‘It seems I was the only one in the square who remembered his guilt over Ferdinando and Zulfa’s death, since it doesn’t really matter that others were involved and that they acted against his will: simply by drawing them into his circle, he condemned them to die. There was something cruel and possessive about that man, who exercised a strange pull on people – myself included, despite my age – and also made them suspicious. As if one lost one’s way simply by giving in to him. Just like when a grown man spoils a child’s game by insisting on taking part. In his case, what was at stake in the game were those tender youths; just like how a king is unable to let the regal mantle fall off his shoulders. After all, how could he possibly attain innocence, if he couldn’t stop being omnipotent?’
‘It’s as if one of us tried to relive a past moment in our lives. Semereth had already lived out his lot, and yet kept living. That’s why he was so pathetic, and it proved an inexhaustible source of ruin for everyone around him despite the cool courtesy he showed them.’
‘Zulfa was of an age only fit for child’s games. However, her role as wife had put her in Semereth’s bed, where she couldn’t fulfil his desire for carnal pleasure. Thus thwarted, the giant was unable to do anything but kill, there was no point in him even resisting it: when it tumbles, a boulder crushes everything in its path … My own, rather disconcerting, impression – call it cruel if you will – is that there’s no such thing as destiny when we speak of modern men, or as we say, civilised men. Were all my efforts simply a way to discover my own identity, to pry from that man the secret of my destiny? General Delle Stelle would laugh at such thoughts: he understands only what our times allow him to understand – which isn’t much.’
‘The disproportion between the giant’s body and Zulfa’s indicated their lives were running on different tracks and fated never to cross: that doesn’t mean neither belonged to this world, but that there wasn’t a world big enough to accommodate both simultaneously. One can plan for everything – and in fact Semereth did conclude a marital contract with Zulfa – yet still be divorced from the event in question, just like a dead man has nothing to do with the funeral procession around his grave. Then again, would you believe me if I said that I relived that experience while visiting Semereth in his cell, having only stood a couple of yards from him, but we were separated by an immense river, which forbade any contact: our meeting was reduced to meaningless sounds. It felt like I was groping around in the dark, and falling.’
‘Chébas, have you ever strolled through a cemetery? I wonder whether I also wanted to be drawn into that fatal ring in Semereth’s house, or whether I just told myself a little story, like people do when they walk alone past rows of tombstones. I know you weren’t present at his execution: your dignity forbade you from profaning your eyes with that heinous spectacle put on by the Expeditionary Force. If it had been up to me, I would have ordered you to watch. It’s far too easy to remain ensconced in your shop like this, Mr Chébas, amongst cloths so fine they almost slip through your fingers, while other people’s lives are offered up to death – who is a compulsive buyer, as sophisticated as any collector.’
The ledger had been left wide open on the desk just in front of Émile. The captain thought the multitude of numbers bizarrely laid out on the wide, squared pages looked like the pamphlets the local soothsayers kept on the sandy ground while sitting cross-legged in the tiny square to the east of the covered market’s exit. Émile listened to the captain in silence. It was as though he were watching Captain Martello’s suicide, or self-imposed execution, a futile mirror image of Semereth’s public death. The captain constantly relived Semereth’s tragic end, which was etched into him like a dream and played over and over in the bell jar of his mind. It was a ceremony, the final duel; but truth be told, he was simply lamenting that hero’s death. In keeping with everything he was saying, Captain Martello’s tone had changed, but it had nothing to do with Émile, since the two were not on intimate terms.
‘The sun was scorching and the dust enveloped people and objects in a single halo. But Semereth’s golden words redeemed that miserable scene. He said: “We return from whence we came.” The peace negotiations with the Sanussi Brotherhood, the relocation of military garrisons, the current war on the Austrian front, General Caneva’s pompous ambitions on his arrival here, all that poverty, hunger, chaos, those men in rags, the soldiers … everything appeared to have been thrown upside down, far away, lost – along this road that begins with Him and which takes us back to Him. Standing on the gallows, Semereth almost looked like Jesus on the cross, or Moses holding the tablets of the law. It’s the only way to ever get to know our world, to organise our perceptions and see it for what it is, and it changed the meaning of our lives, of the pain running through our bodies from head to toe. I nearly went down on my knees! Like John, I’d have pushed the heathens aside and taken him down from the cross. It was a brief but intense experience. Then I felt a kind of pleasure in watching that monster punished for the lovers’ deaths. But because I could no longer question him, I too had been punished. As if I’d murdered a crucial witness by torturing him in order to make him talk.’
‘Mr Chébas, you aren’t answering my questions either. Perhaps you’re playing the role of Semereth’s comic sidekick in order to confuse me further? You know what? I think this execution was my equivalent of Semereth’s barrel of gunpowder: it exploded and disfigured my heart. From this day on, maybe my life will be nothing but a series of past events, and I too will exit the scene on a downward slope towards death wearing my mask, this frivolous uniform of a colonial officer!’
