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bastard time to organize his fleet, the day will be long, the opening of the Gulf of Patras sparkles due east in the rising sun, it has become a deadly trap where 208 Turkish galleys and the 120 light vessels that accompany them are enclosed, carrying 50,000 sailors and 27,000 soldiers, janissaries, spahis, volunteers, in twelve hours 30,000 corpses or over 1,800 tons of flesh and blood will have joined the fish in the peaceful blue water, I told Ghassan about the Battle of Lepanto when we visited the arsenal of Venice the tranquil warrior, which without a qualm would negotiate a separate peace with the Ottomans a few years later, thus putting an end to that famous Holy League commanded by Don John of Austria the first bastard of Charles V, hard to imagine the foul smell spread by 500 galleys and their slaves, the illnesses, the parasites, the vermin they transported, the first cannon thunder around nine in the morning, average speed five knots, let’s not rush ourselves, let’s try to preserve marching orders, in the rearguard on board the Marquesa Cervantes is feverish, in bed, he insists on taking part in the battle, on deck—better to die standing up in the open air than be drowned or burned alive in a fetid forehold, Cervantes goes back to his arquebus, the enemy galleys are a few miles in front of him, behind the center of the Christian camp where the Austrian’s flagship sits in state, it fires a cannon and raises its flag to identify itself, the Turkish standard-bearing vessel the Sultana with Ali Pasha on board does the same, customs are chivalrous, men less so, before long they’ll massacre each other forgetting all the courtesies of war, already the Venetian galleys, veritable battleships of the time, loftier and better armed, break the Turkish central lines and cause terrible damage, it is 11:15 in the morning, the Christian left wing is under fire and seems on the point of being turned round, Barbarigo its commander is hit with an arrow in his eye, his nephew and officer Contarini is already dead, sunk with the Santa Maria Maddalena—on the right, facing Andrea Doria the clever condottiere, Uluj Pasha moves to the south, so as not to be outmaneuvered Doria follows him, leaving a void in the line of defense, the galleys of the rearguard advance to fill it, from his arquebus Cervantes sees Don Álvaro de Bazán give the orders: the oarsmen strike the flat sea, the speed increases to ten knots, in a few minutes there will be a confrontation with the Turkish galleys that have detached from Uluj Pasha’s squadron, already the arrows are flying, grapeshot too, at the very instant Cervantes fires his arquebus at the Turkish soldiers fallen into the sea I empty my glass of wine, like Captain Haddock right in the middle of the adventures of the knight François his ancestor, and Ghassan begs me to continue, how was Cervantes wounded, what was the outcome of the battle, despite being Christian he can’t help but be on the side of the Ottomans, which after all is understandable but soon the Turkish center will collapse, the head of Ali Pasha will adorn the galley of Don John, that of Murat Dragut will follow, already their right flank is nothing but a memory, the galleys are captured one by one by the Venetian fleet, boarded in a wild melee, driven against the coast and bombarded from the shore, the Turkish archers confront the muskets and cannons of La Serenissima and Don John of Austria, from the height of his twenty-five years and all his nobility, sees with pleasure the fire and battle on the Sultana whose escort his galleys destroy vessel by vessel, the Christian slaves suddenly freed gather together the scuttling axes and massacre their former masters with fury, Uluj Pasha the infidel has seized the standard-bearing vessel of the Knights of Malta, Don Álvaro de Bazán’s squadron launches forward to free it, on the Marquesa Cervantes the artilleryman loads his weapon in the company of five soldiers, he aims it at the galley of Saïd Ali Raïs the pirate from Algiers, without knowing that a few years later their fates would cross again, conversely, that Cervantes would be imprisoned and at the mercy of the corsair noble, already near the center of the battle cries of victory resound, the surviving Turkish galleys are trying to escape, one of the vessels opens fire on the Marquesa to free Saïd Ali, a volley of grapeshot sweeps the top of the deck where the weapons are in battery, and a shard of wood penetrates Cervantes’s wrist, slices a nerve and deprives him forever of the use of his left hand, for the greater glory of the right—what would have happened if the Muslim gunner hadn’t had the noon sun in his eyes, if Cervantes had passed away, anonymous on a forgotten galley, erased by the Glory of Don John of Austria, he would no doubt have been replaced, if there is always someone to take over a cannon there will also be someone to take up a pen and a