Kruse's Keys: Read "She Would Be King" to Experience Liberia's Birth (Liberia)

In Philip Hitti's History of the Arabs, he highlights the long-standing Arab appreciation for oral story-telling and poetry which they call sihr halal.  He further describes this ingrained love for "the rhythm, the rhyme, the music, [which] produce on them the effect of what they call "lawful magic" (sihr halal). "  In her debut novel Wayetu Moore channels this idea of lawful magic as she joins magical realist authors like Couto, Martel, and Marquez in her telling of an alternative origin story of the Pepper Coast lands that would become Liberia.

In her novel, Moore has decided to focus not on Liberia's historical realities and details but rather on highlighting the people and ideas that would become Liberia.  This shift allows the reader to more thoughtfully ponder the roles of justice, religion, and slavery against the backdrop of the most unique colonialist setting on the continent.

Envisioned as an alternative to the emancipation of black slaves in the United States, the west coast African colony began through the efforts of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1822.  Twenty-five years later it would become an independent nation--Liberia.  The entire venture was embroiled in controversy as many freed blacks in the United States viewed this as an affront to their efforts and rights to exist in America.  That many members of the ACS were prominent white politicians further served to support this viewpoint.

Like all colonization, Liberia's was rife with bloodshed, betrayal, theft, and violence.  The initial land purchase was only successful when the US Navy Lieutenant leading the expedition "encouraged" the local tribe leader King Peter to sell them a tract of land at gunpoint.  The colony's further expansion came at the expense of the bordering native villages and tribes over the ensuing century.

That history, however, is not the author's focus--instead she has created the story of three superhumans from three groups who eventually made up the country of Liberia.  The first is Norman Aragon, the son of a white colonialist and a free Jamaican woman.  He inherits his father's pale skin but his mother's ability to disappear and move invisibly.  The second is June Dey, the son of an American slave woman and a ghost.  He soon discovers that he has superhuman strength and that bullets and blades have no effect on him.  The last is the heroine Gbessa who is outcast from a local Vai tribal village after she is proclaimed a witch as a young girl.  She soon finds out that while she can be hurt and feel intense pain she cannot die--she is eternal.  Moore weaves the tales of these three lives into an intersection that climaxes as they seek the future of a land and country.  This beautiful tapestry will leave a lasting impression on any reader--Africanist or not.

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
See our 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Key References:
Library of Congress primary source information on ACS and Liberia origins
Powell's Interview: Wayétu Moore, Author of 'She Would Be King'
She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore review – magical visions of Liberia
In Wayétu Moore’s Ambitious Debut Novel, Liberia Is Reborn
A SENSE OF GOD: SHE WOULD BE KING BY WAYÉTU MOORE

Kruse's Keys: Read "Shadow King" to Discover a Forgotten Part in Ethiopia's History

Following the conclusion of World War II, Mussoloni (as the Ethiopians derisively referred to him) concocted a plan to give himself a slice of the colonial pie while simultaneously avenging his country’s late 19th century embarrassment at the Battle of Adua.

Kidane, the military leader in “The Shadow King” remarks to his men that the Italians “have come to rewrite history, to alter memory, to resurrect their dead and refashion them as heroes.”

At exiled Emperor Haile Selassie’s behest, Kidane assembles a local militia to fight against the invading forces. His wife Aster leads the women who trail the fighters, supplying them with food, bullets, and equipment. As Kidane’s forces suffer battlefield losses, Aster eventually convinces him to let her women fight. A character equal parts cruel and inspirational, Aster implores her fellow women to take their place in history and fight. Her servant, and narrator, Hirut describes Aster’s fervor: “She is one woman. She is many women. She is all the sound that exists in the world.”

And so the women fight and author Mengiste brings to light a forgotten and ignored piece of Ethiopia’s famed resistance against Italy. “I see you. I will always see you” the author remarks in the novel’s acknowledgements to the women of Ethiopia who would not let themselves be forgotten. The novel does not shirk away from the violence of not only war but of the Ethiopian society for women. Early on in the story, Kidane’s father notes that “somewhere, a woman is always weeping” because no matter who the victor is in a conflict, the mothers, daughters, and sisters bear the brunt of loss, injury, and death.

