The Levanter Part 3

I might have replied that had I not puzzled them by offering to hand, over the Syrian a.s.sets of the Agence Howell, we would not have been sitting there discussing what was to become of its blocked funds. Instead I gave my prepared answer.

'At present the government lacks the administrative machinery to implement its socialist programme for industry. But only at present. I am looking to the future, I might retain control for a year or so, but sooner or later I will certainly lose it. I prefer to lose it sooner and devote my time and energies to retrieving the situation. Does that seem foolish, or even generous, Dr Hawa?'

'If we knew better what you mean by "retrieving the situation" we might be able to judge.'

'Very well. Then let us begin with two a.s.sumptions. First, that the government takes over the operation of our remaining business in Syria for its own account and profit. Second, that the government compensates us in the usual way, with paper.'

He was lighting yet another cigarette. 'There is no harm in our speaking hypothetically. Let us, for the purpose of your explanation, accept both acquisition and compensation. What then?'

'The Agence Howell is left without businesses here but with substantial a.s.sets. Some of these a.s.sets are intangible-management skills, knowledge of world markets and access to them, trading experience - but they are real enough none the less. However, without the capital to exploit them they are useless. The capital is there, but it is blocked. So, since the capital is not allowed to work, nothing else can. The loss is only partly ours. Your economy loses too. The remedy I propose would work to our mutual advantage and would be in line with announced government policies for industry.'

'If you could be more specific."

'Certainly. I propose a series of cooperative ventures, under government auspices and control, in the light industry field. Their primary object would be the manufacture of goods suitable for the export markets.'

'What sort of goods, Mr Howell?' He had now the intent look of a cat who has suddenly seen a plump and rather somnolent field mouse.

'Ceramics to begin with,' I said; 'then I would go over to furniture and metal-work.'

The cat's tail twitched. 'In case you are unaware of the fact, Mr Howell, I must tell you that we already have a considerable ceramics industry.'

'I am well aware of it, Dr Hawa, but as far as I am concerned it is making the wrong things.'

'And as far as I am concerned, Mr Howell, I begin to suspect that you are barking up the wrong tree'

He was beginning to annoy me. 'Of course, Dr Hawa, if you find it too painful to listen to new ideas on old subjects, there is nothing more to be said.'

He decided that it was time to pounce. 'New ideas, Mr Howell? Decorated junk in quant.i.ty - pots, plates and vases -for export to the trashy tourist shops of the Western world? Is that the way you would like to get your money out?' He laughed shortly at the others and they smiled back dutifully.

I nearly lost my temper; but not quite.

'I realise, Doctor, that you must be a very busy man,' I said, 'and that before this meeting you were unable to make the usual departmental inquiries about my qualifications and reputation.'

He shrugged indifferently. 'You were trained as an engineer. That could mean anything.'

'Then you cannot have heard that it is not a business habit of mine to talk nonsense. At the mention of ceramics your mind goes to pots and plates and vases. And why not? That is all you know about in the context. When I say ceramics I have something different in mind, because I have done some market research. I am talking, for one thing, about ma.s.s-produced tiling.'

He frowned. 'Tiles? You mean the tiles we use on our floors?'

'Not of the kind you mean. I mean ceramic tile sold by the square metre and made up of two-centimetre mosaics glazed on one surface in plain colours, and not sold in any tourist shops, trashy or otherwise. I will give you an example. There is at the moment a modern two-hundred-bedroom hotel going up in Benghazi. Each bedroom has a bathroom tiled in this material - floors and walls, plain colours - pink, blue, green, black, white. Approximately fifty square metres of tiling go into each bathroom. There is the same kind of tiling in the kitchens and on the verandas. About twelve thousand square metres were involved in the contract which went to an Italian manufacturer. It was worth forty-five thousand American.'

'Dollars?'

'Dollars. There is a big demand for this material. All over the Mediterranean hotels and big apartment blocks are being built, all over Europe for that matter. Marble is expensive. Tiling is comparatively cheap. Tiling is now the preferred material. Could Syria have had this order for Benghazi? If it had been equipped to produce the right article in the quant.i.ties needed and on time, the answer must be yes. True, Libya still has commercial ties with Italy, but what of her religious, ethnic and political ties with the UAR? Besides, Syria's price could well have been lower.