‘What do you say to that, Mr Chébas? Maybe even you, just like the general, can’t understand. But one day you might find yourself a step away from your desire, and forbidden to move any further. My dear friend, promise me,’ he said, standing up, ‘that you’ll come and confide in me: life sometimes grabs you by the throat, that’s the real monster. I won’t be able to save you, but I make you a solemn promise that I will—’ he continued while both men stood at the shop’s entrance, ‘—be a very attentive listener. In other words, your mirror.’
The officer was outwardly composed, having taken maniacally scrupulous care of his appearance even on that day: his confession seemed incapable of shaking even a single strand of hair loose on his head. But it was exactly this sort of precision and those impeccable standards that explained his attraction to Semereth, a man with a completely different stature and gait: the giant’s silence was sucking that straight-edged man into his vortex.
The officer stiffened.
Looking elegant and unapproachable, he crossed the crowded market square.
Left on his own, Émile returned to his desk and bent his head over his ledgers.
Semereth’s volition to keep falling behind, one step after the other, seemed to lie outside his control, which explained why he’d stayed so obstinately silent. Instead, that officer was being ruled by a crazed willpower: it wasn’t only his destiny that had disappeared, even his laws had vanished, and that man was capable of everything. He was like the ghosts of men who, having been mown down by bullets, search for another body to inhabit; it was his destiny, as he himself had put it, to search for a tragic sense of peace, or at least a glorified fiction of it. How peculiar!
As for himself, Émile wanted to bring his soul the kind of clarity he found in his ledgers: where everything was broken down into numbers, and understandable. Being ambitious, he wanted to satisfy his cravings for success in society, and not under the vain lights of some inner theatre. God be praised, he didn’t belong to the army, a theatrical troupe that swept through that district making such a racket. No, instead he belonged to commerce, which is another form of arbitration. When we accept that perpetual mutability guarantees the legitimacy of life, what sense is there in complaining about the damage to our sense of identity? Once we split into different selves, recombining them is nothing but an impossible dream. There, he thought, standing up and moving the paper
s on his desk as though playing solitaire, I have walked down a path, which included meeting Semereth on the boat that brought me here, and I reached its end when he was executed in the market square. Martello peered into his soul and cruelly watched him hang. He wanted to know if Semereth endorsed the rebels’ manifesto: that dying in defence of one’s faith was the most beautiful death a believer could hope to achieve. There were many of us at the funeral. We all know who the last executed rebel was, that this hanging would be the last of its kind, and that a new era would now begin, the last tremor that had brought the past full circle. Everyone breathed the fresh air of reconciliation. The atmosphere was festive.
Semereth and I tried to treat one another respectfully. He wanted to protect me and I looked after his affairs for a while when he suddenly abandoned them. Solidarity is the true channel of communication between men. This wealthy merchant was my first customer, granted me one of his precious servants, and left me to manage his estate for two years; in other words, he abdicated in my favour, but never felt jealous or angry towards the man who took his place. So much so I feel I’m his heir. I still carry the note he sent me from prison, in which he invoked God to bless me, then forgave my mistakes and asked me to forgive his; I keep it in my breast pocket, close to my heart.
Semereth Effendi’s death is the end of a journey. By taking his place, my education and training are over. Now, I need to satisfy Uncle Mikhail. Once the war’s over, I’ll return to Aleppo and get married. According to ancient traditions, returning home to choose one’s bride is a pledge.
At that moment, Abdelkarim entered the shop. He looked at his master inquisitively and then fled; Semereth Effendi’s death had shaken him to the core. Émile had observed him closely at the funeral as he stood looking shameful amidst all the grown-ups.
He chided him for being so late: where had he been? Why hadn’t he finished the work he’d been assigned? Bales of cloth had been left half untied at the back of the warehouse. Émile used these reproaches to help the loyal lad, who badly needed a guiding hand at that difficult moment: when life falls off the bone like flesh, structure is the net that catches it.
CHAPTER 2
I
Captain Martello pondered his situation while sitting upright on his horse. Now that the colony’s problems had been resolved, there was a pressing need to be quicker than everyone else and demobilise. He had looked for a gesture he could make that would stand out prominently in the eyes of others, but especially himself: he’d got engaged to an upper-class girl who was slender, blonde and the commander of the coast guard’s daughter, as though wishing to signal, as they once used to say, that he’d made a fresh start. However, the marriage wasn’t the first step of a new beginning, but more like a farewell. The captain found it difficult to picture himself a contented father and husband in a gloomy provincial garrison, awaiting the next promotion. Now that the Great War had caused an irreparable rift in Europe, it was certainly true that the colonial affair had assumed a secondary role: the dark cloud of conflict had completely absorbed that minor African episode, and nobody knew what the world would look like once it emerged from that storm.
The captain calmly led his troops through the country; it was unlikely the rebels would attempt an ambush. The atmosphere of defeat, which turns everything to rot, wasn’t conducive to an act of aggression.
