Alsop's Fables

Washington Columnist Joseph Alsop flew back to his capital beat last week after eleven weeks of legwork in the Middle East. Out of his trip came a notable series of reports on the critical area where Russian diplomacy is stoking the fires of Arab nationalism against the West. As a pundit, 46-year-old Joseph Wright Alsop, who shares his column with brother Stewart, often overdramatizes the dark side into deepest doom. But Alsop's dramatic flair as a reporter in foreign lands seizes surely on color, incident, history and personality to bring a situation crackling to life. In this journalistic field he has had few peers since the days of Vincent (Personal History) Sheean.

Pleasures & Palaces. In the sheikdoms and kingdoms of the Arab world, in palaces and refugee camps, he updated the Arabian Nights into Alsop's Fables. In the new palace at Jeddah ("the house that Aramco built"), guarded by blackamoors with gilded scimitars, King Saud of Saudi Arabia entertained 400 dinner guests at once, headed by little Imam Ahmed of Yemen, "who waggles his big, richly turbaned head like a teetotum in a sort of passion of politeness." While the guests drank orange pop, "a court bard, descended straight from the poetic line that sang before Agamemnon at Mycenae . . . recites a long poem in praise of the King and Imam into a deafening loudspeaker system." The King's interpreter, "last seen in Washington in a fairly sensational convertible," now "kneels on the floor by his master's chair, translating his master's words with downcast eyes." Amid burning sandalwood, one of the King's advisers "distills venom against Palestine's invaders and all the West, in a beautifully educated English voice." Alsop's moral: "Although social notes do not generally appear in this space, the contrasts of the evening seemed to tell a great deal about this increasingly critical country."

Alsop pursued the contrasts to Dhahran, where Saudi Arabian workmen drew top pay as technicians at Aramco's vast refinery while some of their countrymen bought and sold slaves ($150 for an able-bodied man, $300 for a boy and $600 for a girl). Though he reported that King Saud was using his U.S. oil dollars to finance Arab nationalism's whole anti-Western drive--paying some $500,000 a month to politicians and editors in the Middle East--Alsop found him playing the role reluctantly, the captive of the movement centering in Egypt.

Everywhere he roamed Alsop put his readers into the scene. He found the tiny desert sheikdom of Kuwait, on the Persian Gulf, "little more than a vast oil well with a small town on top of it." Where Syria, Turkey and Iraq meet, he attended a "continuous house party" in the luxurious spring camp of a Bedouin sheik. Among the notables: "the aged, white-bearded Sheik Khalaf Anlasr of the Yezidis, an odd but ancient local minority who wor ship the devil under the name of the 'Peacock Angel,' abhor the color blue and hold lettuce-eating a mortal sin." In Baghdad, he found calling on Prime Minister Nuri Pasha "alarmingly like disturbing an owl in the daylight hours. He sat huddled in his dressing gown, his piercing eyes hooded as though against the light." In Amman, "sharp resentment glittered visibly" in the eyes of Jordan's young (20) King Hussein when Alsop questioned him about the influx of Egyptian propaganda and Saudi Arabian money.

Too Much History. One of Alsop's best columns appeared last week. Through the eyes of an aged, "lavishly bearded" English monk near Emmaus, Alsop struck a bitterly ironic contrast. With tears of simple faith, Brother James pointed out to Alsop the road "where our blessed Lord met the disciples on Resurrection Morn." Recounted Alsop: "This is a place that has known more history than most." There the moon stood still at Joshua's command.

Judas Maccabeus fought a fierce battle for Jewish independence. The Romans next swept in, then the wild desert riders of the Caliph Omar, followed by the Crusaders, Saladin, the Turks, the British and again the Jews.

"See the heirs of all this history, the many scores of half-starved poor people of Emmaus who come to share in the monastery's daily distribution of soup and bread," reported Alsop. Below the village, 3,000 fertile valley acres that once helped feed the village now lie in the neutral zone --forbidden to be tilled under the armis tice agreement. Wrote Alsop: "You wish to cry out in warning to all simple people everywhere to flee those places where his tory may tread with heavy foot."

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