A few days before the death of Ceausescu, Romania’s late dictator, he was asked about the political conditions in his country. He said it was true that those around him had fallen but he knew the Romanian people better than to fear the tense conditions of the day. Four days later, he was executed. That is how tyrants come to their end.
But not in all cases. Stalin, with all his tyranny, died of natural causes. Another example is Franco, Spain’s dictator. He was glorified even after his death and his body was respectfully put in a great coffin and placed in a fancy building. Lenin died while still sending people to their deaths. Though a writer and an intellectual who wrote more than fifty books, which constitute the sacred revelations for Communists, he had no compunction about shedding human blood. Orders of execution were a routine procedure for him and were regarded as a mere question of statistics. When peasants on communal farms rebelled, Lenin’s orders were to choose two hundred of the best-known and execute them in full view of the rest of the rebels.
There are different kinds of tyrants: tyrants who kill and are killed, and tyrants who kill but are carried to their graves with elaborate military ceremonies. Political conditions in some countries can reach a point where the country cannot move until the death of its tyrant. A tyrant rules through terror, and when he dies, it is also the death of the regime and the elite.
Der Spiegel, a German weekly, published some fascinating statistics about the longest terms of rule. At the top of the pyramid are the rulers of the Arab world in an average that reaches 30 years and more. Durant, the American historian, through his study of different historical events, explains that many rulers came and went without any significance that is worth mentioning. Today we remember Ibn Rushd, the Arab philosopher, but we do not remember the king under whose rule he lived. He is now forgotten, despite the fact that in those times a king held people’s lives under his thumb. In fact, Ibn Rushd was exiled at the age of seventy by an order of the king. That king would probably wish for his name to be remembered as much as Ibn Rushd’s is.
Thus, time is not the cycle of the cosmos but the condition of the self, and the change of societies as Muhammad Iqbal said. A person may pass weeks at a time without any significance and there may come a few hours where he develops in them more than in years. Character is built through an accumulation of experiences and not by the daily monotony and routine. It is amazing that what shapes and elevates the essence of humans is suffering and challenge.
It is difficult for us to understand the movement of history to see the connection between events. Therefore, we do not understand why societies can live under ignorance and oppression. It is chosen slavery as a 16th century French author said. He says that to get rid of those chains one need not conspire against the regime or kill the ruler. Instead, disobedience and refusal to cooperate are the best weapon in the face of tyranny.
However, neither our intellectuals nor our ordinary people know this recipe. This way of understanding resistance does not have its supporting institutions and has not yet reached our intellectual dictionary.
Social reformers and philosophers may be persecuted and killed in the age of political darkness through which our nation lives. However, their deaths have a different impact from that of the tyrants. The death of reformers and intellectuals is like burying a seed in the soil; it will blossom and grow into a tree. Nizar Al-Qabani, the Syrian poet, spent the end of his life in exile and his country would receive only his dead body. Nevertheless, his poetry lives on and is read by children and adults all over the Arab world.
