Encyclopedia Titanica

The Dream and then the Nightmare

Syrians on the Titanic

Titanic Review

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Reviewed by George Jacub

Each new Titanic book comes with an air of excitement.

It's more than the 'new book' look and 'new book' smell. It's the anticipation that tickles your fancy even before you crack the first page. Does this book contain something new? Something thrilling? Or is it just a rehash of the same old thing?

Well, The Dream and then the Nightmare by Leila Salloum Elias delivers in spades. It's all new, and it's excellent. Not only does it shower the reader with information never before available, but, for added frisson, it sprinkles the story with controversy---firsthand evidence of the darkest secret of the Titanic disaster.

The subtitle is 'The Syrians who boarded the Titanic', making it the latest in a line of books about nationalities on the doomed ship (Irish, Norwegians, Canadians, Swedes). It follows the pattern---here are the survivors, here are passengers who died and here's their stories.
(For the purpose of this book, Syrian means residents of the former Ottoman Empire--- Syrians, Lebanese, Armenians--- before the Middle East was divided into the countries we now know.)

What separates The Dream and then the Nightmare from the others is how little is known about the Arabic passengers on the Titanic. They were poor, they didn't speak English and they had funny (to us) names.
Strikes one, two and three when it came to newspaper coverage. Their stories were told only in regional papers which covered local survivors, and those accounts were quickly lost in the sands of time.

The first contribution by Elias is to provide the real names of the Syrian and Lebanese passengers on the Titanic. The lists of living and dead supplied by American and British authorities relied on phonetic spellings of non-Anglo names, and the results were often brutally wrong. As Elias writes, families in the Middle East reading these lists frequently couldn't even tell whether their relatives were on the ship. Arabic newspapers spent weeks sorting out names so that family members left behind could know whether to mourn a loved one or not.

Tapping these newspapers, reading the survivor accounts told in their own language, interviewing descendants and relatives of Syrian passengers in their home villages, and mining the book 'The Lebanese on the Titanic' by investigative reporter Michel Karam, (published in Beirut in 2000), Elias was able to piece together the stories of the Titanic's Arabic passengers.

Dahir Shadid Abi Shadid was fooling around with a rifle when it discharged, killing a girl. Fleeing the revenge of her relatives, he got a ticket on the Titanic to America, thanks to money sent by his uncle in Pennsylvania. He never made it, dying in the mid-Atlantic.

Safiyah Halut-Mariyam Yusuf Ibrahim (Sophie Abraham) was 15 years old and a new wife, with an 8-month old baby, when she and her husband decided to emigrate to the United States---in 1909. They left their daughter with her in-laws until they were settled. Her husband was allowed in, but she was turned away because of an eye infection. She spent 3 years in the Caribbean trying to qualify to enter the U.S., but finally gave up and recrossed the ocean to France on her way home. When a ticket on the Titanic became available, she decided to try once more. She succeeded this time---after a harrowing escape from the sinking oceanliner. She didn't see her daughter again for 39 years.

Mubarik Hanna Sulayman AbicAsi (aka John Borek, Hanna Monbarek, Hanne Moubarck) was one of a large group of emigrants from the Syrian village of Hardin, and one of the few survivors. The residents of Hardin still repeat the story told by the survivors of the last minutes of those Syrians who couldn't find a place in the lifeboats.

Many Titanic books recount how a group of passengers gathered on the boat deck in those final moments and together sang the hymn Nearer My God To Thee. The Syrian survivors told a different story.

As the boat sank, writes Elias, one of them took out a mijwiz (a wooden flute) and began to play. Others, standing shoulder to shoulder, began to stamp their feet and sing.

"Heads held high they danced defiant to death and steadfast they faced the end: the final scene that survivors from Hardin remembered."

The Syrian survivors remembered something else---something the authorities wanted forgotten as soon as possible and never mentioned again.

They remembered seeing their countrymen shot down by officers and sailors aboard the Titanic.
Elias tells these stories, which have circulated in Arab villages for almost a hundred years. She names some of the men who were shot.

Ilyas Tannus Ibrahim Nasr Allah was coming to Canada to make money for his family. Ottawa-bound survivor Zad Nasr Allah (Mariyam Assaf) told his wife, a 15-year-old relative of hers, that he "did not die from drowning but that he died from gunshots fired by one of the officers..."

Fatimah Muslamani told her family that one of her cousins was shot by a crewman when he got caught hiding in a lifeboat.

Latifah al-Haj Qurban al-Bacqlini told an Arabic newspaper she saw three Syrian men shot and killed.

This is sure to be the most controversial element of The Dream and Then the Nightmare. And one wishes that on this point Elias stopped paraphrasing the survivor accounts and repeated verbatim what they said about the shooting incidents.

