Atop his steed, Rafiq rode ahead of the procession in silence. Separating from Ghazala was proving almost unbearable. Saad’s face flashed right before his eyes. Saad’s sacrifice had seemed necessary so long as Ghazala had lived in Sheikh Hassan’s house, since it was the only way Rafiq could have ever returned home. If not, the accusation of impiety would have led him to exile himself further and further away. He had sacrificed his loyal friend, the young man who had lovingly tried to emphasise their similarities so that he could appear in an honoured role before his stepsister.
For a few fleeting months, Saad had been his beloved brother.
Who could possibly claim to be Ghazala’s groom if not Saad, to whom she’d been promised during their long journey through the mountains? What woeful destiny was forcing Rafiq to accompany his stepsister to the man and strangers she had been given away to, separating her not only from Rafiq, but also from the other one, Rafiq’s spitting image, who people believed was his brother? Saad would have clasped her to his chest without feeling any guilt.
Restlessly galloping back and forth, as though trying to draw the bride’s attention for one last time, Rafiq pondered the horror of the separation: his stepsister had been given away to a stranger. She had been torn from her brother to be given to a stranger.
Rafiq galloped further ahead and came to a halt on top of a hill. From that vantage point, he could see the simultaneously sumptuous and funereal procession that was accompanying his stepsister to that strange new house, which appeared as distant as the house of the dead.
Before heading back to Benghazi, Fatima entered the room where Sheikh Hassan was busy reading. She said she’d heard of the accusations that her daughter Ghazala had levelled against Anwar and Dhahab’s son, Rafiq. The runaway had arrived in the city where he’d met Saad, a young man who bore a perfect resemblance to him. Having won his confidence, Rafiq had dragged him to the mountains to meet his death. Saad was innocent.
Sheikh Hassan had buried the incident in silence. Once the stranger had been killed, nobody had dared mention him to the Sheikh any more. What did that old woman want? And why had she waited so long to say anything? Rafiq was guilty and the stranger was innocent. Thus, Rafiq was doubly guilty: of having lusted after his stepsister, and of having led an innocent man to his death.
Fatima waited. She was not intimidated by the Sheikh’s authority. Sheikh Hassan suspected she was harbouring other horrible secrets. She was a forthright woman, incapable of lying. But what proof can this woman possibly have? he asked himself in a jolt of soothing scepticism. ‘What proof do you have?’ he asked her, loudly.
‘Saad was my son,’ she said.
Something stirred deep in the master’s heart. No memory can remain buried for ever.
‘Your son?’ he asked, not because he doubted her sincerity, but to gain a little time.
‘He worked at the market, with a goldsmith. When Saad fled the city, people told me he’d been with a young man who resembled him, but was a little shorter. On entering this house, I saw Rafiq and ran up to him. Even I was fooled and thought he was my son. Rafiq looked at me, scared out of his wits. Nobody knew I had another son, and so I kept quiet. Rafiq was the young man people in the city had told me about. But how could I suspect he was my son’s murderer? People said they always went everywhere together, and that they looked so identical everyone thought they were brothers.’
It was like the tragic story of Harun al-Rashid, his beloved sister and his closest friend, Jafar the vizier: where the union of two people is sacrilegious, a third wheel is often added, a prelude to further sins.
Fatima waited in silence until the master could see clearly through the heart of the matter, as well as his own heart. Even Sheikh Hassan was a patient man, since reading engenders patience. But everything had already been explained and there were no further questions to ask. He had no choice but to summon Rafiq and confront him with these accusations; if what Fatima said was true, he would lure him into a trap and kill him without anyone ever discovering the real reason. The execution had to look like an accident. Or it could look like a vendetta carried out for sins unknown to anyone in the Sheikh’s house. Only once Rafiq had been executed would the whole regrettable matter finally be brought to an end. The house had been tainted by the nocturnal visitor, and it needed to be purified. Justice demanded that the guilty party be properly punished, and not that an innocent person be sacrificed.