'Where else is this special tiling made?'

'You mean is it an Italian monopoly? By no means. The French and the Swiss are already in the business. There is a tile factory near Zurich employing over two hundred persons.'

He made a face. 'So a tiling factory, and when the building business slumps. . . .'

'We shall be much older men. In any case the tiling is only one example of the kind of thing I mean. Egypt is now building an electric power grid. It will take years to complete, and overhead high voltage power lines need glazed ceramic insulators, ma.s.sive things, six or eight to a pylon. Tens of thousands will be needed. Of course, they could all come from the Soviet Union or Poland, but would the Russians care if these insulators were made in Syria? They might even be glad to sub-contract the work to a friendly neighbour. It would be interesting to find out. I am sure that a request pa.s.sed through their commercial attache for drawings and specifications would be sympathetically received.'

'Yes, yes, of course.' He had risen nicely to that bait as I had hoped he would.

The senior official leaned forward. 'I take it that your proposals for furniture manufacture are equally unconventional, Mr Howell?'

'I believe so, sir. No camel-saddle chairs, no ornamental coffee tables, but modern office and hotel furniture of Western design and, again, ma.s.s-produced. Some relatively inexpensive machine tools would have to be imported, as would the plastics we would need for surfacing, but the metal fittings could be made here.'

Dr Hawa returned to the attack. 'But in the metal-working field you would surely be thinking in terms of such things as Western-style cutlery.'

'No, Dr Hawa.'

A sly smile. 'Because your Lebanese and Egyptian companies already sell expensive cutlery imported from the United Kingdom?'

So he had done some homework after all.

'No,' I answered; 'because the j.a.panese already dominate the market for ma.s.s-produced cutlery. We could never compete. I am thinking in terms of door fastenings, catches, bolts, hinges - building hardware that can be made in quant.i.ty using jigs and dies and some inexpensive machine tools such as drill and stamping presses. There must also be modern finis.h.i.+ng processes. Handicraft standards would not be adequate.'

The senior official intervened once more. 'You again emphasise the use of inexpensive machines, Mr Howell, but isn't it the expensive machines which make the inexpensive and compet.i.tively-priced goods?'

I replied carefully. 'Where labour costs are high that is certainly true. We should endeavour to strike a balance. Labour-intensive projects, I agree, are of no value to Syria. But in the refugee camps we have a source, still largely untapped, of unskilled and semi-skilled labour. Under Syrian foremen it could be trained and made useful. I have no doubt that as we progressed we would need, and could use, machine tools that were less simple and more expensive. Our ability to buy them would certainly be one measure of our success. Our inability to do so in the beginning, however, should not foredoom us to failure. In properly guided hands even simple machines can do a lot.'

'It is a relief,' said Dr Hawa nastily, 'to know that Mr Howell has at least considered the possibility of failure.'

'I have tried to consider all the possibilities, Doctor. I have proposed that the government uses our company and its a.s.sets to advance the public interest. Whether you use us or not, or how you use us, are questions which will not, I imagine, be answered today. But if we are to be used, and used successfully, I submit that we can serve you best in the ways I have suggested, employing our limited resources to reach limited but realistic objectives in the foreseeable future.'

The senior official was nodding encouragingly, so I went on quickly before Hawa could interrupt.

'The projects I most favour, the ones we have been discussing in general terms, are those which can be most easily tried and tested by means of pilot operations. I believe such operations to be essential. When we make mistakes, as we will, they should be on a small scale and rectifiable. On the other hand, all pilot operations must, to be of real value, be big enough for us to make accurate forecasts, projections of our full-scale needs-for raw materials for example. Simple arithmetic can sometimes be misleading.'

'It can indeed!' Dr Hawa blew smoke across the table; he had taken charge again. 'Having been treated to some entertaining flights of fancy, perhaps we may now return to more prosaic matters. Mr Howell, are you in fact proposing that the Agence HowelFs blocked funds should be employed entirely to finance these splendid schemes of yours?'

'No,' I said bluntly, 'I most certainly am not proposing that.'

Then I fail to see. . . .'

