book on one of my life's more interesting stories.

Do thank Audrey on our behalf for your wonderful invitation. I should tell you that your wife makes the most exquisite blueberry pies ever tasted by this notorious enthusiast of all things blueberry (I have been trying for aeons to get Chelsea to bake such things, but alas, to no avail!).

I must now attend to a few decidedly mundane matters, so that everything is in order when it comes time for the trip (we must find a house-sitter who meets with the approval of our awfully finicky cat, and this requires advance preparation). We are very much looking forward to seeing you!

Yours, Aldrich Jarvis

_ _

Rayyan Al-Shawaf, a writer and book critic in Beirut, can be reached at calaboose@gmail.com.

<< Back to Issue 16, 2013