Ismail often wondered what his mother might have accomplished if she had been born into a different culture, a different era, a different country. They had a running joke between them: when she shared her opinions about the world with Ismail, and he complimented her intelligence, she held up her thumb and pointer finger as if to measure a tiny sliver of air. “If only I had the tiniest bit of education—just this much—I would have been unstoppable,” she would say.
Hajja flew in a plane only twice in her life: to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to perform the Hajj—the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca—and to Italy, an hour-long flight over the Mediterranean, to visit her sister whose husband worked briefly at the Libyan embassy in Rome. She spent her first day ever outside Libya wandering down narrow Italian cobblestone streets. When she grew tired, she squatted down on the sidewalk and drew her thin cloth over her head to rest. A few moments later she heard a sound like a tiny metallic raindrop—plink—hitting the ground nearby. Then another, and another. A few coins rolled across the cobblestone and settled near her feet, and she realized that the Italians walking past assumed she was a beggar. When Hajja told me this story, she slapped her hand on her thigh, threw her head back, and laughed, her gold tooth glinting in the light.
Late one evening, exhausted and jet-lagged, I excused myself from a large social gathering in the main room and retreated to Hajja’s bedroom, where I lay down on a thin cushion on the floor. Just as I closed my eyes, the door squeaked open and she padded quietly into the room. Her joints creaked and popped as she gathered her dress around her and lowered herself to the ground by my head. I opened my eyes to see her smiling at me from only inches away.
A rush of panic came over me as I squeezed my eyes shut. The strange language, the foreign smells and tastes, the social gatherings that lasted longer than a full workday—these aspects of Libya I had been able to handle. But a mother-in-law who sat only inches from my face watching me sleep—this I did not think I could bear. In my family, we considered personal space to be sacred. At family gatherings we tiptoed carefully around one another, ever fearful of becoming an imposition. Firmly believing the adage that fish and visitors stank after three days, we limited our visits to weekends—even when we flew across the entire country to see one another, even when we hadn’t seen one another in months. As guests in one another’s homes, we pounced on the first opportunity to clean a dish or clear a table, anything to minimize the burden of our presence. And we never, ever opened closed doors.
After a few moments, I heard a long sigh and the soft rustling of cloth. I opened my eyes to see Hajja first rubbing her tired eyes and then tugging loose the thin head scarf she had worn since my arrival. She swept it from her head, and long, spindly strands of hair came tumbling down around her face. To my great surprise, her hair was an electric red—a rich, playful, utterly unexpected color. Noticing my wide-eyed look of surprise, Hajja began to laugh—an explosive cackle that opened up her face and shook her pendulous breasts in her lap. Pointing to her hair, she repeated one of the few Arabic words I understood: henna. I nodded and reached out to touch a long strand that had fallen across her shoulder. Her hair was as silken as a child’s. I wrapped a strand around my fingers while Hajja held my gaze, smiling. All my awkwardness, all my resistance to the strange and relentless intimacy of this place, disappeared.
During my last week in Libya, my sisters-in-law insisted on dressing me in traditional clothing. With my eyes closed, I felt fingertips sweep through my hair as someone brushed it; I felt warm breath on my cheek as someone else stroked eyeshadow gently over my lids. My sisters-in-law spent hours decorating my feet and hands with intricate henna designs. No one stopped to answer a text message, make a phone call, or check email. No one grew antsy because she needed to run errands or get to the gym or have time to herself. Each gave her time and attention lavishly, as if these precious resources flowed through her blood like the oil that coursed beneath the Libyan desert. I drank in the intimacy in the room, and it warmed me from the inside, loosened the tension in my neck, turned time into something warm and fluid, in which I was completely submerged.
Seeing the faces of my sisters-in-law crowded around mine, I was overcome for the first time with envy. I could not imagine living as they did, confined mostly to their homes and subject to the will of their husbands—and yet I ached for the intimacy they shared, for their selfless generosity, for their abiding faith and the slow pace of their daily lives, devoid of my typically American concerns: balancing career and family, saving for retirement, trying to stay fit and thin. They would never experience the freedoms I enjoyed, but neither would they have to correspond with their closest relatives by email from thousands of miles away. They would never negotiate eight weeks’ maternity leave with a boss who viewed that arrangement as generous or leave their tiny babies with a stranger for eight hours while they sat in an office across town. They would never worry that the lines on their face made them less marketable in a tough economy. They would never know the persistent sense of failure or the creeping despair that comes from doggedly chasing the elusive dream that women can be everything at once: sexy and youthful, independent and financially successful, extraordinary mothers and wives.
They turned me in circles, wrapping stiff, gold-embroidered cloth around my body, then covered my head in even more cloth and girded my neck with an ornate gold necklace that hung all the way to my waist. I liked to wear clothes that showed off my best features (long legs, narrow waist) and minimized my worst ones (small chest, big bottom). But beneath these concealing layers of cloth, my body was no longer divided into good and bad parts; it was a seamless whole. I had always equated feeling sexy with feeling beautiful, but swaddled in this material I felt entirely different: hidden and safe.
When Ismail stepped into the room, I felt silly and self-conscious, as if I were in costume, but his face registered awe, not amusement. “You look beautiful,” he whispered. How could I, when there was so little of me to be seen? But when my sisters-in-law led me to a mirror, I understood what he meant: All that colorful, shimmering cloth caught the light as it fell sensually to the floor, and in the midst of it my face shone as fresh and inviting as a blossoming flower. With no other part of my body to appraise, I met my own gaze in the mirror. I barely recognized my expression: not the anxious frown of a tourist but the relaxed smile of someone who felt at home.