Sheikh Hassan’s thoughts turned back to the young man he’d seen at the head of the procession a few days earlier as it led his stepsister to the strangers’ house. He experienced an overpowering horror at the thought of dipping his hand into that young, restless blood. That blasphemer, that traitor, he didn’t deserve anything but death. But why had he deserved it? Who had led his heart astray?
Sheikh Hassan stood up. He was very tall, and his chest leaned forward to the point that he always seemed on the verge of snapping in two. He slid his feet into his slippers. Finally, he put down the book he’d been holding.
‘You won’t say anything to anyone,’ he said, ‘It’s my duty to see that justice is served.’ Fatima wrapped her veil around her face and took the few steps that separated her from the door. ‘Of course it’s up to you,’ she said, ‘Saad was your son.’
Neither Fatima, who’d kept the secret of the son she’d had with the Sheikh during one of his forgotten visits to the city, after she’d divorced Anwar, nor Sheikh Hassan, a man who always waited impatiently for the night so he could shoo everyone away and seek refuge in his room by candlelight, wanted people to witness their conversation.
However, Sheikh Hassan’s finicky wife Zazia, a city woman who detested peasants and their culture, heard everything.
Just as she had once brought Ghazala’s accusations against her impious brother to Sheikh Hassan’s reluctant ears, thereby earning Dhahab’s wrath, Zazia now urged her friend Dhahab to be on her guard: Saad was Sheikh Hassan’s son. This no longer had anything to do with saving a stupid servant’s honour, it was about avenging her son’s death: ‘Rafiq won’t escape this time.’
On leaving Sheikh Hassan’s room, Fatima picked up her bundle, lightened by the absence of the gifts she’d brought for the bride, bid her relatives goodbye, and set off on her journey, accompanied by an old man: she would spend the night at Barca, where she’d part ways with her chaperone. She even hurriedly bid Rafiq goodbye, pushed into her path by Dhahab. Zazia and Dhahab accompanied her for a stretch of the road, with ceremonial perseverance.
Fleeing Zazia’s malign vigilance, Dhahab entered Sheikh Hassan’s room. Zazia was busy keeping an eye on Rafiq, who idled about in a field to keep his distance.
Dhahab spoke prudently. Sheikh Hassan wasn’t even listening. Those hags who came in and out of his room tracked the mud of life onto his floor. What did that woman want? The mother of his son’s assassin! Sheikh Hassan heaved a heavy sigh.
Dhahab used the opportunity to say that life is a burden, but that God was there to help them. That God was merciful. Sheikh Hassan suddenly rose. He swelled to gigantic proportions, frightening Dhahab. ‘Don’t do anything you might bitterly regret tomorrow,’ she said as though trying to cast a spell, ‘Fatima told you that the young man who was killed in this house was your son. May God forgive that young man, and the rest of us, too.’
Dhahab’s tiny body drew closer to Sheikh Hassan. ‘Because Rafiq,’ she continued, ‘is also your son: he wasn’t an early product of my marriage to Anwar, but a fruit of your loins. I consented to marrying a crazy servant to hide the fruit of my love with his master. I was the one who told Rafiq that he wasn’t that fool’s son. Rafiq is our son, just like Ghazala is Anwar and Fatima’s daughter: they’re not related, and while Rafiq’s desire was sinful, it wasn’t unholy. Justice turned him first into a fugitive and then into a murderer. There was no way out: he would either have had to live far away from his homeland until his persecutors caught up with him, or he could have tried to trick them in one way or another.
Keep the secret. That young man can’t bear another accusation.’
Nagi’s sudden arrival was warmly and enthusiastically greeted by his mother, Zazia. The young man had gone off to fight against the invaders, and had joined the little bands of rebel patriots that operated outside the major population centres where Italian authority reigned supreme. Scornful and tough as he was, nobody could deceive him. Even if Rafiq tried to flee, Nagi would eventually catch up with him. Nobody was stronger or faster than him.