As the story unfolds, the Ethiopians fighters notice that one of their own bears a striking resemblance to the Emperor and decide to dress him as a “shadow king” in order to inspire the surrounding towns to mobilize and actively fight against the invaders. With periodic chapters imagining the helpless emperor in England, it quickly becomes apparent that he is less a king than his countrywomen fighting back in Abyssinia. Later in life, having survived not only a cruel stint as a prisoner of war but the war itself, Hirut realizes that “we were the Shadow King. We were those who stepped into a country left dark by an invading plague and gave new hope to Ethiopia’s people.”  "Plague" is an apt description for the Italian invaders as Mengiste lays bears the range of horrifying atrocities committed from searing mustard gas attacks to the ritual tossing of women and children prisoners off of a cliff.  These acts are all captured and framed through the eyes of Italian photographer/reluctant solider Ettore.  While his commander Fucelli orders him to document these horrors, Ettore readily acknowledges his guilt as he recalls the words of his father: "we must all suffer our consequences."

Finally, I can’t end this review without remarking on the talent of author Maaza Mengiste. I first read her debut novel “Beneath the Lion’s Gaze” last year and was struck by her writing’s beauty. Her talent has continued to grow and it’s evident as she pens stunning lines like:

“The sun highlights the hints of henna in Aster’s braided hair. It splashes a glow across her cheeks. Her eyes are liquid in the bright light.”

“[Selassie] stands beneath a soft drizzle that feels like a weeping sky.”

“But she cannot know that grief cradles at the beast of cruelty, and it hungers for more, and she is for the taking.”

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
**See our 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Read my review of Mengiste's other novel: "Beneath the Lion's Gaze"  
"Prevail" is a comprehensive history of Ethiopia's fight against Italy, my review of it is here.

Key Quotes:

23-4 “What’s lost is gone, my child, what is lost makes room for something else.” Berhe to Hirut as she mourns her rifle’s loss.

34 “Hirut recognizes for the first time that some memories should be barricaded by others, that those strong enough must hold the others at bay.”

89 “They have come to rewrite history, to alter memory, to resurrect their dead and  refashion them as heroes.” Kidane on Italian motives as they seek to avenge their loss at Adua in 1896.

93 “He stares as if he wants to charge, as if he understands the camera’s weakness. As if he already knows the difference between what one sees and what is true. He is the only one whose mouth turns up on one side in both a smile and in mockery.” Aklilu, lover of Hirut in one of the pictures.

101 “The sun highlights the hints of henna in Aster’s braided hair. It splashes a glow across her cheeks. Her eyes are liquid in the bright light.”

112 “She is one woman. She is many women. She is all the sound that exists in the world.” Aster as she implores the women to rally to support the their soldiers.

114 “We’re more than this...we’re more than this...we’re more than this...we’re more than this.” Aster’s words to her fellow women as she implores them to realize their destiny to rise above their station and society’s expectation to them.

116 “Who remembers what it means to be more than what this world believes of us?” Aster’s final words in speech to her fellow women.

119 “And so somewhere, a woman is always weeping.” Kidane’s father on the cost of war and death.

133 “There is nothing that can come from this but blood and more blood.” Ettore

139 “But she cannot know that grief cradles at the beast of cruelty, and it hungers for more, and she is for the taking.” Chorus as Hirut is discovered in camp with her stolen rifle.

168 “That the dead are stronger. That they know no physical boundaries. They reside in the corners of every memory and rise up, again and again, to resist all our efforts to leave them behind and let them rest.” Hirut considers death in war.

173 “Yibeqal. We’ve had enough.” Mussolini’s words that Selassie that repeats to himself as he resolves to fight.

