Obituaries & articles

The loss of a rare syndicate oak

Jordan and Palestine have lost a syndicate figure of acknowledged presence and constructive spirit, of a human quality rarely found, one that marked the late engineer Ibrahim Abu Ayyash and shaped his character and his political, syndicate and professional conduct. He was Jordanian to the marrow and Palestinian to the point of fusion, with an Arab nationalist spirit in which the values of accord and harmony took form as natural and complementary things, without hesitation, affectation or pretence. Nobody ever held it against him that he combined in one person the presidency of the Jordanian Engineers' Association, the presidency of the Union of Arab Engineers, and membership of the Palestinian National and Central Councils, which embody the unity of the Palestinian Arab people wherever it lives, at home and abroad.

In the period before 1989, the year of the parliamentary elections, the lifting of martial law and the licensing of political parties, the address of the political opposition was the professional associations complex with its nationalist and leftist leaderships. The great association presidents, Suleiman al-Hadidi, Ibrahim Bakr, Hassan Khreis, Ibrahim Abu Ayyash and others, had a prominent part in supporting some policies and condemning others. The weight they built for themselves, and the moral and material value of their positions before our people and before the state alike, made them figures of substance, whom the late King Hussein regarded with appreciation and respect. I often saw this at political meetings I worked on or took part in, which gave me the chance to bear witness, or to try to learn from these men, in Hussein's presence.

With the death of Ibrahim Abu Ayyash, the Jordanian and Palestinian political and syndicate movement has lost a great teacher: brilliant professionally, unifying in syndicate work, clear politically without sharpness or condescension, and instead with great modesty despite abilities ahead of others in learning, professionalism and politics. He had a long hand in his last achievement, reaching an agreement to amend the internal rules of the engineering offices body with the council of the Engineers' Association, which responded to a mediation he led with others and led to the enactment of rules that will carry consulting engineering in Jordan a professional and syndicate leap forward.

He had a long hand too in ordering internal affairs at what is called the Marmara meeting, which led to the success of the syndicate team that leads the engineering offices body today, on the basis of the internal elections of the political syndicate bloc represented by the syndicate leader Qaher Safa. May God have mercy on Ibrahim Abu Ayyash. The consolation of those who loved him in Jordan and Palestine is that our people here and there can carry on the road the great departed marked out: for Jordan, its stability, its pluralism and the recourse of its institutions to the ballot box, and for the freedom of Palestine, its independence and the return of its refugees to it. There are many like Abu al-Abed, candles that sought to scatter the darkness and the despair, so that the road may be carried on to its end.

The two Ibrahims: two full moons, and with them the moon is complete

Gone with the wind? No, gone with the breeze. That is how Ibrahim Abu Ayyash, Abu al-Abed, left us. And so it was decreed, and so he was in his blood: he was the man of the breeze. Even now, at his fortieth-day remembrance, we still catch the scents this breeze carries to us. True, he was at times a storm, as the fiercest winds are, but he always returned quickly to his nature: the nature of a breeze. True, what he loved in the Fatah movement was its side of the storm, but in essence what he loved in the movement was its breeze, for that is what suited his nature and his humanity. The storm was for him a matter of necessity. Feeling was his character and his origin. At times the hard letter in him got the better of the soft one, from the sheer weight of the injustice he saw falling on his people and his nation, but he always rose towards the heights as a man of the softer letter.

A man of feeling. He truly deserved the title of the Count, given him by his close friend, a man of whom one cannot speak without speaking of the other. The Count was the title Ibrahim Bakr bestowed on him, with as much jest as earnest, and from then on the title stuck fast to the name of Ibrahim Abu Ayyash. And who could throw the gilded cloak over Ibrahim's shoulders and make him the first Arab Count but Ibrahim the stormer, Ibrahim Bakr? And that other Ibrahim was the great man of the assault: in thought, in law, in struggle and in political work. How I have prized, in my depths, my close friendship with them both, as I prized each of them on his own and the two of them together.