Zazia took Nagi aside and told him what had happened during his absence, explaining that Saad, the young man who’d been killed, had been his brother.
During the initial hours after Nagi’s arrival, Sheikh Hassan told him nothing and Dhahab did nothing either.
Thanks to Nagi’s arrival, Sheikh Hassan finally realised that Rafiq had nowhere to run. Would he execute his own son? Would he delegate the task to Nagi, his legitimate son?
Being sure of himself, even Nagi didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.
Nobody would say anything in that house without it being overheard. This time, fate decreed that Anwar eavesdropped on the conversation between his wife and the master. What did it all amount to? Which resentments did they stoke? Who could they possible benefit?
Anwar fled the house and caught up with Rafiq, who was loitering in a field so as to keep his distance. He very excitedly informed Rafiq that he was Sheikh Hassan’s son, and that he had killed his own brother. Then, as though afraid he would be caught in Rafiq’s company, he returned to the house and spent all his time in the courtyard, in plain sight.
Even Nagi was waiting. His father was to be the first to speak. Zazia and Dhahab kept their eyes focused on the men.
Rafiq didn’t doubt the crazy man’s story. Saad was his brother, as testified to by their perfect resemblance. Hadn’t they been called brothers in Benghazi? And hadn’t Dhahab told him that Anwar wasn’t his father? His father was the master, Sheikh Hassan. Rafiq had found his father after killing his own brother. He’d saved himself from accusations of impiety by committing an even unholier crime: fratricide. It was certainly true he’d sought out Ghazala knowing that she wasn’t his sister, and that he’d killed Saad not knowing he was his brother. But what did it matter now? Why keep living? What horrendous accusations would they use to persecute him now? Why should he taint the Sheikh’s hands with his blood? Why hand himself over to Nagi, who although also his brother, would willingly – and lawfully – murder him? There was simply no room for his youth anywhere: not in his own home, nor anywhere else.
Rafiq reached the hill fort from where he’d observed, only days earlier, Ghazala’s procession, the bride ensconced on a high throne atop a camel on her way to that distant house. The strangers’ house! Rafiq wasn’t heading towards the house of the dead, he was running away from it.
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.’
8 All translations of Ibn Khaldun by André Naffis-Sahely.
Epilogue
In the summer of 1927, after bloody clashes dispersed the bands of rebel patriots still hampering the Italians’ advances sixteen years after the aggressors had first landed, the tricolour finally flew from the serene valley where Sheikh Hassan had his house. The Sheikh had fled the previous night. His family and servants had found refuge in a nomad encampment. Nagi had been killed.
Once again, Sheikh Hassan avoided gazing upon the faces of the men who’d come to pillage his land. Their presence was symbolised by a column of smoke rising from the remnants of his house. His incredible voyages into the farthest regions of the world had led to that defeat, meaning what the Sheikh had implicitly abandoned had been taken away from him and burned to cinders. The Italian soldier, one of the innumerable characters evoked by his reading, had triumphed in the Sheikh’s own home. It hadn’t happened in one of those godforsaken cities where lapses of reason occurred, but in his own beloved, unlucky country. Alongside a few other fugitives, the Sheikh headed for Kufra. His other books had perished in the fire, but the Sheikh still carried the holy book with him, which he’d committed to memory at a young age.
When even that oasis became indefensible, the Sheikh abandoned Kufra, and headed east, accompanied by other travellers. Among them was a certain X, who was much loved by the Brotherhood’s ikhwan and who’d also wound up in Kufra after his father had turned himself over to the Italian government, after extracting a promise that they wouldn’t exile him from Cyrenaica, but who had instead been banished to the island of Ustica. X’s illustrious family had placed all its hopes in him, and he possessed a sense of irony, was unfailingly gracious, was tolerant towards others and demanding with himself; and just like his illustrious ancestor, he had a high awareness of his mission.
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.