knight of mournful countenance, his brother Rodrigo who knows, his brother whom the subsequent good fortune of the author of Don Quixote has crossed out of history, I imagine he would have related his elder brother’s death with panache, and today, on the ferries that go to Patras from Italy, Bari, or Brindisi, loudspeakers would point out to passengers the monument to the older brother of the one who imagined the old sailor crazy with pirate tales, on board a galley whose name I prefer to forget, and so on, soldiers are for the most part unknown, where are the names of the 30,000 drowned, burned, decapitated men of Lepanto, where is the name of the one whose teeth and skull almost killed Ghassan, who knows the name of the Turkish soldier who was on the verge, without realizing it, of changing the course of Western literature and who died in Smyrna or Constantinople, still trembling with rage about the memory of the disaster of Lepanto, mustache in his gruel—at 7:00 p.m. on that October 7, 1571 the Turkish spoils and the Christian armada are sheltered in the cove of Porta Petala, Don John of Austria has an immense Te Deum chanted in the starry night, the Muslim is defeated, the Turk conquered, the allies of the Holy League sing of the glory of God and their captain, that young twenty-five-year-old imperial bastard who has just won the most important naval battle since Actium in 31 BC: a few miles north of Lepanto, in those same waters ruled by Poseidon, the fate of the world has already been played out once before, the divine Antony and Cleopatra the Egyptian confronted Octavian the landowner, the two former triumvirs threw their fleets and their gods into battle, Isis and Anubis against Venus and Neptune, another battle between East and West, between North and South, without anyone knowing very clearly who the barbarians were: all these stories fascinated Ghassan, he swallowed Christian propaganda and was pleased to believe that the Lebanese were Phoenicians, descendants of worshipers of Astarte and Baal, originally from Byblos he imagined his ancestors like himself, cultivated, cosmopolitan, tradesmen, great founders of cities, Carthage and Leptis Magna, Larnaka and Malaga, great navigators and formidable fighters, whose elephants crossed the Alps: Hannibal son of Hamilcar the tamer of warriors first conquered the Romans in Ticino and wounded Scipio the horseman his enemy—out the window, as the Po plain stretches out to the outskirts of Piacenza, a hundred kilometers from Milan, I wonder if I’ll see one of Hannibal’s elephants, who died of cold and of their wounds after having crushed the Roman legions a few kilometers away from here, in Trebbia, in the course of that Battle of Trebbia where 20,000 legionaries and foreign auxiliaries of the Roman army perished, 20,000 corpses looted by the locals—beneath the sediments of the river, beneath the dead of one of Bonaparte’s first battles in Italy, beneath the tons of dust borne by time are the skeletons of pachyderms who were victorious over the Romans but conquered by snow, abundant this year too, I want to ask my neighbor if he knows that there are elephant bones buried right next to us, he never looks out the window, he is content to drowse over his magazine, one December day similar perhaps to this one in 218 BC, the day of the winter solstice says Livy the scholar, 80,000 men 20,000 horses and thirty elephants clashed: Livy the precise counts the legions, centuries, cohorts of horsemen, names the leaders of each troop, the ones who won glory for themselves and the ones who deserved shame, he describes Hannibal the stubborn who, after over fifteen years of war on Roman soil, didn’t manage to wrest surrender from the senate or the people of Rome, despite a series of massacres that are unique in ancient history: in Tunis near Carthage sitting in the Porte de France I order an espresso that they call here a direct as I read the paper, in 1996 I paused for a few days in Tunisia to meet Algerians in exile there, within the framework as they say of my new functions, I visit residential and seaside Carthage, cluttered with luxury villas, in Megara, Hamilcar’s gardens are still planted with sycamores, vines, eucalyptus, and especially jasmine, with my source, a friendly reformed bearded man, we stroll along the beach, I think about the Carthaginian vessels come from Sicily, Spain, or the Levant that landed there, acceding to the war orders of the senate inflamed by the memory of the Roman dead at the Battle of Cannae, then they decided to reduce it to ashes, Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, and nothing more, Cato the Elder the gravedigger of Carthage certainly wore a beard, like my repentant Algerian Islamist who rounded out his monthly paycheck by snitching, in the name of the Good, on his former comrades who had strayed from the path of God, on the wrong path, Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, there are always
