Fugue for a Darkening Island

I read the PAN edition of Christopher Priest's prophetic novel, Fugue for a Darkening Island, sometime in the 1990s, and it made a lasting impression. The novel came to mind yesterday, just as I began reading a story in the GUARDIAN about African migrants massing in Libya. In "Fugue" Priest postulates a near future in which Africa has been blighted by nuclear bombs, resulting in a colossal move northward of refugees, supported by African troops. England, hobbled in its responses by civil rights legislation, is overrun to the extent that heavily laden ships steam up the Thames and refugees easily de-bus onto the docks. The protagonist in the tale is Alan Whitman, a white liberal with no particular interest in politics or any desire to confront the migrants. After losing his family to violence and being made a refugee in his own country, the change in his personality is profound.

Originally published in 1972 to excellent reviews, (in the U.S. it is known as Darkening Island, and won a Campbell Award) it was accepted as just one more dystopian prediction for England - no more outrageous than say, Orwell's Nineteen Eightyfour. But Fugue attracted vociferous critics on the Left during the period of the Thatcher ascendancy, which offended the science fiction writer. Still, his novel remains in print.

There is a short BBC documentary discussing the novel and the furor it created, on YOUtube. Listen to the author read passages from his novel.

In May of 2007 - twenty seven African migrants held a Maltese tuna boat captain's gear hostage in the Mediterranean. Each had paid a snakehead $1000 for safe passage into Europe. After a three day standoff, clinging to the net, the dehydrated Africans were granted admission to migrant processing facilities in Italy.

If the novel Darkening Island erred in its predictions, it was only in the naive assumption of a nuclear exchange in Africa. Today's sub-Saharan migrants are motivated by the need to make a living, not escape radioactive fallout. Black Africa long ago gave the boot to all European colonial powers, but that boot is now worn through and barefooted Africans are doggedly following the uprooted settlers home. This week a London newspaper warned the authorities of an unprecedented massing of illegal migrants in Libya, and they are about to overwhelm Europe's maritime and customs defences. "New estimates reveal that there are two million migrants massed in the North African country and that half of them plan to sail to the European mainland and travel on to Britain in the hope of building a new life. According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), there are currently most have travelled from sub-Saharan states such as Ghana and Sierra Leone, attracted by Libya's reputation as a centre for people smugglers. Most are expected to wait until the spring, when the seas are calmer, before making the crossing on un-seaworthy and crowded vessels."

The British Isles are now very densely populated and reached 60 million inhabitants by August 2006. Worse news, militant Muslim clerics in London are agitating to have the government abandon its centuries old ties with the Church of England, a cunning demand that may prove a fatal blow to the status quo. Unrest within the existing population is already a reality and the Brits seek to avoid even more destabilising events like Tex-Mex style border swarming.

Interviews by the I.O.M. have determined that England is the preferred destination for most of the migrants. Leaven that news with the fact that Libya's paramount leader holds a special animosity for the British. Gaddafi has no particular reason to interdict the migrants at his southern border, even if the European Union pays him to try. If anything, the destabilizing Europe makes for sound Libyan tactics.

According to Laurence Hart of the I.O.M., "It would be accurate to say you've got about a million people in Libya who are looking to get to Europe at some time in the future. The numbers setting sail from Libya are so great that half of the military budget of Malta -- 350km from North Africa -- is spent trying to deal with migrants sailing north."

Christopher Priest discussed only possibilities in his fiction, offering no solutions. It ends on a bleak note. Those Brits who have smirked at U.S. inability to stem the illegal traffic in migrants are invited to enjoy the list of their own diminishing options.

LION OF THE DESERT- a DVD backgrounder

This 1981 bio-pic pits the "lion," famed Senussi guerrilla leader Omar Mukhtar against the Italian bull, 6' 4" tall General Rodolfo Graziani.

The vast majority of war movies produced in the 20th Century focus on less than a dozen wars, and the result is a distortion of the past. Very few African wars, for example, have been filmed. Niche films, those which tell a good story while offering glimpses of limited conflicts, are particularly scarce. I missed out on adding a good one, LION OF THE DESERT, to my DVD collection when it was released in 1998, and the primary DVD sellers in my area - Futureshop, HMV and Best Buy, have never stocked it. All the more reason to pounce when the 2-Disc Special Edition turned up in a post-Christmas sale bin at Walmart. It's a fact of life that some of the most elusive titles turn up in delete bins, which is why I stay alert for them.

The director/producer, Moustapha Akkad, a Syrian-American who is most most famous for making the eight HALLOWEEN horror movies, went to great lengths and expense to build detailed sets and replicate military equipment, which I found a real joy. Enthused, I did a little post-viewing research in order to check the facts behind this film treatment. (It's an old habit.) The film's researcher is said to be one "Michael Starkey" and I tried to determine if he was an historian. He could not be found so perhaps the name was just a pseudonym.

