Cyrenaica Post-Script

OK so The Black Book of Cyrenaica is out in the world at last, for better or worse, and getting some very kind comments and reviews. Those who have read it might find the following notes--initially appended to the story as an epilogue--interesting:

Yusuf Vartoonian’s reign lasted only a few more years. When Britain’s defeat of France at Trafalgar freed up her fleet for increased action in the Mediterranean, King Yusuf’s days of piratical glory were numbered. He tried to make up for the lost revenue by increasing the nation’s slave trade with the west, but the difficulties of transport from the interior to the northern coast of Africa, combined with growing abolitionist sentiment in Europe, eroded his profits. In 1811 his sons raised an army to depose him. His witch consort failed to warn him of the plot and in response, Yusuf had her executed. Her head was encased in lead and cast into the sea. He himself disappeared not long afterward. His fate is the subject of North African legend. While few of the stories agree on the particular means of his death, all report that it was unpleasant.

Glorious, improbable, and never formally authorized, Malcolm Weston’s expedition lives on in footnotes. Historians and geographers still find it difficult to explain how an American with no experience in the desert was able to find water in the brutally dry expanse of the Western Desert—something even his native followers were unable to do.

Weston received a hero’s welcome on his return to the States. Civic proclamations celebrated his deeds, and he was offered a parade through the City of Hartford. But the general—as he insisted on calling himself ever afterward—was reluctant to accept such accolades. He consorted with anger and alcohol, particularly a mixture of sherry and rum called flip that was popular in those days. He sought but never obtained repayment of the money he personally expended on the Libyan Expedition, and he called on President Jefferson and the Republicans to apologize for abandoning America’s Arab allies and the good people of Derna. He picked fights with Congress and wrote long letters to the local newspaper. The general’s friends grew embarrassed. He died alone. In his will he requested that he be buried face-down—the only position, he said, in which his sleep was not interrupted by nightmares. He did not specify the nature of the nightmares that plagued him.

Lemuel Sweet served in the Marines for another four years. He married in 1809 and shortly thereafter left the Corps to become a schoolteacher in Breedlove, Vermont, a town noted chiefly for the quality of its cheeses. He held this post for the rest of his life. When he died, he was survived by four children—all girls—and nine grandchildren. In 1822 he published an account of his service in the Marines, with special emphasis on his part in Weston’s Libyan campaign. This publication, which he called The Black Book of Cyrenaica, was unusual in that in contained an attestation notarized by a local justice of the peace. It was also unusual in that it drew the attention of local clergymen, who roundly condemned it as a work of unhealthy imagination and pagan influences. In 1824, quite possibly in response to such criticisms, Sweet attempted to buy back and destroy all copies of the Black Book. Until recently it was said that no copies of this history survived.

Lemuel Sweet's account of America's conquest of Tripoli is no doubt fanciful and exagerrated. In Sweet’s defense, however, the lost city of Zerzura is a subject of long-standing legend in the Middle East; he didn’t make it up. Stories of “lost” civilizations, or groups of people, such as the one he posits may have inhabited Zerzura, are in fact not uncommon. Generations of Americans grew up believing that a tribe of western Indians was descended from a group of ancient Welsh explorers who got themselves lost on the new continent and were thus unable to sail home with news of their discovery.
While this tale proved to be a fabrication, others are harder to dismiss. For example, members of the Kalash tribe of Pakistan describe themselves as descendants of Alexander the Great, and have the distinctive language and religion to support the claim. They are of course the basis for the “Kafirs” described in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King.” Similarly, the Khevsureti peoples of eastern Georgia are said by some to be the remnants of lost “Latin” crusaders, Christians in chain mail bedecked in crosses who for centuries would descend from their isolated mountain home in response to a summons from the King of Georgia in times of national emergency. Both of these curious “pocket” populations are dying out rapidly, though their legends will doubtless live on.

As for the supernatural presence in the book, it is of course true that the Bible relates the story of Jesus casting out a demon, or demons, from the men of Gadarenes. Sweet cites this tale three times in his journal, indicating that it was much on his mind during the expedition. And the Koran (Sweet calls it the “alcoran,” as was the custom of the day) mentions the djinn, or "hidden," on more than one occasion. Are demons djinn, or vice versa? Sweet never says—probably because he never knew. He is also careful to note that in his last meeting with Colonel Ladendorf, he believes he was under the influence of laudanum. This means that by his own admission, he is not a reliable narrator for the most important segment of the narrative—his final encounter with Ladendorf, and Ladendorf’s capture by the army of ghostly crusaders who came to take the emerald ring back into safekeeping.

Certainly it’s possible that Colonel Ladendorf was a traitor, or a spy, and that he and Donald MacLeish betrayed General Weston by sharing intelligence with the temporarily ousted Governor of Derna. Perhaps they conspired to kill Sweet in order to prove to the Governor that they had in fact committed the most conclusive renunciation of their loyalties to the expedition. Beyond this—and with all due respect to Lemuel Sweet’s notarized attestation—it is impossible for a rational man to go.

The fates of the other Marines in the Derna Expedition are unclear. In fact, historians disagree on whether there were seven or eight Marines assigned to General Weston’s army in the first place. Only one other figure associated with the mission resurfaces, briefly, in history. In 1827, the United States Congress voted to appropriate four hundred acres of land in Kentucky to a veteran of Weston’s campaign who was long thought to be lost in North Africa. His name, according to the Congressional Record, was Donald Ailes MacLeish. One contemporary newspaper account describes him as a large man who was missing most of his left ear and two fingers from his right hand. It was also said that the man’s eyes were a curious shade of yellow, probably on account of a prolonged battle with jaundice during a period of captivity among the Mahometans, who were said to have used him harshly.

Donald MacLeish occupied his Kentucky freehold for only a year. He admitted that he found no pleasure in agrarian pursuits. He was a restless sort, a rambler, always curious. He was heading west, he told his neighbors. Something about the Indians. The big man was said to dislike them. America should never rest, he said, until they were driven from her shores. If this meant war, he said, so be it. He for one was ready for a fight.