'Allow me to finish, please. Firstly, the amount of company capital available, if it can be made available, would be quite inadequate for the projects we have been discussing. What I am proposing is that company funds are employed to finance and manage the pilot operation in each case. When, and only when, a pilot project has proved itself does it go forward into full-scale production. At that point the government takes over the financing and the company becomes a minority shareholder in a government-owned cooperative.'

Dr Hawa rolled his eyes in theatrical amazement.

'You would expect me to believe, Mr Howell, that you and your company would be prepared to work for nothing?'

'No, I don't. We would expect something in the way of management fees for our work in organising and developing the projects. They could be nominal, enough to cover normal overhead expenses let us say. Naturally, all such arrangements would be covered in the formal agreements made between the department of the government concerned and the company.' I paused slightly before I added: 'It would, of course, be one of the conditions of our entering into such agreements that our company is granted exclusive agencies for the sale abroad of the products of these joint ventures. I think that sole and exclusive agencies for a period of, say, twenty-five years, would be fair and reasonable.'

There was a silence; and then the senior official began making a throat-clearing sound which developed after a moment or two into words of protest. 'But . . . but . . .' He did not seem quite able to go on. Finally, he threw up his hands. 'You could make a fortune!' he cried.

I shook my head. 'With respect, sir, I think we are more likely to lose one. However, since our fortune here is not at risk anyway, I would like to reduce the odds against if I can.'

'The government would never agree.'

'Again with respect, sir, why not? They will be running no risks. By the time they are asked to fund a project, all the risks will have been run for them. It can only be for the good of the economy then, and for the people. Why should they not agree?'

Dr Hawa said nothing; he was lighting yet another cigarette; but he seemed to be amused.

A month later the first of the draft agreements was initialled; by me on behalf of the company and by Dr Hawa on behalf of the newly formed People's Industrial Progress Cooperative.

The news had a mixed reception in Beirut, and I had to preside over an unusually prolonged board meeting. My sisters, Euridice and Amalia, both had husbands who, with one qualifying share apiece, attended these meetings as voting directors.

This lamentable arrangement had been initiated by my father in the last months of his life; mainly, I think, because it made him uneasy to see more women than men seated around a boardroom table - even when the women in question were his own wife and daughters. Having dealt so much with Muslims over the years, he had become inclined to regret the arrangement, however, he was too ill and tired to do anything about rescinding it. That task he had bequeathed to me; and, since I was unwilling to precipitate a major family quarrel during my first year in command, I had postponed taking the necessary action.

I don't dislike my brothers-in-law; they are both worthy men; but one is a dentist and the other an a.s.sociate professor of physics. Neither of them knows anything about business. Yet, while both would be understandably affronted if I offered to advise them in their professional capacities, neither has ever hesitated for a moment to tender detailed criticisms of, and advice about, the management of our company. They regard business, somewhat indulgently, as a sort of game which anyone with a little common sense can always join in and play perfectly. With the dreadful persistence of those who argue off the tops of their heads from positions of total ignorance, they would make their irrelevant points and formulate their senseless proposals while my sisters took it in turn to nod their idiotic heads in approval. Having to listen to these blithe fatuities was almost as exhausting as having later to dispose of them without being unforgiveably offensive. No, I don't dislike my brothers-in-law; but there have been times when I have wished them dead.

Their immediate and enthusiastic approval of my Syrian agreement was, therefore, both disconcerting and disquieting. Guilio the dentist, who is Italian, became quite eloquent on the subject.

'It is my considered opinion,' he said, 'that Michael has been both statesmanlike and far-sighted. Dealing with idealists, ideologues perhaps in this case, is no easy matter. In their minds all compromise is weakness, and negotiation a mere path to treason. The radical extremist of whatever stripe is consistently paranoid. Yet there are c.h.i.n.ks even in their black armour of suspicion, and Michael has found the most vulnerable - self-interest and greed. We have no need of gun-boats to help us do our business. This agreement is the modern way of doing things.'

'Nonsense!' said my mother loudly. 'It is the weak and short-sighted way.' She stared Guilio into silence before she turned again to me. 'Why,' she continued sombrely, 'was this confrontation necessary? Why, in G.o.d's name, did we ourselves invite it? And why, having merely discussed an agreement, did we fall into the trap of signing it? Oh, if your father had been alive!'