A Libyan non-commissioned officer rode alongside the captain. The boy had just returned from Sicily, where he’d been sent for a training course. The army wanted to clear those boys out of the colony: it was afraid of them. However, the army also tried to instruct and indoctrinate them in the hope they would rush to quell any new rebellion. Some even spoke of sending colonial regiments to the Austrian front. Captain Martello thought this was absurd, nothing but a fantasy cooked up in a wretched bureaucrat’s office, and thus took no interest. The training course in Sicily had turned out badly, and the few remaining survivors had been sent back to Libya.
The young officer rode deftly; his wrist was steady, but the captain didn’t fail to notice his frailty. Perhaps he was suffering, but Fathi seemed happy to talk and didn’t appear bashful at all. He wasn’t careful with his words – and this unusual trait, coupled with his aura of suffering, immediately endeared him to the captain. The monotony of the journey through those semi-deserted moors stoked the fire of his curiosity. Fathi painted a vivid portrait of life in Benghazi during the final months of the Ottoman Empire’s rule, and swore he’d welcomed the arrival of the Italian Expeditionary Force as liberators. He’d chosen his side immediately, opting for the invaders, who’d then done nothing but prolong his wait. Poor and uneducated, Fathi had expected the opportunity to work and study which had been promised him. 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. Fathi had quickly learned the newcomers’ language, and found a job. He even knew how to read and write, and a soldier had taught him to play the accordion. Thus, he’d enthusiastically taken his steps down the path paved by the Expeditionary Force; even though it had come at the cost of a deep wound, the foreigners had poached the people away from their tyrant – perpetual stagnation. All of a sudden, both those who joined the rebels and those who believed the invaders’ promises found themselves miraculously in a saddle, knights who held the reins of their destinies in their hands.
Captain Martello’s ear was trained to detect flattery: when the natives spoke to him, they all said they’d welcomed the Expeditionary Force, that they were indebted to them for all the social progress they’d brought about, among other laudatory descriptions of the Italian adventure in Africa. But Fathi didn’t flatter him, and had focused on plotting his own destiny during the mayhem of the past five years. The humble manner in which he spoke gave his words the imprimatur of truth. Martello had rarely encountered such candour in that foreign, distant land before. He asked himself whether he’d been wrong to ascribe so much tension and meaning to people’s words and gestures. Everything Captain Martello had been chasing up to that day, in other words a sincere exchange with the people of the place, now seemed easy and natural during that morning ride. He wondered whether the peace accords, which he didn’t support because both parties harboured secret and fatal misgivings, might not be a step in the right direction. Meaning that demobilisation, which he’d hurriedly and ironically consented to, was turning out to be a fruitful avenue. For the first time, Martello believed he could continue living in that African land and enjoy a semi-legitimate position. He might even metamorphose into a colonist: his mind was flooded by pastoral scenes.
Perhaps Semereth Effendi’s death had freed the country from a spell. Hostile to happiness and the rule of law, the man’s mere presence had impeded the country from finding a peaceful solution to the conflict. Now that the country had been freed from that monster, it could finally live in peace.
Captain Martello knew how minor a role Semereth had played politically, and that he shouldn’t confuse the limitless theatre of the country with the play being staged in his mind, which featured Semereth in the principal role. The resistance had organised itself long before Semereth joined it. In fact, the only reason he’d done so was due to a personal tragedy. But spells are hardly ever conspicuous, and whoever casts them is usually the l
ast to fall under suspicion. Given to exaggeration because of his excessively confined nature, Semereth had channelled his fearless violence into action in tribute to his earlier life as a Turkish officer before he’d become a merchant in that forgotten province of the Ottoman Empire.
The captain turned his thoughts to the morning when he’d been locked up in his fort and watched as those rebel cavalry troops disappeared into the sandstorm after looting the market: an event that now belonged to the past, just like that legend from Herodotus, ‘and having held counsel, they decided to mount an expedition against Notus, the south-wind … ’ He wanted to put his non-commissioned officer at ease, and so confided in him a little. He even told him that he’d got engaged, thus initiating him into a domestic intimacy, as though he would welcome him as a guest into his home as soon as the ride was over. He was determined to exert his influence over the boy and avail himself of his simplicity and candour: he was even willing to repay him in kind by being benevolent, maybe even caring, all to bury the differences between their stations, which the colonial context dictated, thus keeping them apart.
When they stopped in Tocra at the end of the first day, he took only the boy with him as he roamed the ruins of the ancient city of Teucheira, almost completely buried in the sand. He explained the little information that could be gleaned from those relics. The path they walked on, which stretched along the sea, was whipped by the winds.
It was as though they were following someone else’s footprints; but the road was deserted.
Before sunset, he swam among the reefs inside the rocky enclosure around the fort. Fathi stayed ashore and watched him. He was scared of cold water. Martello stayed in the water for a long time, unable to let go of that happy day. When he later stretched out on his cot, he feel asleep immediately: his tent protected him like a castle.
The Colonial Conquest: The Confines of the Shadow Volume I Page 16