Westward Ho

Many a traveler has remarked the resemblance between Southern California and Lebanon--the same sunny skies (and unusual rains), golden beaches, orange groves, snowcapped mountains, religious cults, and taste for gossip with an overripe flavor.

Even California has produced no more overripe character than Dahish the Amazer, a dynamic hypnotist who set himself up in Lebanon as a second Christ, built up an ardent circle of cultists. At the top of his vogue, in 1944, the souks (bazaars) of Beirut peddled many a rumor of orgies in his modern villa in the Mazraa section of the city. Over their tea at the Patisserie Suisse, over cocktails at the seaside Normandie, Beirutis whispered that Dahish was getting into trouble with the Government. Lebanon's good, round President, Sheikh Bechara El Khoury, frowned on Dahish.

Worried. El Khoury is a natural worrier. In the fall of 1944 he had plenty of troubles--his wife's illness, his scapegrace son's escapades, his efforts to get rid of the French (who had jailed him for opposing them in 1943).

As if those were not worries enough, Khoury's sister-in-law, Mrs. Margaret Haddad, had become Dahish's most fanatical disciple. As the stories made the rounds of Beirut, the Government decided to act. Foreign Minister Selim Takla, buzzed the bazaars, was drafting a deportation order for Dahish. Then, on the night of Jan. 11, 1945, Takla entertained U.S. Minister George Wadsworth (now Ambassador to Iraq) at dinner. Wadsworth left the Foreign Minister, apparently fit and smiling, returned home to find a message that Takla had dropped dead.

"Ah ha," said the Dahishites, "you see what happens to the enemies of Dahish!"

Khoury's worries increased. Margaret Haddad's daughter, Magda, also a Dahish admirer, committed suicide. In Khoury's eyes, Dahish had become not merely a nuisance but a menace. Khoury determined to get rid of him.

Before he acted, Khoury's mind began to wander. When one close friend visited the President's house to inquire after his health, Khoury meandered into the room in his nightdress, asked "And who is this?" Once, when he was being taken to his car for a visit to the doctor, he refused to enter, saying that he must take his eggplants with him.

"Ah ha," said the Dahishites, "you see what happens to the enemies of Dahish."

Unwanted. On Jan. 30, Khoury disappeared. While his Ministers wondered whether his job should be declared vacant, he went quietly to Palestine to consult a Jewish neurologist. Two months later a cured Khoury returned to Beirut.

Thereafter Dahish was not long for Lebanon. Police nabbed him, beat him up, whisked him across the mountains to Aleppo in Syria. The battered hypnotist went off to live quietly in the little village of Kamishli in the Jezireh, on the upper reaches of the Euphrates.

Last month Beirut gossip mills had new grist. The Amazer, they said, had asked for a U.S. visa. His destination: California, to attend a spiritualist convention.

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