'The agreement is not signed, Mama. I have only initialled a draft.'

'Draft? Hah!' She struck her forehead sharply with the heel of her hand, a method of demonstrating extreme emotion that did not disturb the careful setting of her hair.

'And could you now disavow that initialling?' she demanded. 'Could you now let our name become a byword in the market place for vacillation and bad faith?'

'Yes, Mama, and no.'

'What do you say?'

'Yes to the first question, no to the second. A draft agreement initialled is a declaration of intent. It is not absolutely binding. There are ways of pulling out if we wish to. I don't think we should, but not for the reasons you give. There would be no question of bad faith, but it might well be thought that we had been bluffing. In that case we could not expect them to deal generously with us in the future.'

'But it was you, Michael, who took the initiative. Why? Why did you not wait pa.s.sively until the time was ripe to employ those tactics which your father knew so well?' She had leaned forward across the table and was rubbing the thumb and third finger of her right hand together. Her second diamond ring glittered accusingly.

'I have explained, Mama. We are dealing with a new situation and a different type of man.'

'Different? They are Syrians, aren't they? What can be new there?'

'A distrust of the past, a real wish for reform and determination to bring about change. I agree that a lot of their ideas are half-baked, but they will learn, and the will is there. I may add that if I had attempted to bribe Dr Hawa or even hinted at the possibility, I would certainly have been in jail within the hour. That much at least is new.'

'They are still Syrians, and new men quickly become old. Besides, how do you know that the parties to your agreement will still be there in six months' time? You see a changed situation, yes. But remember, such situations can change more than once, and in more than one direction.'

I removed my gla.s.ses and polished them with my handkerchief. My wife, Anastasia, has told me that this habit of mine of polis.h.i.+ng my gla.s.ses when I want to think carefully is bad. According to her it produces an effect of weakness and confusion on my, part. She may be right; I can always count on Anastasia to observe my shortcomings and to keep the list of them well up to date.

'Let us be clear about this, Mama.' I replaced the gla.s.ses and put the handkerchief away. 'There are many in Damascus, persons of experience, who think as you do. I believe that if father were alive he would be among them. I also believe that he would be wrong. I don't deny the value of patience. But just waiting to see which way the cat is going to jump and wondering which palms will have to be greased may simply be a way of doing nothing when you don't think it safe to trust your own judgement. By going to these people rather than waiting for them to decide our fate in committee, we have secured solid advantages. With luck, our capital there can be made to go on working for us."

She shook her head sadly. 'You have so much English blood in you, Michael. More, I sometimes think than your father had, though how such a thing could be I do not know.' Coming from my mother these were very harsh words indeed. I awaited the rest of the indictment. 'I well remember,' she went on steadily, 'something that your father said in nineteen twenty-nine. That was before you were born, when I was-' she patted her stomach '-when I was carrying you here. A British army officer had been staying in our house. An amateur yachtsman he was, and the yard had been doing some repairs to his boat. When he left he forgot to take with him a little red book he had been reading. It was a manual of infantry training or some such thing, issued by the War Office. Your father read this book and one thing in it amused him so much that he read it aloud to me. "To do nothing," the War Office said, "is to do something definitely wrong". How your father laughed! "No wonder," he said, "that the British army has such difficulty in winning its wars"?'

Only my brothers-in-law, who had not heard the story so many times before, laughed; but my mother had not finished yet.

'You, Michael,' she said, 'have done things for which you claim what you call solid advantages. First advantage, compensation for loss of our Syrian businesses which we will not receive and which is therefore stolen from us. Second advantage, a licence to subsidise with the stolen money, and much too much of your valuable time, some non-existent industry producing non-existent goods. Yes, we have the sole agency for these goods, if those peasants and refugees there can ever be made to produce them. But when will that be? If I know those people, not in my lifetime.'

She had, of course, put her finger unerringly on the basic weakness of the whole arrangement. I was to be reminded of that phrase about 'non-existent industry producing non-existent goods' all too often during the months that followed. At the time all I could do was sit there and pretend to an unshaken calm that I certainly did not feel.

