When the barbarity of “civilization” wins the overhand
Tarif Khalidi (s a Palestinian historian who now holds the Shaykh Zayid Chair in Islamic and Arabic Studies at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon
Orignally posted at Al-Akhbar
When the renowned Greek poet Constantine Cavafy published his poem “Waiting for the Barbarians” at the beginning of the 20th century, it attracted—like all profound, nuanced poetry—a deluge of analysis and exploration of meaning. I was very impressed upon reading it as a young man, but I only grasped its meaning at a superficial level and failed to discern the true essence of the poem, no doubt owing to the impatience and narrow-mindedness of youth.
I have returned to Cavafy’s lines in my old age, as our world drowns in a cacophony of obstreperous voices yapping about civilization and barbarism, hoping to find in it what I had missed in my youth. Let us first briefly summarise the poem in order to do justice to the subject.
“Waiting for the Barbarians” theatrically portrays people in a public square with one side asking questions and the other responding. Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s gate wearing the crown? Because the barbarians are coming today. Why are the senators sitting there doing nothing? Because the barbarians will do the legislating. Why have our leaders come out in full regalia, with rings sparkling with emeralds? Because things like that dazzle the barbarians. Why aren’t our orators making speeches? Because the barbarians are bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
The concluding lines inject a note of mystery: Why this sudden bewilderment and confusion? Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home lost in thought? Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come. Some men at the border say there are no barbarians.
The poem ends as follows: Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.
What can we read into this poem today, in this age of “civilisation” and “barbarism”? At first glance, the reference to the emperor seems to invite readers to recall past empires that were weakened and confused by the absence of one of their most fundamental raisons d’êtres: Barbarians. Without them, there can be no empire. They are both a source of fear and something to be welcomed, a necessity for defining one’s own identity. “Us” versus “Them”. At least, that is what I understood from the poem when I first read it.
Today, two empires dominate the Arab world—an American one and an Israeli one. We can see them dressed in their finery, their weapons glinting in their hands. Throughout history, all empires have dazzled and intimidated their subjects like this. But these two are set apart by their embrace of ideas which we, their subjects, view as obsolete, namely that the Creator has chosen them from among all of humanity to carry out His will, regardless of what the naysayers might say. We are thus transported back to a Manichean world, where light stands against darkness, humanity against brutality, good against evil, and civilization against barbarism. These ideas are not merely political conceptions guiding the policies of these two empires; they are widely held beliefs throughout both their societies.
In America today, the barbarians are the immigrants from “shithole” countries, to use Emperor Trump’s expression, along with anyone who refuses to submit to American civilization. In Israel, the barbarians are Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims more broadly. In both empires, we find leaders who seem intoxicated, drunk on dreams of superiority and supremacy, determined to crush all those beneath them on the ladder of humanity, backed by entire societies that have supported them and brought them to power.
Anyone observing the course of events today has a rare opportunity to witness history turning back the clock in a miraculous and fascinating way. I, along with many of my generation, was naively convinced that the establishment of the United Nations after World War II, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the victory over fascism and Nazism, and the spread of “liberal democratic” thought across the globe had forever erased the rhetoric of Hitler and Mussolini and the lofty pronouncements of figures such as Lord Cromer, Winston Churchill, General Lyautey, Theodore Roosevelt, and their “powerful contemporaries” [Ibn Khaldun].
As historians, we are always required to identify the beginning and ending of things, but I cannot say when this particular clock started ticking backwards. Perhaps the decline of the liberal climate, with the political, social, and economic transformations that came with it, became apparent after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the empire of the “barbarians” fell, and with it “barbarians” of both the East and West, while “civilisation” triumphed in a resounding victory.
With the rise of Netanyahu and Trump, the rhetoric of “civilisation” has reached its zenith, as witnessed by the former’s address to US Congress, and the latter’s daily drivel and his remarks to the Knesset. Unfortunately, the barbarians were not particularly impressed by this eloquence. So their henchmen came to our land to remind us of their civilization and our barbarism. One of these envoys, the reptilian rebuked a crowd of Lebanese journalists for their “animalistic” behaviour; another, Miss Orange Blossom herself, the former Miami beauty queen, lectured a politician about the dangers of drug-taking. Meanwhile, an Israeli minister described Palestinians as “animals” and his colleague threatened the Saudis with a return to “riding camels”. These are just a few of the fragrant bouquets of civilization that they make us inhale daily.
Today, we find some regimes in the Gulf striving to join the ranks of civilisation by signing up to the Abraham Accords, or at least flirting with that notion. But, alas, they can never succeed in shedding their barbarism, no matter how much money they pour into civilisation, no matter how much they adorn themselves with finery, nor how high they build their buildings (competing in the production of high buildings being one of the portents of the Day of Judgement according to the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad). They are no more than rich, barbaric regimes providing civilization with what it needs to accomplish its civilisational mission.
Returning to the relevance of Cavafy’s poem, we may discern some confusion and unease in the two victorious empires amid their euphoria. Have our civilisations truly triumphed over barbarism, they ask. Have we clipped its talons for good? Have we accomplished everything the Creator has ordained for us to accomplish? Will the barbarians return to torment us? How can we justify our existence, our civilisational identity, if we do not constantly affirm, in word and deed, our superiority and their inferiority?
We live in a time of drunkards staggering around parroting slogans about “civilisation” and “barbarism”, and their bedfellows “antisemitism”, “terrorism”, and “the defence of sacred values”, along with other depictions of the civilised and the barbaric. Since I am classified as a barbarian, I find myself comforted by a feeling that I belong to the group causing unease among the people of civilization. So come, barbarians, let’s proclaim:
Death to civilization! Long live the barbarians!
This is an edited translation of an article originally published in Arabic.
Be the first to comment