The Kidnapped Child

Resurrecting North African Ghosts in the Archives of the Greek Sponge Divers

This paper is an act of necromancy. It resurrects three Arab “ghosts” who force us to confront the historical erasures inscribed in the idea of modern Greece.

The first ghost is that of a Libyan Muslim boy who was kidnapped by a Greek sponge captain off the coast of Cyrenaica in 1882. Culling archival sources in Ottoman, Greek, and Arabic, I frame this kidnapping within the widespread transformations in global commodities that transformed the lives, and deaths, of the peoples who fished for sedentary marine animals like the pearl, the coral, and the sponge. Desperate to pay back mounting debts to new investors, the renowned Greek sponge divers of the Dodecanese plunged both deeper — often to their deaths — and farther, becoming ever more dependent on the ecologies of Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia.

The second ghost is that of the Libyan fisher that this kidnapped boy might have grown up to become. Drawing on Libyan archival documents found within the archives of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I demonstrate how even as the Greek sponge industry’s dependence on North African ecology intensified, the interests and existence of North African fishermen was repeatedly denied.

The third ghost is the haunting of Libya itself in the imaginary of the modern Dodecanese. Using interviews I conducted with descendants of the Greek sponge captain who kidnapped the Libyan child, I demonstrate how the present-day insistence that this child was always Greek, never Libyan reflects a wider refusal to acknowledge what is “Arab” about the Mediterranean.

This seminar is co-sponsored by the Program in Hellenic Studies. Registration closes at NOON on Wednesday, January 22nd. If you do not have a Columbia ID, you will receive a QR code to access Faculty House.