Other quibbles: there is no index and the Syrian passengers are listed alphabetically, based on the first letters of their (unfamiliar) names.

But such minor faults shouldn't deter anyone from buying this book. It belongs in the library of every Titanic researcher and historian and anyone interested in immigration to America at the turn of the 19th century.

The Dream and Then the Nightmare sells for $25 plus postage. The book is 366 pages, with photos, and includes a handy foldout poster of the permutations of the survivors' names as they were reported in assorted publications. It's softcover, nicely bound and well laid out.

It is published in Syria and only available so far from a single bookstore in New York City, Dahesh Heritage Fine Books [email protected].

Contributors

George Jacub

Comment and discuss

  1. Joseph Elias Joseph Elias
    I have no doubt that the book has a great value from the middle-eastern point of view but I am very puzzled the fact that the author has ignored the geopraphy and history before and after the Ottoman occupation and insisted to call Lebanon as Syria.To Leila, I wish you were more accurate from this aspect, you would have no doubt won my support and many of the Lebanese citizens because this is the last thing they would like to hear, is to be called by incorrect country name. With all respect, Syria is our neigbour country but not our country. But also Leila is contradicting herself by saying sometime Lebanese and Syrian passengers and in the mean time the Syrian village Hardin. I can't immagine how Hardin can be a Syrian village.If only the brief introduction has this contradiction in it, so how the full book is going to read?My view is the book needs to be corrected to reflect the fact of the geagraphy.Many thanks.Joseph Elias - Hardinian citizen.
  2. Alex Khalil Alex Khalil
    To Mr. Joseph Elias, Lebanon, as precious as it is, is and has always been a name of a mountain: Mount Lebanon, for as far as you want to go back in history. The fact that the French mandate (and the British mandate as well) decided to formulate an entity and call it Lebanon and separate it from its main land does not mean - and should not mean - that Lebanese are not indeed Syrians. If you prefer, you can call the Syrians: Lebanese, if this would make you feel better, but I don't think it would. During the times of the Titanic trip, people from cities of current Lebanon, current Jordan, or current "Israel"/Palestine, as well from current Syria; I'm saying these people from any of these cities used to call themselves Syrians. Now, many might not like this, but it is a fact that no one can deny.
  3. Saba Barghout Saba Barghout
    Well said Alex and Thank You! I am Arab American and my family immigrated from Damascus at the turn of the century about the same time the Titanic set sail. They could have been on that ship. This is an important part of our history!!!
  4. Emilie Emilie
    It sounds to be a great book, particularly timely with current Syrian war, when thousands of Syrian people fled their country since 2011.
  5. gerald korey gerald korey
    Greetings. My grandparents (last names Dagher/Decker/Korey/Deeb) were from Hardine, and in fact had cousins (Yazbeck; Deeb) who were on the TItanic. Some survived - most perished. They were on their wway to Wilkes-Barre, PA, USA. They identified as Lebanese, not Syrians. Correctly or not, they considered Syrians to be people from outside their "area", although it was never clear what the area definition was. In some cases the word "Syrian" seemed to refer to Muslims.
  6. Mtkishbaugh Mtkishbaugh
    Hello, Gerald. Many of my relatives were on the Titanic as well. My sitto's sister Thelma survived the Titanic, but my Ghiddo's brother Charles did not. When your brother George and I were at Kutztown, we tried to figure out if we were related as we were both related to Uncle Ike and Aunt Sadie Decker. I'd love to talk to you. Perhaps you might help me with our family tree.
  7. Leila Salloum Elias Leila Salloum Elias
    Joseph, historically and specifically in 1912, the country of 'Lebanon' did not exist. Lebanon was created as a result of Sykes-Picot and San Remo (1920). Official papers and all government issued documents refer to all the villages, towns, etc as in Syria. History cannot be changed - all of the passengers were listed as Syrian, and thus were. Lebanon was a created as a result of Britain and France's design on the Middle East to 'carve it up' in order to control it.
  8. Leila Salloum Elias Leila Salloum Elias
    All of the Syrian passengers were in fact Syrian. There was no country of Lebanon - despite that many hailed from Mount Lebanon, this was not a country - their villages and towns, including Hardin were part of 'Suriiya al-Kubr' - Greater Syria which would eventually be carved out by the colonial powers of France and Britain.
  9. Leila Salloum Elias Leila Salloum Elias
    After 'Lebanon' was created, the descendants of these passengers would come to be identified as 'Lebanese', the designation as a result of the creation of the country out of Greater Syria. Syrians and Lebanese are one and the same people.
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Encyclopedia Titanica (2011) The Dream and then the Nightmare (Titanic Review, ref: #13095, published 4 July 2011, generated 1st December 2024 08:55:59 PM); URL : https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/the-dream-and-then-the-nightmare-13095.html