Buy it Because: You want to understand European
colonialism in a deeper context or because you love beautiful, witty writing
in historical fiction.
I came across this book through a post on the Arabist's excellent blog--it was
entitled
A Libyan Novel You Should Read. The
author of the post--Ursula Lindsey--wrote such a great opening hook to describe
the books' author that I've included it here:
Alessandro Spina was a
Syrian Maronite who grew up in Ben Ghazi, was educated and wrote in Italian,
and over the course of 40 years penned an extraordinary cycle of novels about
the bloody establishment, brief flourishing and troubled aftermath of the
Italian colony in Libya.
So a novel by a Catholic Syrian that
grew up in Libya, was educated in Italy and wrote in Italian and his work has
only recently been translated into English...awesome.
Confines of the Shadow is the first of a three volume collection that
texturizes the history of Libya. The second two volumes have yet to be
translated so you will have to wait for the exciting conclusion. The
book's translator, Naffis-Sahely, does a really beautiful job with
an introduction that captures the labor of love he completed to bring this
collection to the Anglophone readers (read the intro here courtesy of google
books). Naffis-Sahely also has a great blog/website that
is a testament to his talent and breadth of scholarship. Prior to his
superb translation (and really re-working/updating of the book), this gem had
been largely forgotten.
Now that Spina's work is once again being read--this tome should easily
ascend to the top of the reading list for any budding middle
east/maghreb/european history scholar/foreign area officer/foreign service
officer (hopefully I caught enough categories there).
Perhaps the most incredible part of Confines is its relevance today.
Take for instance the comments by one Italian soldier concerning Italy
foray into Libya:
Just as a language is only useful in the area in which it is spoken, and is
pointless outside of it, so it goes with Europe’s liberal moral values, which
don’t extend anywhere south of the Mediterranean. As soon as one reaches the
other coastline, one is ordered to do the exact opposite prescribed by God’s
commandments: kill, steal, blaspheme … Once the Turkish garrison was defeated
and a few key locations on the coast were occupied, we found a vast, obscure
country stretching out before us, into which we were afraid to venture. Thus,
we cloistered ourselves in the cities while waiting for daylight. Instead, the
night is getting deeper, darker, deadlier and teeming with demons.
This is a novel that should have been mandatory reading for all western
countries before we even thought about getting involved in the Qaddafi
overthrow. And while, Spina's collection did win literary
recognition during its time, his keen analysis into the Italian ethos likely
did him no favors in winning widespread popularity:
Italy’s obsession with catching up with Europe’s great powers is impeding its culture
from recognising the legitimacy of other civilisations. We employ reason merely
as an instrument in our attempt to imitate a superior model. We disdain
civilisations to the south of us; in fact, it’s as if they embodied exactly
what we wanted to escape. We’re a backward country that always keeps its eyes
on the other European capitals: Vienna, Paris or London. If Venice had led the
Italian unification effort, things might have turned out otherwise, but instead
it was led by Piedmont, a lowly vassal of France, and we are the victims of
those provincial beginnings. Italian culture seems to atrophy part of our
organs. It’s no use trying to educate oneself, or to read books written
elsewhere; whatever we do, a congenital mediocrity clings to us like a bad
smell.
The genius of these stories is that much of what Spina writes transcends
the particularity of the Italian colonial experience in the specific country of
Libya:
Generosity cannot overcome our fundamental problem: is
our presence here legitimate? What right do we have to interfere in their
destinies? Did anyone ask us to bring order to their world? (location 3268)
On my part this is not meant as a commentary on past US/Western
involvement in the middle east and north africa, however, these are important
questions that should at least be considered and publicly debated within
governments and wider society prior to intervention/invasion somewhere.
Finally, Spina displays his gift for capturing what it is to be a foreigner in
another country as he notes that presence and weapons will never confer
acceptance.
To be a foreigner is a magical condition: this land will
never belong to me, no matter how many cannons and rifles I bring here; weapons
will only protect me, and I don’t know how long that will last. Alas, you can’t
put down roots with cannons. (location 3432)
Finally, I owe it to my former life as an English major,
to state that this collection is ripe for commentary and analysis on the nature
of 'shadows.' Spina comments that "The native is a living
shadow" (location 3457) and he probably uses the word shadow a few hundred
times. A properly analysis would delve into:
- why/is this true?
- Who is the sun causing
the shadow?
- what are the extremes of
the shadows (i.e., when are they longest/shortest)?
- How does a character's
subjugation to a shadow steal away their humanity?
This is a book I will return to and which anyone
traveling to/working in/being station to Libya should read...several times.