191 “She once believed she belonged to herself.” Hirut after Kidane rapes her and Aklilu finds her unable to move.

214 “As soon as a country builds an empire, he says, it has to decide who is who.” Fucelli on Italy’s descent into nazism.

237 “All you have to do is sit on the horse, Hirut says to him. She has to stop herself from patting his arm. We will all stand in the shadow of your light, she adds, repeating what Aster told her: To be in the presence of our emperor is to stand before the sun

272 “To kill: to make dead, to extinguish life, to murder. Ghostly apparitions have been trudging past him since the night before, motioning him back to Ethiopia: Haile Selassie, Jan Hoy, Teferi, we’re waiting. Where have you gone? Teferi, Haile Selassie, come home.” Imagined thoughts of the Emperor as he sits in England and hears of the Italian atrocities against women and children.

297-98 “We must all suffer our consequences.” Ettore’s father tells his mother as a baby.

298 “It is the land the carries our suffering when we die. It is the land that remains the same, no matter what we call ourselves. And what he meant, Lev would later learn, was this: that only soil will remember who we are, nothing but earth is strong enough to withstand the burden of memory.” Ettore’s grandfather’s advice to his son as they flee Odessa for Italy.

317 “She lets herself disappear until all that remains on that bloodstained bed is a girl remolding herself out of a rage.” Aster described after her wedding night but also speaking to the role of women in the society writ large.

318 “He stands beneath a soft drizzle that feels like a weeping sky.” Selassi described in England.

351 “Knowing only he will ever see the way hatred sways so easily between shame and fear.” Ettore as he watches the eyes of Hirut as Fucelli beats her.

402 “Every sun creates a shadow and not all are blest to stand in the light.” Minim, the shadow king as he returns to normal life following his service in the war.

423 “We were the Shadow King. We were those who stepped into a country left dark by an invading plague and gave new hope to Ethiopia’s people.” Hirut thinks as she hands Ettore the letter from his father.

428 “I see you. I will always see you.” the author in her acknowledgements to the women of Ethiopia who would not let themselves be erased.

Key Takeaways

6 Dead must be heard and known--that is the primordial call that Mengiste answers in this novel.

28 The memory of war and taking lives irrevocably changes one.

99 Aster mimics courage in order to foster it in her self.

119 The true cost of war is always born by women--no matter the victor--mothers, wives, sisters, lovers.

132 Ethiopians would purposely mispronounce Mussolini’s last name as: Mussoloni

180 Emperor’s command from abroad to Kidane to risk everything

190/226 In an awful rape scene (Kidane raping Hirut) shows further demarcation of class, power, worth, male dominance. His intrusion--his rape of her--forces her to vacate her own body. We later see her victory through indifference--through her detachment from the brutal act he tries to perpetrate upon her.

191 Aklilu’s love after the rape helps to restore her dignity as he feeds her.

219 More an observation: the sharp intake of air when Ethiopians speak

232 The notion of a shadow kings and shadow queens is rooted in Ethiopian and broader mythology and provides an arc of hope in the novel

241 Names of the emperor: Jan Hoy, Negus Nagast, Abbatachin, Haile Selassie, Ras Teferi Mekkonen, King of Kings--these names flow through the head of Hirut as she emerges of the bodygrad of the Shadow King

272 Italian horrors against women and children reach Emperor in England, where he is surviving in the shadows. In this case, the actual Emperor is perhaps the actual shadow king referred to in the book’s title for he is only the shadow of a ruler, impotent and powerless.

292 Jewish racism just provokes further descent into depravity as Ettore is left with what he deems to be little choice. This also shows that the evils are racism are a spectrum that eventually consumes everyone.

293 Even as the Italians toss Ethiopian children off the cliff to their death, they maintain their honor in the pronouncement of their names. They have a name!.

315 Wow, balance of societal order is ingrained in Hirut’s understanding of the world as she is appalled that brutality can reach the body of Aster (reminiscent of Coates’ notion of “the body” in “Between the world and me.”

