Preface to Second Edition

Extract from This Land Belongs

This Land Belongs follows my debut novel Chameleon in My Garden (2014), a semi-autobiographical novel which I dedicated to my mother-in-law, Hajjah Fathia Ben Ali, and also to the many brave souls in Libya who, in the 1970s in the early years of the Gaddafi regime, were imprisoned for their beliefs. Amongst them was my then husband, Dr. Mohamed Elmufti, who had been the director of the hospital and health services in El Baitha, in Cyrenaica, Libya, also serving the desert hinterland, facing a cholera epidemic. 

After Chameleon in My Garden my thoughts turned to the life of Hajjah Fathia Ben Ali, who was born in Derna, Libya, at a time of brutal ‘penetration’ of Libyan territory by Italian colonial expansion. Sadly, when I began my quest to understand the context of her childhood, she was no longer with us to bear witness to her experience. I was able to draw upon conversations we had in Benghazi sharing afternoon tea on the veranda of her home. I had visited Derna a few times, an unforgettably beautiful orchard town on the coast of Cyrenaica, cradled by the forested ranges of the Green Mountain. Derrna became my focus, and in many ways, Hajjah Fathia already symbolised its beauty for me.

In the process of writing, the narrative took on a life of its own.  Eventually it spanned fifty years from 1911 to 1961. Its action ranged across the Mediterranean from Italy and Sicily to what Mussolini regarded as Italy’s fourth shore, land that was at the time an Ottoman province.  Occupied by force after a long Bedouin uprising, this province of three regions was annexed by Italy and named Libya.

I was in England at the time of researching for and writing This Land Belongs, and so my writer’s journey was lonely. Yet, as I wove the fabric of my research into a story, I found myself emotionally attached to a vibrant people held captive by colonial occupation and empire. As the scope of the novel expanded to include competing perspectives, the narrative wove its own design crossing land boundaries and shifting between opposing perspectives, moving in and out of place and of historical time as testimony demanded.

To what extent I have imposed my own sensibilities on the narrative I cannot be certain, but my intention was to allow the characters to speak, as much as was existentially possible through my writer’s intervention. I wanted to free them to retrieve their emotions in the way that they might have rescued them from memory. I hoped to explore what they saw, and  to imagine how war and occupation would have affected them. You may call it writer’s arrogance to assume to understand the private introspections of others, but I invite readers to imagine and discover for themselves the emotions and insights of those who were colonised, and to do so with empathy.

Many thanks go to persons who wish to remain anonymous but who advised me and helped with proofreading for this second edition. Many thanks also go to my mentor on cultural and historical matters, Dr. Mohamed Elmufti. I am grateful to Dr. Robert Donaldson, a scientist and a writer with a keen eye for detail. My thanks also go to Dr. Mansour M Elbabour, Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Benghazi, Libya. Many thanks also go to friends who encouraged me.

Reflecting again on the continuing trauma that is Libya, I am reminded of a Libyan expression: “Holding on to the dog’s tail until you pass the depths.” It seems to me that the Libyan people have had to hold on for a very long time. 

Considering the many years that Libya suffered from colonisation, various disease epidemics and four episodes of war in just thirty-four years, I decided to devote all the proceeds of the sales of ‘This Land Belongs’ to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) London, in support of its humanitarian work alleviating pain and trauma in many countries across the world, often in arenas of war. I set up my own company, Glass Carpet Publishing, to do this. I was aware that at the time of writing the novel, MSF was working in Libya, a hundred years since the Italo-Turkish war of 1911. The story in the novel begins in the same year. A History teacher in Derna is anticipating the threatened war and a Maltese doctor in Benghazi is helping to deal with an epidemic. That, in 2022, we should again be facing a world threatened by war and pandemic is beyond tragedy.

March 18 2022

Paperback available November 2023. Download Kindle App to read on ANY DEVICE — Click here.

All proceeds from sales (less publishing costs) are donated to Médecins Sans Frontières (UK) (Doctors Without Boarders) supporting flood victims in Derna, Libya.