Make no mistake, this is a propaganda movie intended to showcase a Muslim "martyr" hanged by Italian fascism. Most of the $35 million dollars in production costs (filming started in 1979) was Libyan oil money. Specifically it came from strongman Muammar Gaddafi , the dictator who still holds power nearly 30 years later. Gaddafi had earlier bankrolled Akkad's film THE MESSAGE, which also starred Anthony Quinn.

Islamic polemics aside, LION is still a fabulous movie with plenty of action, Hollywood style stunts, and three engaging lead characters. Oliver Reed is masterful as General Rodolfo Graziani and Rod Steiger did a superlative job portraying Mussolini. Anthony Quinn stars as Omar Mukhtar, a guerrilla fighter of more than twenty years experience, whom we are told was a teacher before he took up the gun. Quinn played him as a reticent wise-man type, and here the screenplay is at fault, not the actor. Still the Muslim world went gagga for this movie (as Gaddafi intended) and most Muslim websites today use a still photo of actor Quinn playing Omar Mukhtar, rather than a photo of the real man. (He's on Wiki)

Omar Mukhtar, age 73, in shackles outside Italian courthouse in 1931. Note the man in the white shoes. He too appears in the movie, below.

This is a movie and not a history video, but the director was very clever in his use of old Italian newsreel footage, which goes a long way toward convincing us to accept the major premises of the story. Still, in most of the battle scenes the Italian troops are a bit too inept for my taste. At least three times we witness armoured columns totally annihilated by Mukhtar's horsemen, but most problematic is the telescoping of events to make it appear that Graziani was outwitted endlessly. The Fascist officer, already with a long service in Libya, was promoted General of Division and appointed Vice Governor of Cyrenaica (province) in 1930. Many other officers had failed to quash tribal resistance and Graziani assumed his new duties with a frenzy. Within a year he had taken the Senussi "capital", Kufra (Feb. 20, 1931) and scooped up Mukhtar (Sept. 12, 1931).

You don't have to know the history of Libya or more specifically Cyrenaica, to enjoy the film, but it does help one sort through the premises we are being exposed to. During World War I the Senussi were our enemy. The Germans supplied them with several shiploads of arms and the Ottoman Turks trained hundreds of tribesmen to infiltrate into Egypt and report back on Allied troop movements and fortifications. The R.F.C. bombed the Senussi and the Brits raided their villages. The Italians hanged Mukhtar in 1931 but the Senussi spiritual leader escaped into British controlled Egypt and was given sanctuary. More, the British gave arms to his militia, the so-called "Free Libya Force", which had a tiny role in the North Africa Campaign in WW2.

Most egregious is the extended scene which has the Italians defeating the Muslims before Kufra by resorting to the use of mustard gas released from pressurized tanks, in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol on war gases. (Mussolini authorized use of gas in 1929.) Aircraft had dropped mustard bombs on at least two missions, but they were not operations conducted by Graziani. The general certainly used poison gases in his later campaign in Italian Eritrea, and with that war crime on his record, the director felt entitled to add it to his Libyan tale of anti-fascist warfare. More to the point, at the time Muammar Gaddafi was funding this movie, 1979-81, he had full scale production underway of choking and blistering agents, as well as nerve gas. He later used it offensively, against his neighbor Chad.

The second DVD disc contains the Arabic version of the film and an Arabic version of the "making of" featurette. It is significantly different in content, and contains lengthier interview segments with Director Akkad in which he repeatedly describes Omar Mukhtar's resistance campaign as a "Jihad".
One irony associated with this bio-pic is that it was originally General Graziani who was the "Lion," and not his Muslim opponent. When he died in 1955, TIME magazine dubbed Graziani the "Desert Lion".
One of several replica tanks built by British production designers in 1979. Because turrets were not well bolted to the hulls, they shake or rattle in some closeups of armour on the move.

Two film extras, out of uniform, mug for a private photo between takes. Site is of an ambush on a mountain road - the best scene in the movie. Supporting material on the DVD includes an interesting "making of" film, with emphasis on the weaponry.
The greatest irony associated with this movie is that its well intentioned Director was consumed by the very forces of Islamic militance and faction fighting which he has tried to portray as purely anti-colonialist in nature. In November of 2005 Akkad was in Amman, Jordan on the day terrorists launched a coordinated attack on three American owned luxury hotels. He was standing in the lobby talking to his daughter when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest. They were both killed. Akkad's next project was to be a historical drama about Saladin; perhaps one more cinematic attempt to put a heroic or benign face on today's armed Islamic resurgence.
Director/producer Moustapha Akkad and his daughter Rima Akkad at her marriage. The two were murdered in Amman, Jordan by terrorist bomb.