I look forward to the translation of the following two volumes in the
coming years.
Kindle Highlights
The Confines of the Shadow by Alessandro Spina You have 76 highlighted passages
Here
is Captain Romanino’s take on Italy’s African venture during a soirée in Milan,
where he is on leave: Just as a language is only useful in the area in which it
is spoken, and is pointless outside of it, so it goes with Europe’s liberal
moral values, which don’t extend anywhere south of the Mediterranean. As soon
as one reaches the other coastline, one is ordered to do the exact opposite
prescribed by God’s commandments: kill, steal, blaspheme … Once the Turkish
garrison was defeated and a few key locations on the coast were occupied, we
found a vast, obscure country stretching out before us, into which we were
afraid to venture. Thus, we cloistered ourselves in the cities while waiting
for daylight. Instead, the night is getting deeper, darker, deadlier and
teeming with demons.
The
years following Qaddafi’s coup had seen the despot eliminating foreign
influences in Libya, a process he began in 1970 with the expulsion of thousands
of Jewish and Italian colonists. Thus, at age fifty, Spina witnessed the Italo-Arab-Ottoman
universe he’d been born into vanish completely.
Twenty-first-century
readers might do well to heed Solzhenitsyn’s warning that ‘a people which no
longer remembers has lost its history and its soul.
Lies
were promissory notes he would eventually settle on time. He pretended to take
the young man’s words at face value. Cowardly obeisance to reality is the rot
that eats away at the mediocre. That young man was ambitious, and lying was
simply a form of risk-taking. Hajji Semereth decided to take him under his
wing. Read more at location 215
We
don’t need the colony: it’s yet another symptom of that same frenzy for
bloating everything out of proportion for the lack of anything better to do.
Read more at location 282
ROMANINO:
If the officer stops thinking of the enemy as automaton and instead considers
him as guileful. It’s laughable to accord those things such abstract
concepts as rights, responsibilities, consciences and souls … it’s an
entertaining game, like hunting – and massacres are taken lightly. But if said
officer is rash enough to think of those two peoples as living under the same
sky and under the same law, lights and shadows begin to assume such a
mysterious shape that he’ll start questioning himself while absorbed in the act
of killing the enemy; he’ll start to tremble and his anxiety will lead him down
any number of paths. If that happens, the connection between the troops and
their commanders will be severed. In times of war, isolation is fatal: enemies
become supernatural knights, one’s own comrades become demons, comfort and
morale vanish and an officer’s heart can rarely weather the ordeal. A hero can
become a saint; but if he doesn’t, guilt will crush him and the warrior will
begin to fear that he’s no better than a common murderer. Cruelty and suicide
become the easiest way out of this dilemma. Just as a language is only useful
in the area in which it is spoken, and is pointless outside of it, so it goes
with Europe’s liberal moral values, which don’t extend anywhere south of the
Mediterranean. As soon as one reaches the other coastline, one is ordered to do
the exact opposite prescribed by God’s commandments: kill, steal, blaspheme …
Once the Turkish garrison was defeated and a few key locations on the coast
were occupied, we found a vast, obscure country stretching out before us, into
which we were afraid to venture. Thus, we cloistered ourselves in the cities
while waiting for daylight. Instead, the night is getting deeper, darker,
deadlier and teeming with demons. Read more at location 331
Everywhere
you look, you can’t help but see the omens of a tragedy hanging over our heads
like a Damoclean sword, of which the Libyan enterprise is but the prologue.
Read more at location 357
The
outcome of the war would be decided outside the city’s walls, in the immense
country that opened up before the aggressors’ eyes like a great abyss, and into
which nobody dared set foot. Read more at location 461
The
peace treaty between Italy and the Ottoman Empire concluded at Ouchy hadn’t
resolved anything. It stipulated that the Ottomans withdraw all their troops,
ratified the Italian occupation, but granted the natives the right to recognise
the Sultan’s authority as Caliph. The invaders didn’t know the meaning of these
words and didn’t understand that the Caliph was both a spiritual and temporal
leader. Thus, from a legal standpoint, sovereignty was split between the
Italians and the Ottomans. Not because both parties had agreed to it, but
because of a basic misunderstanding. Read more at location 629
The
Italian government insisted on pretending that the road to the Seraglio Point
lay open to them, and that Istanbul was ripe for the taking. The Sublime Porte
refused to do anything for that province, and some there may well have hoped a
European power would rescue it from its abandon and neglect. But it distrusted
Italy’s intentions. After all, it was the seat of the Papacy, and it would try
to colonise the region with its own citizens; furthermore, the lamentable
conditions of Italy’s southern regions didn’t presage anything good. In
addition, while a truly great nation only needs to make a show of strength, a
second-rate power is forced to actually employ it. The game was far from over:
the Treaty of Ouchy didn’t hold much weight on the coast of Africa. Read
more at location 639
It’s
a well known fact that an insult inflicted on an individual is an insult to the
whole clan. Read more at location 690
Semereth
Effendi was handsomely attired and prolonged the customary greetings longer
than he needed to. The strain in Semereth’s soul manifested itself in an
accentuation of formalities. Life exhausted itself in rituals during those
difficult moments. Read more at location 727
The
young Maronite offered me a cup of tea with mint leaves and peanuts at the
bottom. Read more at location 827
An
officer is a man who identifies with an Order and who devotes his life to
guarantee its longevity. Read more at location 832
Eighteenth-century
operas excelled at resolving private conflicts with military violence.