'Are there any questions?'

'Yes.' It was my sister Euridice. 'What is the alternative to this agreement?'

'The alternative that Mama proposes. We do nothing. In my opinion this means that eventually we will have to cut our losses in Syria, write them off. The best we could hope for, I imagine, would be a counter-revolution there which would restore the status quo. I don't see it happening myself, but ..." I shrugged.

'But you could be wrong?' Guilio the dentist was back in action, with bulging eyes and one forefinger tapping the side of his forehead - presumably to inform me that the question came from his brain and not his stomach.

'Yes, I could be wrong, Guilio. What I meant was that the sort of counter-revolution in which the radical right overthrows the radical left doesn't usually restore a former status quo.'

'But surely action and reaction are always equal and opposite.' This was Rene the physicist. He had a maddening habit of quoting scientific laws in non-scientific contexts. Entanglement in one of his false a.n.a.logies was a thing to be avoided at all costs.

'In the laboratory, yes.'

'And in life, Michael, and in life.'

'I am sure you're right, Rene. However, the political future of Syria is not something that we can divide in this boardroom. I think that there has been enough discussion and that we should put the motion to a vote. You first, Guilio.'

At that point, I think, I had pretty well made up my mind to go against the agreement myself. The instant enthusiasm expressed by Guilio and Rene had engendered misgivings which my mother's shrewd disparagement had deepened considerably. By abstaining from voting on the grounds that, as the author of the agreement I was parti pris, I could have backed away from the issue without too much loss of face. If Guilio had chosen to repeat his idiotic dithyramb in praise of my sagacity, that, I think, is what I would have done.

Unfortunately, he decided to change his mind. 'My considered opinion is,' he said weightily, 'that time is on our side. No agreement, however ably negotiated, can in the end serve our interests if the r6gime with which the agreement is made is essentially unstable. If time is on our side, and we may hope it is, then I say let time work for us.'

'You are against the motion, Guilio?'

'With deep regret, Michael, yes.'

Rene had a few words to say about game theory mathematics and the possibility of applying them to the solution of metapolitical problems. Then, he too voted against.

I looked at my mother. She would now decide the matter, whatever I wanted; my sisters would follow her lead.

I said: 'I think, Mama, that even the silliest generalisation, even one made in a little red book by the British War Office, may once hi a while have its moment of truth. I believe that this is just such a moment and that to do now what you and Guilio and Rene want to do-that is, nothing - would be to do something definitely wrong.'

For a moment her lips twitched and she almost smiled, but not quite. Instead, she threw up her hands. 'Very well,' she said. 'Have your agreement. But I warn you. You are making a lot of trouble for yourself - trouble of all kinds.'

In that, of course, she was absolutely right.

The trouble was of all kinds; and I had no one to blame for it but myself.

For almost two years the only party to the Syrian agreement who profited from it in any substantial way was Dr Hawa. Our company lost; and not only in terms of its unblocked a.s.sets. As my mother had predicted, the Syrian cooperatives took up far too much of my time. Inevitably some managerial responsibility in the profitable areas of the company's operations had to be delegated to senior employees. They, naturally, took advantage of the situation and had to be given salary increases.

In the early days, I must admit, the work itself was fairly rewarding. Pulling rabbits out of a hat can be fun when the magic works. The ceramics pilot, for instance, which I started up in a disused soap factory, went well from the beginning. That was partly luck. I found a man to put in as foreman, and later manager, who had worked for three years in a French pottery and knew something about coloured glazes. He also knew where to recruit the semi-skilled labour we needed and how to handle it. Within four months we had a range of samples, realistic cost accountings and a complete plan for volume production which I could submit to Dr Hawa under the terms of the agreement. Within weeks, and after an incredibly brief period of haggling, the govern-fent funding had been authorised and the project went ahead.

By the end of the year we had received our first export orders.

With the furniture and metal-working projects it was a different story. In the case of the furniture some of the difficulties arose from the fact that, under pilot plant conditions, a lot of work which should have been done by machines had to be done by hand. That made much of our costing little better than guesswork. However, the biggest headache with that pilot was its dependence on the metal-working shop. The trouble there was shortage of skilled labour.