410 The costs of war--Ettore’s life is eternally and irrevocably damaged and ruined.

Key References for Further Study

104 Astenagir--touted as better than khat for strength: https://botanicaethiopia.com/herbs/
Datura stramonium
https://www.ethiomedia.com/1000parts/7403.html


313 Fucelli, the Butcher of Benghazi

Rape of Hirut parallel to Italy’s incursion into Ethiopia

Notion of memory

http://www.project3541.com/
https://bookpage.com/interviews/24444-maaza-mengiste-fiction#.XfXixagvPnE
https://bookpage.com/reviews/24403-maaza-mengiste-shadow-king-fiction#.XfXjiqgvPnE

Kruse's Keys: Read "Season of the Shadow" to Peer Into Slavery's Origins (Cameroon)

What were the beginnings of slavery like for those villagers who were first kidnapped?  Author Leonora Miana transports the reader to those early terrifying days and likens the horror of slavery to a shadow of darkness whose advance can't be stopped nor hidden from.  Instead the insidious shadow grows and consumes with a callous indifference.

Miana's story begins as the inhabitants of a tribal village tucked away in the interior of modern day Cameroon awaken to its huts ablaze and find that 12 of its men have vanished.  This mysterious disappearance sets off a chain of events that, as one might guess, ends in tragedy.  This tale's power comes as the reader is placed in the middle of a people group who's whole order and existence is thrown into havoc.  Even as the reader is keenly aware as to what happened, the kidnapping is so out of place with centuries of accepted conduct and cultural norms that its tribal members can't fathom who the perpetrators might be.

Written in lyrical prose, "Season of the Shadow" is equal parts beautiful, terrifying, and tragic.  In it Miana's reminds the world that evil unchecked can quickly grow from from the slimmest of shadows to an all-encompassing darkness.

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
See our 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.
**Poet of the week from Cameroon: Mbella Sonne Dipoko

Key Takeaways:

• Parents of stillborn children were scarified to remind death that it had already taken a life (6).
•  In the Mulongo tribe, sovereignty was passed through the maternal line (7). 
• Importance of group over individual is emphasized at the tribal level.  One's own suffering is almost immaterial if the larger group's well-being is preserved. "I am because we are" was the tribe's motto (19, 26, 88).
• There's a large power associated with one's name and the history associated with it.  Sharing one's name is to share a vulnerability that one has (75).  
• The idea of this shadow is not only consuming villages and people, but also entire cultures and histories (171).
• All it really took was one coastal tribe becoming enamored with the Europeans and their "gifts" to push them to expand and grow the kidnappings.  In this way the "shadow" of slavery was like a malignant cancer--every spreading and near impossible to stop (194-5).

Key Quotes:

• "The shadow is also the shape our silences take." (31)
• "Evil, his father had taught him, exists only to be battled." (157)
• "Like other men with shaven heads...he considers that he has no past anymore." (197)

Key References:

• https://www.lexpress.fr/culture/livre/leonora-miano-l-enigme-des-fils-disparus_1283735.html

Kruse's Keys: Read "Prevail " to Learn How Ethiopia Resisted Against All Odds (Ethiopia)

LMVFAS (Let Me Vent For A Sec): It didn’t help that I listened (on Audible) to this 24.5 hour exhaustive (and at times exhausting) tome during my 60 minute commute home every day from DC over the course of what felt like two long months. I felt every slogging 15 minute rabbithole, every non-germane detail to the core of my aching lower back...this book could easily have been a bracing 10 hour ride without any of its power debased. My grand takeaway being that this is a better book to read vs. listen to since reading would give you better opportunity to skim the less important parts.

All that said, I can’t imagine there’s a more well-researched book out there on Ethiopia’s decades long resistance and eventual defeat of an overeager, over confident, overreaching wanna-be colonial power (i.e., Italy). Canadian author Jeff Pearce’s work is strongest as he brings to life the myriad actors, antagonists, and heroes of the saga. It’s worth noting that Pearce is a bit of a Selassie apologist but given the complicated history of Ras Tafari (yup that’s where that term came from) Makkonen’s reign, I imagine this can fall either way.

