VV (19) Suez

[Wolfgang Karrer]

Johnny's reflections may not be paranoic, Suez not seismic, but
"everybody's fault."
Pappy Hod and the drinking take us back to chapter one: the whole
drinking crew continues in blissful ignorance of what has been brewing
since Xmas 1955.
The Suez Crisis does not begin with the Dog Days in chapter ten, only
Benny and his friends, including Sten, ignore the present political
"situation" (a Stencil word) because they cannot connect the past with
the present, or the US with (de)colonization. Chapter one refers to
DEsDiv 22, US Scaffold (also: a platform for the execution of
criminals), minesweeper Impulsive, Seventh Fleet, Algeria, Arabs in
Israel, the Hagana etc. Nobody sees the warnings in 1955, nobody
remenbers them October 31, 1956. The Suez Crisis has been building all
year, but nobody cares.

Here is my proposition (how much of it has been said before?):
The Suez Crisis ends what the Fashoda Crisis began: a confrontation of
colonial powers over Africa and the Mediterranean, including Malta. If
we do not consider the past as a hothouse, a closed system, a woman, a
collection of inanimate things like Stencil, then the Suez crisis
mirror-times the Fashoda Crisis, Fashoda the June Disturbances, those
the Herero Risings etc.
Suez references begin in chapter three (the night train to Suez). Things
in the night are not so unknown. Who built the train?
"Somebody's fault" challenges us to read Suez as a geological disaster,
or blame it on Sirius OR colonial politics. V. a postcolonial novel?
Wolf