Of the two of them there will be, I think, a long account in my memoirs, which I see coming, unless death visits me suddenly, and in the two Ibrahims we have a lesson. An account in which one important side completes another important side. Ibrahim the stormer cut himself off from many of life's pleasures because he was who he was, and because that was how he wanted to be. But fortunately he understood, indeed he grasped with his well-known civility, the impulses of others, and of the Count Ibrahim above all. They differed in politics, and their differences were civil. But they never differed for a moment on principles. Both were humane, not to say internationalist, Arab nationalist, deeply Jordanian in belonging, Palestinian to the marrow, and secular without limit.

They were in agreement in struggle through the hours of a working day that often ran from six in the morning until eight or nine at night. Neither tired nor wearied of productive work, each in his own profession, or of politics and national work, including of course leadership in the associations. But when the wing of night's darkness came down, each had his own life. Ibrahim the stormer went deeper into the world of reading and writing, and Ibrahim the breeze went off to the world of the Count: a world full of life, an elegance of dress preceded by an elegance of manner and accompanied by an elegance of living. Even so, that night world was not cut off from the world of the day. How many times I saw the Count Ibrahim forget his love of life and return to its cares, if someone sitting with him touched any of his beliefs and principles. Ibrahim the Count and Ibrahim the stormer: two full moons, and with them the moon is complete.

And for someone like me, with the loss of them both, the grief is complete.

The memorial for Ibrahim Abu Ayyash

The Palace of Culture had never seen a gathering of such standing, so varied in those attending and so large, for the memorial of a political figure, as it did on Saturday 17 August, at the memorial for the late Ibrahim Abu Ayyash, under the supervision of a body of figures representing the Jordanian Engineers' Association, the Presidents' Council, the engineering offices body, the engineering business forum, the coordinating committee of the opposition parties, the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinian engineers, the Fatah movement, the Arab engineers, the Arabtec Jardaneh group and volunteer friends. That left its mark on the range and the number of the speakers, and yet nobody grew restless and nobody left the occasion, which was marked by the dignity and composure of the moment; one of those present called it an occasion with a light heart.

The participation of Azzam al-Ahmad, a member of the central committee of Fatah, with words not prepared in advance and not on the programme, and his introduction to the reading of the message of the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, raised the political standing of the occasion and of Ibrahim Abu Ayyash as a symbol, beyond the significance carried by Marwan Abdulhameed as an eloquent speaker for the institutions of the Palestinian engineers, for Fatah and for the Palestinian National Council. But it was the Palestinian president who marked the tribute with what it deserved, instead of being absent. And Salma Abu Ayyash gave it awe, a fine grief and love for her father, as though she were a friend possessed of knowledge, of feeling, of human depth and of the sting of tears at losing her father, and at the loss of him for all those present. She summed up the moment and the feeling, as our great surgeon Dawoud Hananiya said, the man who has opened hundreds of human chests and set a record for the number of operations he has performed on his patients without so much as blinking. He summed it up by saying: Salma made me weep.

What is the worth of Ibrahim Abu Ayyash? And why this select gathering of Jordanians, Palestinians and Arabs? In the answer to those two questions lies the secret and the key to understanding the memorial and the occasion. It was not that he was a village boy who came first in the secondary certificate across the two banks, united then in heart, spirit and mind, in that time in the fifties. It was not that he took honours from the American University and came first in his year, or that he was president of the association for several terms and successful in his profession, or that he stood squarely with the national, nationalist and leftist forces. Many of those present and others match him in these achievements, and may surpass him.

The worth of Ibrahim Abu Ayyash is that he was Jordanian to the marrow of his bones and took pride in it, just as he was Palestinian to the marrow of his bones and insisted on it, with no evasion, hesitation or pretence. He was an opponent of the Muslim Brotherhood and, as an association president, among the figures they most respected and held in regard. He represented Jordan in the Arab world and internationally, and Palestine likewise. The worth of what the preparatory committee has now done is that we miss Ibrahim Abu Ayyash as a symbol and what he stood for, and we strive and long for what he struggled for. When we ache at the sectarian, national and confessional conflict we see in Iraq, in Lebanon and Syria, in Sudan and Egypt, where brother fights brother, where a person kills and assaults himself, assassinates his partner and conspires against him and blows him up without mercy, we pause before the memory of Ibrahim Abu Ayyash and his values, and cry out in protest at his passing, because we refuse killing and plead for pluralism, for democracy and for recourse to the ballot box. And we say loudly and firmly: Ibrahim Abu Ayyash, we miss you.