I won’t provide any further extensive notes on this book. One of my biggest criticisms of Audible is the lack of utility with regard to the its bookmark/clip Create Linkfunction. I had hundreds of 30 second bookmark clips for this 24 hour audiobook. As you can see below I tried to start going back through them, listening to each one and typing up the bookmarked quote. This became an exercise in ludicrousness (is that really a word)--who’s got time for this? I mean we landed a man on the moon like 100 years ago but there’s not a way to export the Audible bookmarks into a text file? Yes, I know there’s kind of a way to do this for Kindle purchases that you also buy the whispersync functionality for, but that’s not what I am talking about for.

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.
See our 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.
Related writing on the Italian invasion is Maaza Mengiste's masterful novel: "The Shadow King"--my review is here.
My review of Mengiste's debut novel about a family during Ethiopia's Derg rule is here.

Key References (For Further Study):


Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste.
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste.
The Man Called Brown Condor by Thomas E. Simmons
The best books on Ethiopia: start your reading here (The Guardian)
Notes from the Hyena’s Belly by Nega Mezlekia
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat by Ryszard Kapuscinski
The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat



Afevork Ghevre Jesus: One of ethiopia’s first novelists, and Emperor Selassie’s representative in Rome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afevork_Ghevre_Jesus

Wrote “A Heart-born Story”
https://www.selamtamagazine.com/stories/the-legacy-of-the-brown-condor
https://et.usembassy.gov/u-s-embassy-honors-the-legacy-of-colonel-john-c-robinson/


Chapter 4

Description of the first time an Black african nation had beaten a developed one in a war (1895-6). In addition the Ethiopians mutilated and amputated the captured Eritrean Askari that had fought for the Italians.
The climax of this was the Battle of Adwa.

Chapter 5

38:45 Robinson pilot opened the door for further airmen to get pilot training at Chicago’s Curtiss Wright School of Aviation by first working there as a janitor when they wouldn’t admit him--eventually an instructor got him a training slot. He later opened the John Robinson School of Aviation since in Robins, Illinois since other airfields wouldn’t let black pilots fly there.

Kruse's Keys: Read "The Gunny Sack" to Live the Indian Experience in East Africa (Tanzania)

Most of the African fiction that I’ve read has focused on the “native” experience (outside of V.S. Naipaul), so I found the “The Gunny Sack” to be an important novel as it focuses exclusively on the experience of four generations of an Indian family in Tanzania and wider East Africa beginning in the late 1800s.  Vassanji relates this in-depth experience across the span of Tanzania’s colonization and eventual independence through the backward lens of the narrator Kala who parses through the contents of a gunny sack bequeathed to him by his great grandmother Ji Bai.

Through this we see the interaction of native populations, the Germans, and the British as a nation (in the modern sense at least) is birthed.

ENDNOTE: Normally, I take fairly copious notes on this african novels, however, (in this case for fairly boring reasons), it took me some 5 months to read this book (I am typically reading 3 books at a time) and it lost much of its impact on me.  So that's on me. I look forward to rereading this novel again in the future.

*One of my Reading Around the Continent books--the full list is here.

See our 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 Reading Lists.

Related Posts:
Kruse's Keys: Read "African Kaiser" To Learn an Untold Chapter of WWI History

Africa: Declaration of Delegates from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi from the 2011 East African Workshop on Cyberspace Security

Clientelist State-Society Relations Notes (Barkan, Fatton, Pitcher et al)

Notes on the rural majority in Africa (Hyden, Jayne, MacLean)

Confines of the Shadow: My Notes and Kindle Highlights

 

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.  

Lindsey also writes a very thorough and lengthy article on Spina:  A Stage Across the Sea: An unjustly-neglected Libyan novelist captured the twisted logic of colonialism, past and present.  

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.