Read more at location 879
quoi!
La vie içi est à un très grand bon marché!’ was a saying that had been
attributed to Anwar Bey, the leader of the Libyan partisans stationed in Derna.
Read more at location 913
Worshipping
one’s own slave is the most horrible of traps. Seducing what he already owned –
it’s the very essence of hope and the painful prison that encages all powerful
men. Opera is the complete repository of all human nadirs. Read
more at location 951
DELLE
STELLE: Is the story of Semereth and his wife a metaphor for our role as the
unloved conquerors in this splendid African province? Still, the desire to be
loved, to seduce – if I am to employ your librettist’s language – is a poison
that you have succumbed to. This has nothing to do with us. After all, being
loved by people we already control is superfluous. Read more at location
955
He
can only save himself by coming to terms with how provincial he is, by neither
playing up to it, nor being ashamed of it, just like nobody should be
embarrassed by the language they speak. This is not to refute the concept of
cultural exchange, but to say that imitation is only a masquerade of that
cultural exchange: because one party immediately declares himself the loser
from the outset. Colonialism humiliates and offends, and whenever it
shows a more benevolent face, it corrupts. As Christians and foreigners we are
treated kindly, and they’ve offered us a chance to assimilate. But we must keep
our guards up. Read more at location 1188
This
does not mean that our customs are superior to others, simply that they are the
foundations upon which our code of conduct has been built; it is the narrative
of our history, the language with which people have expressed themselves,
reached an understanding, or even how they respect and come to love one
another. Read more at location 1197
One
must measure oneself against perfection, not other people’s mistakes.Read more
at location 1208
PIETRA:
What I’m still unsure about is whether I’m more astonished by the differences
between us or our similarities. They are different, and this puts our values
and beliefs into doubt. But then they are also similar, and this jeopardises
our notions of superiority. We’re even in a hurry to destroy this civilisation
because we’re so afraid that its mere existence threatens the worthiness of our
own. Read more at location 1305
PIETRA:
Italy’s obsession with catching up with Europe’s great powers is impeding its
culture from recognising the legitimacy of other civilisations. We employ
reason merely as an instrument in our attempt to imitate a superior model. We
disdain civilisations to the south of us; in fact, it’s as if they embodied
exactly what we wanted to escape. We’re a backward country that always keeps
its eyes on the other European capitals: Vienna, Paris or London. If Venice had
led the Italian unification effort, things might have turned out otherwise, but
instead it was led by Piedmont, a lowly vassal of France, and we are the
victims of those provincial beginnings. Italian culture seems to atrophy part
of our organs. It’s no use trying to educate oneself, or to read books written
elsewhere; whatever we do, a congenital mediocrity clings to us like a bad
smell. Read more at location 1320
In
a war like this, merchants must be as brave as soldiers: otherwise they’ll grow
poor and vanish. Read more at location 1646
‘Family
is the community, and it protects its laws and values. Don’t make the mistake
of thinking – or believing, or pretending – that you can move freely about in
this foreign land as though it belonged to you or your people, or of thinking
you can overcome their different religion and customs. They are confines that
one should respect. Read more at location 1705
A
melancholy shadow swept through his soul: privilege always entails exclusion,
he thought. Taking part in an old, compelling world is always accompanied by a
loss. Read more at location 1819
He
took hold of the tambourine and began beating the rhythm of a dabke, a popular
dance from the mountains of Lebanon. Read more at location 1855
Abdelkarim
could detect his master’s character from his movements. Relationships are
desire and memory.Read more at location 1880
Shadows make people bigger
than they are. Read more at location 1960
adumbrated
Read more at location 2040
uselessly
tried to detect fear in his features, or hatred, or pious resignation. He said:
We return from whence we came. Or maybe: Devoted to God, to Him we return.
