Essay: Running From Defeat

Stunned beyond belief, shaken beyond admission, still unable to comprehend the disaster, the Arab world last week lurched violently between collapse and retribution. It could no longer make war, but refused to make peace. It had lost its armies, but was desperately determined not to lose its face. Instead, it indulged in an orgy of breast-beating, rationalizing, complaining and threatening that seemed intended to prove both that the Arabs had won the war and that someone else was to blame because they had lost it. "Defeat exists only for those who admit it," said Cairo's semiofficial newspaper Al Gumhu-ria. "We do not admit it."

TV From China. Despite such exercises in extended solipsism, the defeat could not be hidden. What was left of Jordan was swarming with refugees from the overrun west bank of the Jordan River. Amman's normal population of 300,000 was swelled by at least 100,000 refugees, many of whom arrived with their feet bleeding, their earthly possessions left behind. Schools, mosques and public buildings were converted into sleeping quarters, and thousands of refugees bedded down on sidewalks, in doorways or on the city's rocky hillsides. They foraged in garbage cans for food, which quickly became scarce —and, thanks to profiteering, impossibly expensive. King Hussein's government set up two refugee camps, and other Arab nations sent emergency relief shipments of food, clothing and money. With its usual spirit of Arab brotherhood, fanatic Syria detained a Lebanese government convoy of 70 trucks for twelve hours before allowing it to proceed to Amman.

No less grim was Cairo, which seemed seized at once by confusion, hysteria and dismay. Unshaven soldiers guarded major intersections and the Nile bridges. Walls were still plastered with tattered victory posters depicting the Egyptian eagle pouncing on the viper of Israel. For no apparent reason, there was a half-hour air-raid alarm during the lunch hour one day. Newsstands hawked such paperbacks as The Defense of Towns and Hoitse-to-House Fighting. The government warned that watches, cigarette packs and fountain pens found in the streets were probably booby traps dropped by Israeli planes. Only one of the city's three television stations was broadcasting, and it had been forbidden to carry such "imperialist" programs as Gunsmoke, had to make do with local talent and thrillers from Peking, including Women Locomotive Drivers in China.

The Egyptian people had not yet been told of the extent of the debacle. There were no announced casualty figures, no lists of wounded or missing, no mention of the fact that Israel held the east bank of the Suez. Egyptian officials evacuated part of the population of El Qantara, site of a bridge across the canal, to prevent townsfolk from seeing the stream of ragged, bandaged soldiers dragging homeward. But the troops returned with tales, and the marketplaces of Cairo buzzed with rumors. In the streets of Cairo, people spat on their own army officers.