Translator’s Note
I made a fairly daring choice while translating these first volumes of The Confines of the Shadow, but months after putting the finishing touches on the manuscript, I remain satisfied with my decision. Spina had filled the spaces between the chapters of the first instalment, The Young Maronite, with quotes from various books, newspapers and government decrees. His motivation for doing so was rather obvious: as mentioned in my introduction, he was writing to an Italian public which barely remembered the tricolour had once flown from Libyan shores, and he had therefore set himself the task of resurrecting that episode from the oblivion into which it had shamefully been cast. Unfortunately, I don’t think this stylistic technique proved very successful: it heavily impeded the flow of his exquisite prose and broke up his fable-like narrative, needlessly confusing the reader along the way. So I decided to cut these quotes out. Spina lived during a time when public libraries didn’t exist in Libya and when books and newspapers were hard to come by. Almost anyone reading this epic today will be able to conduct further research online. Furthermore, Spina himself didn’t think much of this technique, which was why he never used it again in the subsequent instalments of The Confines of the Shadow (aside from citing a few lines by Ibn Khaldun in The Nocturnal Visitor, which is also included in this volume). Anyone interested in the history of the time would be better served by reading the several historiographies that have been published in the century since these events transpired. 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.
Glossary
p.6 Effendi: Turkish honorific whose English equivalent is ‘Sir.’
p.28 Mal d’Afrique: ‘Africa Ache’ or ‘Africa bug.’
p.32 Majlis: reception room for male visitors.
p.34 Sanussi Brotherhood: political-religious order founded in Libya and Sudan in the early nineteenth century. King Idris I of Libya, who reigned from 1951 until Muammar Qaddafi’s coup in 1969, was the founder’s grandson.
p.42 Jinn: ‘spirits’ possessed of free will which can be neutral, malign or benevolent.
p.57 Turquerie: art produced in Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century mimicing Turkish culture, which was highly fashionable at the time.
p.59 Il balen del suo sorriso: ‘The light of her smile,’ an ari
a from Verdi’s Don Carlos.
p.61 Mais quoi! … : So what! Life is cheap in these parts!
p.66 Quirinale: once the principal palace of Italian kings in Rome and now the official residence of the Italian president.
p.74 Salesian monks: Catholic order founded in the late nineteenth century.
p.134 The Betrothed: I promessi sposi (1827) by Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873), arguably the first Italian historical novel.
p.134 The geometrical locus … : from Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Andreas (Pushkin, 2013).
p.139 Mais que ma cruauté … : ‘But that my cruelty should survive my anger, despite my soul being seized by pity’ (from Racine’s Andromaque).
p.158 Zawiyah: either a monastic complex or a shrine-like tomb.
p.158 Sidi al-Qarba: also known as ‘Yawm al-juma’ah’.
p.198 Marabout: Qur’anic teacher, or wandering holy man.
p.216 What is that noise? … : Lines spoken by Count Almaviva and Countess Rosina Almaviva; from Act II, Scene X of The Marriage of Figaro.
p.217 Je le tuerai! … : ‘I’m going to kill him! I’m going to kill him. Go and kill that wicked servant!’ Line spoken by Suzanne in Act II, Scene XVII of The Marriage of Figaro.
p.221 Festina Lente: Latin motto meaning ‘make haste slowly.’
p.226 Je l’ai trop aimé! … : ‘I loved him too much! My tenderness tired him out and my love exhausted him,’ Lines from Act II, Scene XIX of The Marriage of Figaro.
p.230 épouse délaissé: ‘neglected wife’.
p.256 Muqaddimah: ‘Introduction,’ an outline of Ibn Khaldun’s (1332–1406) theories on history.
p.259 Iram of the Pillars: lost city in Southern Arabia that is mentioned in the Qur’an and whose story bears some similarity to that of Atlantis.
p.261 God gives the kingship to whom He will: Qur’an, Sura 2.247 (trans AJ Arberry)
The Colonial Conquest: The Confines of the Shadow Volume I Page 29