Every translation is a restless shadow.’ Read more at location 2198
Solidarity
is the true channel of communication between men. Read more at location 2298
He
said the Italians’ biggest mistake had been to set foot in the hinterland,
which no one had ever managed to bring under their control. Benghazi, on the
other hand, was well equipped to welcome an Italian military administration –
relationships had already been forged there, and the city already had a
bureaucracy – but the interior was governed by traditions nobody could uproot.
Even the Sanussi Brotherhood had asserted its authority by espousing tribal
customs that pre-dated its existence, and in fact ended up making these customs
even more unassailable. The Italian authorities would never manage to impose
their own laws and do away with the customs that had held that society and its
individuals in equilibrium. The Sanussis had been welcomed a century earlier as
venerated Islamic teachers, whereas the aversion the Italians had encountered
could be largely explained by the fact they were infidels. Read more at
location 2330
The
ruins always emerged out of the sand alongside the coast, as if even the Greek
colonists hadn’t dared to venture into that boundless interior. Read more at
location 2459
General
Caneva’s Expeditionary Force invaded the Libyan coast towards the end of
September 1911. Having vanquished the Turkish garrison, the Italians concluded
a peace treaty with the Sublime Porte in Lausanne in October 1912. However, by
1921 the Italians still hadn’t managed to break the back of the Libyan
rebellion in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. After numerous military vicissitudes,
colonial power was still confined to urban centres, while sovereignty over the
boundless, mostly deserted hinterland was still ambiguous, with power
alternating from one side to the other according to how the struggle was going.
Read more at location 2618
But
the indigenous people know that we granted them this Basic Charter because we
couldn’t win the war. Read more at location 2687
The
tea ceremony, which took so much time, exasperating the colonists – who confused
efficiency with purity of heart, or organisational rigour with equilibrium –
had never made the Count impatient. Read more at location 2737
Impatience
is a sign of ignorance: first he had to let the cat out of the bag. Read
more at location 2747
Sharafeddin
was drinking laghbi, a fermented liquid distilled from palm leaves. Read
more at location 2797
In
Tripoli, the Italian governor had summoned the Arab chiefs to the fort – which
had once belonged to Charles V, then been passed to the Hospitaller Knights of
St John of Jerusalem in 1530, subsequently become the seat of the independent
Qaramanli dynasty in the eighteenth century, and finally become the official
residence of the Sublime Porte’s representative in the nineteenth century – so
they could officially submit to him. Read more at location 2801
‘There’s
no such thing as friendship unless one is among kinsmen, just like there’s
no pity for the defeated. Read more at location 2812
Venier
was enchanted by the city of Benghazi, with its palm groves, whitewashed
houses, and a sky that took up nearly the entirety of the boundless plain.
Read more at location 2849
Omar
was the shadow that followed Antonino, but he also silently guided him.
Read more at location 2915
Professor
Bergonzi had arrived in Africa as though he’d shifted apartments from one floor
of a building to another, where he brought the same familiar objects and where
the same idols would be waiting for him. The colony had to become just another
Italian province, and its different origins wouldn’t be allowed to enrich or
influence it, since the military conquest had made it into a legitimate part of
Italy’s heritage. Bergonzi never mentioned the Libyans, who didn’t feature in
his thoughts because they’d never appeared in the books he’d read, which was
the only guarantee of reality besides the confusion of the present: his
ignorance of the context in which he was operating was unshadowed by questions
and doubts. Read more at location 2940
‘Civilisation,
the end goal of all the progress you preside over, is not a fixed, timeless
paradigm, but is simply the expression of a powerful clique at a given moment
in history. It’s the rubble on which others will build another edifice once
they’ve reconquered their freedom. There are no universal rules: the fury of
nationalism finds its justification in this certainty, and strength is the only
guarantee of survival. Read more at location 3004
The
continuity of tradition, the identity of a nation, matter more than peace;
neither is it possible to have peace if the continuity of these traditions is
compromised. Read more at location 3010
Your
efforts to persuade these people it’s in their best interests to stick with us,
that we can teach them many useful things, that business will boom – meaning,
in other words, that trading their freedom for economic, medical, and
educational advantages is a good deal for them – is haunted by a wretched,
demonic shadow: the surfeit of reason produces monsters. Read more at
location 3011
Generosity
cannot overcome our fundamental problem: is our presence here legitimate? What
right do we have to interfere in their destinies? Did anyone ask us to bring
order to their world? Read more at location 3268
We
have granted the natives this Basic Charter because of our inability to pacify
the country by means of arms; nevertheless, we’ve painted it as a grand
gesture, as though granting these inferior people the right to open the book of
civilisation. Read more at location 3403
To
be a foreigner is a magical condition: this land will never belong to me, no
matter how many cannons and rifles I bring here; weapons will only protect me,
and I don’t know how long that will last. Alas, you can’t put down roots with
cannons. Read more at location 3432
The
native is a living shadow, Read more at location 3457
The
high functionary smiled: all the new arrivals talked like this. ‘Our presence
here,’ he continued, holding forth pedagogically, ‘stirs the opposite reaction
in the indigenous people: they will sanctify every aspect of their culture,
refuse our help, our physicians, and their fanatics will even refuse the bread
we offer them. Religious faith will become the national ethos. Thus, either we
forsake continuing our presence here, or we must consider all aspects of
indigenous culture a citadel of the enemy – precisely because it has been
sanctified – and apply ourselves to dismantling them, one after the other.
