17. The Bey’s Misery

Syrians have adopted a strange and marvelous practice regarding titles. If a man of rank makes a mistake in someone’s name and addresses him, for example, as effendi or bey, the recipient becomes an effendi or bey. Thereafter he demands that people respect his station and recognize his title.[62]

Numerous Syrians possess civil titles. I do not know where they obtained them—and who does?

Nor do I know whether any man who boasts of such a title has ever asked himself, “Why was I given the title bey when Ghanṭūs Falaqyūs, who tends the furnace in Abū Ḥarfūsh’s house, did not receive it?”

Love of titles has so mastered certain people that the thing has become a mighty part of their lives.

Poor Naṣr al-Bayṭār—or Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār—was happy in his condition when he was obscure and unknown. He carried his satchel and sold goods to Americans in Florida during winter and Maine during summer. He hoped to become a merchant once his funds reached ten thousand dollars and strove earnestly and boldly toward the goal.

But time does not make smooth the roads traveled by the children of misfortune. It has ingenious ways of bringing calamity upon its offspring. If misery reaches one person by poverty, illness, or death, Naṣr al-Bayṭār’s misery came by way of becoming a bey. Here is the report.

In 1902 a committee was formed in Lebanon to organize a national exhibition and stimulate domestic commerce. Newspapers at home and in the mahjar carried news of the movement.[63] When Naṣr read of it, he was greatly pleased. Patriotic zeal stirred him because the exhibition would be held in his native village. He immediately sent a hundred dollars in the committee’s name to assist the movement.

Two months later a reply arrived, signed in the name of the mutasarrif. The envelope was addressed:

FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE CHIVALROUS AND PATRIOTIC

NAṢR BEY AL-BAYṬĀR

At first Naṣr did not believe the reply was his. He read the letter and heard the governor pour out praise, measuring lavish phrases in honor of his generosity and patriotism. Then he read it again, eyes ready to burst from plunging so deeply into the writer’s language. After that he read the envelope backward and forward without blinking. He read it more than ten times in succession, until the word “Bey” grew so large before him that the envelope could scarcely contain it.

Bey! Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār! Bey! Bey!

For nearly an hour the poor man read now the governor’s letter, now the envelope, caught between belief and disbelief. Could he really be Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār? If not he, then who? It was he himself.

At last poor Naṣr’s reason returned and he became certain that he himself was Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār. The title had come to him from His Excellency the governor as a reward for service to the nation.

Then the thought returned and he asked himself: “Could it be a mistake by the mutasarrif? Does a mutasarrif make mistakes?”

No, no. There was no mistake in the matter. The governor had bestowed the title. The affair required neither proof nor circumstantial evidence. What ink writes upon paper admits no hesitation in interpretation. It was clear. The handwriting was the governor’s own: Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār. No explanation was needed. Enough.

Before the day ended, most of his acquaintances knew he had become a bey. His home became the destination of well-wishers. Then news reached the newspapers. They published it with congratulations, adding that the title had found its owner through perfect merit and desert.

Naṣr Bey’s funds had not passed five thousand dollars when the governor’s beyhood descended upon him. As we observed, he had been waiting for them to reach ten thousand before becoming a merchant. But being a bey and carrying a peddler’s satchel did not agree. Despite his scant capital, the poor man was forced to open a business among the merchants.

He wrote to tell his family in the village the joyful news. They held a great festival to celebrate their son Naṣr’s beyhood. The villagers shared their happiness. In the festivities, they fired gunpowder worth fifty liras.[64]

Naṣr Bey’s business continued for nearly a year, and its losses almost swallowed his capital. Most customers discovered his weakness. If one wanted him to extend more credit, he addressed him as “Bey.” If another wished to lower the price, he flattered him with “Your Excellency.” What could the bey—or His Excellency—do but submit to the wishes of his honored customers?

The result was loss. At year’s end he liquidated the business and resolved to return to his satchel rather than go bankrupt and become a morsel in people’s mouths—a disgrace for a titled man like him.

Naṣr Bey employed a clerk to keep his books. The intelligent young man despised his master’s beyhood, and they often quarreled over it. He would not call Naṣr “Bey” except under threat of dismissal. In his final days as clerk, however, he used the title frequently as a joke, calling it out with a laugh. This angered Naṣr, but he looked the other way because he knew the man’s days were numbered. The store would close at month’s end, and then Naṣr would part from him and be free.

In the final days of Naṣr Bey’s commerce, I met the clerk. He informed me that the establishment of al-Bayṭār Bey had closed. I shook my head sadly over the loss and said the poor man’s trade had had no grammatical place in the sentence.[65]

The clerk smiled. “The fault was not his, but the mutasarrif’s in Lebanon.”

“What did the mutasarrif have to do with it?”

“He mistakenly called him Bey. So Naṣr entered commerce to elevate his station and ended by losing everything. That is all.”

I laughed, and the clerk laughed with me. His lips moved as though they wished to utter something, but he would not release the sound. I could see this perfectly well and asked him to say what was in his mind.

At first he hesitated. Then he laughed loudly.

“Come closer and I shall show you.”

He reached into his pocket and produced pieces of an envelope sent from home and stamped by the government office at Baabda.[66] I leaned forward eagerly to see what it contained. He placed each piece near its original position and said, “Read.”

I read:

MR. NAṢR AL-BAYṬĀR OF THE VILLAGE OF ʿAMṬĪR,

RESIDENT IN THE UNITED STATES

“Is this Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār?” I asked.

“The very man. This envelope is in the hand of the same mutasarrif who wrote the poor fellow a year ago and placed ‘Bey’ beside his name.”

“Who tore it up?”

“Naṣr Bey—or Mr. Naṣr himself—when this letter arrived from His Excellency the governor asking some trivial thing. He tore it apart and cursed the mutasarrif. I gathered the pieces to learn why he was angry with his country’s ruler. Now that I know, I join him in cursing the governor—not for sending this letter, but for the earlier reply that cost the poor man all the money he had gathered through the sweat of his brow and the labor of a year, perhaps years, as well as people’s laughter and contempt.”

NOTES

[62] Effendi and bey were Ottoman honorifics. Bey ranked above effendi and could signal official, military, or notable status. A salutation on an envelope did not by itself constitute a legal grant of rank.
[63] Lebanon was then the autonomous Ottoman Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon. Its chief administrator was the mutasarrif, here translated “governor” where the function matters.
[64] Celebratory gunfire was—and remains in parts of the region—a customary but dangerous way to mark weddings, titles, and public festivities.
[65] Arabic lā maḥalla lahā min al-iʿrāb is a grammatical phrase meaning that an element has no syntactic role or inflectional position in a sentence. Figuratively, the business had no place or standing.
[66] Baabda was the administrative seat of the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate and later became the site of Lebanon’s presidential palace.
