22. As We Have Become, So Shall You

Fāris al-Dawwār has a commercial history full of incidents. He has gone bankrupt more than once, and his establishment has burned several times. Syrians hold none of this against him because neither his bankruptcies nor his fires harmed any Syrian. All the losses he caused fell upon the Americans and foreigners who dealt with him. Thus his adventures did not diminish his honor among his countrymen. On the contrary, some still regard him with esteem, looking upon him as a commercial cavalier who entered the tumult of trade and trampled difficulties beneath the hooves of his intelligence. Many still describe him as clever, a man who knows how to eat the shoulder—that is, to secure the choicest portion.[79] All this is because he harmed none of them and paid his countrymen immediately. If he consumed enormous debts owed to foreigners, whose concern was that?

Among the incidents in Fāris al-Dawwār’s career was this: once, coming to his establishment early, contrary to his custom, he met there a countryman who lived in the surrounding neighborhood. The man immediately hurried toward him and said that at nine o’clock the previous evening he had passed the establishment and seen a fire blazing inside. He at once summoned the firemen. They extinguished the flames and killed the fire in its cradle, so that the goods were untouched and the establishment remained intact for its owner.

He said this supposing he would receive a handsome reward for his deed—if not a gift, then at least a few words. But when Fāris al-Dawwār heard the news, sweat poured from him like water from a skin. He felt that he had lost no fewer than five pounds in weight.

“Damn you!” he answered. “You have ruined my house!”

He followed these words with a blow to his forehead and nearly fell like a man whose strength had failed. The informant realized that his act had not pleased Fāris and turned away dejected, like a fisherman who asks people to help him draw in a heavy net only to find, when it reaches shore, a stone in place of fish.

In gatherings of his Syrian countrymen, Fāris always said that a Syrian’s own success murdered him because he hoped to prosper through dealings with other Syrians; dealings with Americans were more useful and yielded more abundant success.

Fāris al-Dawwār spent his first years in the world of commerce hoping to profit from the large companies by insuring his establishments against fire. On the third occasion, however, the village’s reckoning did not agree with the palace’s.[80] He nearly lost all his money and his life. He spent thousands of dollars on litigation and, in the end, withdrew through intermediaries with his person as his only spoil, having nearly been thrown into prison. But for God’s grace, his evil deeds would have caught him. After those years he therefore turned toward making profits from bankruptcies and settlements.

During this period, the establishment he created was registered in his little daughter’s name, and the house in the mother’s, as a precaution against whatever fate might befall him. And how much fate concealed for Fāris al-Dawwār in his commercial life!

One tale from his bankruptcies concerns his final year in business. His establishment came to resemble a bank: it was empty of every kind of merchandise, and nothing remained but the ledgers. He, the bookkeeper, and the clerk spent the daylight hours recording, signing, going to banks, and gathering the signatures of neighbors, sons, and daughters—as well as many names whose owners had no basis in existence—so that the banks would discount his promissory notes.[81]

That year an announcement by Fāris al-Dawwār appeared in the Arabic newspapers stating that his establishment was prepared to accept financial deposits on which it paid good interest. It seems he enlarged the newspaper owner’s morsel, for the man devoted an editorial article to him. It declared that confidence in Fāris al-Dawwār’s establishment was great and that countrymen came to it in groups and singly to deposit their money, followed by more writing for hire.

The affair ended with his declaring bankruptcy one final time. The day after that issue of the newspaper appeared, he was arrested for forgery. He was released on bail with his wife’s help and spent thousands of dollars litigating the matter. Today he works as a broker, purchasing for inland merchants and taking a fixed sum from buyer and seller, each without the other’s knowledge.

What deserves mention in Fāris al-Dawwār’s story is that he attributed his success during the years of fires to dealing with foreigners. After everything that happened during the years of bankruptcy and settlements, he became the firmest proof of his first principle: dealing with Syrians leads a man to his commercial death. He often sighs before people and says that if he had continued his dealings with foreigners, he would today possess millions. But misfortune inclined him toward dealing with countrymen, and all that happened came down upon his head and ruined his house.

To this day he laments his bad luck in committing that error—turning toward his countrymen and doing business with them—until his commerce was destroyed. He is not even ashamed to shout at those who demand the deposits he initially promised to repay that they caused his ruin. If not for them he would have remained a great merchant, but through his desire to benefit them he lost what many years could never replace.

This, briefly, is what happened to him. But I shall give the moral of the man’s life. One day I was visiting a house, and his honor was among those present. Someone showed us an item in that day’s issue of a newspaper: a long editorial on the success of the well-known commercial firm “Ḥimṣūnī and Company,” in which the editor directed readers’ attention to the firm’s advertisement on page three.

Fāris al-Dawwār laughed, shook his head repeatedly, and said:

“As we were, so are you; as we have become, so shall you.”[82]

NOTES

[79] The idiom yaʿrif kayfa yaʾkul al-katif, literally ‘he knows how to eat the shoulder,’ praises someone who knows how to obtain the best or most profitable part.
[80] A Levantine proverb: ḥisāb al-qarāyā lā yuṭābiq ḥisāb al-sarāyā, ‘the village’s calculation does not match the government house’s.’ One’s private scheme fails when tested against official reality; here an attempted insurance fraud invites prosecution.
[81] To ‘discount’ a promissory note is to sell it to a bank before maturity for less than its face value. The fictitious endorsers make the practice fraudulent.
[82] The final line is a rhymed, antithetical warning in Arabic: ka-mā kunnā kadhā antum, ka-mā ṣirnā taṣīrūnā. Fāris recognizes another paid newspaper encomium as a prelude to the same collapse he engineered.