Strategy is as important when it comes to spirituality as it is on the battlefield.
Believe me, it will not take much for the rest to crumble. Read more at
location 3585
long
pauses were a sign of respect, not of embarrassment. Read more at
location 3609
BENITO
MUSSOLINI, PRIME MINISTER Read more at location 3790
The
seven years of which I speak lie between May 1915 and October 1922. Read
more at location 3798
I
am here to defend and give the greatest value to the revolution of the ‘black
shirts.Read more at location 3800
The
Count, who was the managing director of a textile company where his
father-in-law was the major shareholder, was walking along the Via Santa
Margherita in Milan on a clear evening in September 1931. Read more at
location 3806
Two
days earlier, after a celebrated trial had taken place in the rooms that once
housed the dissolved Cyrenaican assembly, the legendary leader of the
twentyyear Libyan resistance to the Italian occupation Sidi Omar al-Mukhtar had
been hanged at the age of seventy-four. The execution had been carried out in
Solluk, a wretched little village to the south of Benghazi. The man had the
same name as the young man who’d lived in the Count’s house when he was in
Africa. Read more at location 3809
To
read is to travel.Read more at location 3818
What
had prompted Sheikh Hassan to seek this grim vignette in the pages of Ibn
Khaldun’s Muqaddimah? Read more at location 3835
‘History,’
Ibn Khaldun wrote, ‘is a science: it deals with the principles of politics, the
nature of things, and the differences between nations, places and historical
epochs, ways of life, customs, sects and schools Read more at location
3871
as
well as Benghazi, the city on the coast which few loved, Read more at
location 3875
To
read was to open a window onto the world. Read more at location 3897
Ibn
Khaldun wrote: ‘The secret of Bedouin society lies in its simplicity and its
moderation and reserve.’ Did literature violate these virtues? Ibn Khaldun
tells us everything ‘decays, crushed by the superfluous.’ ‘When sophistication
reaches its apex, it enslaves us to our desires. Suffering from a surfeit of
beauty, the human soul is blinded by a multiplicity of colours that obscures
its vision of this world, or the next. Read more at location 3916
The
Italian Expeditionary Force had believed conquering Benghazi would mean they
would control the rest of the country, but Benghazi meant nothing to the
tribes, who merely saw it as a useful convenience, or a deadly bridge. The city
had always been ruled by foreigners: by Tripoli during the time of the
Qaramanli family, by Istanbul, and now by Rome. Read more at location
3941
Ibn
Khaldun praised the Bedouin way of life because it safeguarded them from the
‘mediocrity of the cities. Read more at location 3958
He
hurled himself from the fort’s highest wall and landed on the rocky hillside.
His death brought the sad affair to a close. ‘God does as He wishes. Read
more at location 4201
The
travellers’ road is neither happy nor lucky, as is their arrival in foreign
lands. No arrival is ever as exciting as the return. This was the hope that the
exiles carried with them. Read more at location 4218
There
is, however, a tome I would like to single out for attention: Francis
McCullagh’s Italy’s War for a Desert,
Being Some Experiences of a War-Correspondent with the Italians in Tripoli(London:
Herbert and Daniel, 1912). This is by far the most cited book in The Young
Maronite, and for good reason; it was perhaps the only contemporary account
untainted by the usual pro-colonial jingoism that saturated most Western
newspapermen at the time. In an article penned in 1913, McCullagh predicted
that the war correspondent was marked for extinction, and that he would soon be
replaced by a new breed of armchair journalists, who would talk about the war
from the hardships of the front while ensconced in the comfortable safety of
conference rooms and hotels. Anyone who watches the news today knows this to be
true.