16 Escape
Though my in-laws did everything they could to make me feel welcome in their homes, I would never be at ease in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. Entering the country was like stepping inside the ransacked home of an abuser, where suffering was written on the faces of everyone I saw. Everything showed signs of neglect: the sidewalks strewn with trash, the potholes big enough to swallow a tire, the buildings whose gaping window frames offered no protection from the wind. Those who live in a violent home know that a separate weather system exists beneath its roof; it sits under a gathering storm cloud even when the sun is shining. Those who live under a tyrant learn to tread lightly and to sniff the air for the scent of danger: muscles quivering and tensed for flight, studying the faces of loved ones for signs of peril. In Gaddafi’s Libya, people inhaled fear along with oxygen, and as it saturated their bloodstream, it caused paranoid, racing thoughts; a disorienting lethargy; and a tendency to choke on words. There was no escape from the heavy weight of oppression.
My chest had tightened as soon as I saw the towering portrait of Gaddafi as I exited the plane. In his 1970s-era sunglasses, with what looked like a coonskin cap on his head and a flowing scarf around his neck, he loomed so high above us that we stared up into his broad nostrils on our way to customs. Ismail translated the Arabic inscription beneath the portrait for me: BROTHER GADDAFI, OUR SOULS BELONG TO YOU.
“You must understand, Krista,” my brother-in-law Adel explained later, as we stepped gingerly over patches of crabgrass in an abandoned field near his home, “this country has been run by a psychotic leader for so long that all Libyans suffer
from mental illness.” Ahead of us, Aliya hid in a small cluster of palm trees—the closest thing to a playground we could find. Adel spoke more freely in that barren field than he did in the privacy of his own home--as if his words were too dangerous to be uttered inside. “Our mental illness comes from having to tell so many lies to ourselves and others just to survive another day,” he said. Even the smallest criticisms of the regime led to disappearances, prolonged incarceration without legal representation, or torture. An enormous amount of pretending was required to try to lead a normal life.
A gaunt man with square, outdated glasses and the broad, lopsided smile of a boy, Adel was an electrical engineer who worked for the military. The best year of his life, he said, was the one he spent in the former Yugoslavia, pursuing his master’s degree. On our first night at his home, he showed us pictures of his simple, well-lit apartment in Belgrade, with its kitchen cabinets full of food; the manicured parks in which he and his new young wife strolled each weekend; the beautiful, well-maintained architecture of the city. His favorite stories about Yugoslavia recalled freedoms so familiar to me that I no longer recognized them as such: the dinner parties they hosted for Yugoslavian friends, during which heated political debates took place at the table and laughter filled their apartment until late into the night; the evenings his wife slipped out of the apartment to wander the city alone and clear her head. At thirty-six, Adel had only one dream: to experience life outside Libya once more. But like an old man who mumbles wistfully about the past, he spoke as if he knew his dream was beyond reach.
In spite of everything Libyans had lost during more than four decades of Gaddafi’s brutal reign—freedom of speech and movement, freedom to access basic goods or to improve one’s life—they remained rich in their connections to one another. The day we had arrived in Ismail’s hometown, a steady stream of friends and family passed through my father-in-law’s home, warmly welcoming Ismail and inspecting his American wife and daughter. And each day we were there, many more neighbors and relatives visited. Yet Gaddafi had turned their most precious resource against them: every Libyan knew that to speak out against Gaddafi was to put loved ones in Libya at risk, which is why even Libyans living abroad were afraid to challenge the regime. There was nowhere on earth they could escape their bondage to Gaddafi.
In the evenings Adel played me his favorite music: Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Kenny Rogers. As we listened to country music, Adel told me stories about his life. He loved to watch my brow furrow in confusion or my eyes widen with disbelief as he described life under “the brother leader.” Maybe it was a relief for him to see the truth written across my face.
Take his story of purchasing a car. One Friday afternoon, an announcement was made at the military office where he worked: any employee who wanted to purchase a vehicle must bring a down payment of two thousand dinars to his or her supervisor the following Monday, because the government was expecting a shipment of cars from across the Mediterranean. Like most of his colleagues, Adel had nowhere near enough money, so he spent his weekend frantically contacting friends and family, securing small cash loans for this rare opportunity. On Monday morning he handed his supervisor a thick envelope stuffed with cash.
Two years later, when the long-awaited car shipment finally arrived, he spent a day at the port watching other government employees drive away in gleaming new Volkswagen Jettas, until there were no more cars to be distributed. A year after that he was summoned back to the port and presented with a shiny red Tata—the Indian version of a Yugo—a car not much bigger than a golf cart. He never asked why it took more than three years for his car to arrive or why some colleagues who paid the same amount as he did received a Jetta. To inquire about the injustice would have been unwise.
As his story drew to a close, Adel began to laugh at my shocked expression. His wife, Fauziya, joined in, and so did Ismail. They held their foreheads and chuckled, their laughter increasing each time they caught my gaze, until their bellies shook and their eyes watered. Pretty soon I was laughing, too—but my amusement was barbed with guilt and sorrow, because I knew it wouldn’t be long before I would return to my hometown, where car dealerships lined the freeway and I could purchase almost any make or model I wanted for no money down. Adel and his family would remain in Libya, with his tiny Tata locked up in his garage, this car he could not afford to drive except on special occasions because his only investment in his family’s future was to sell it as a rare commodity in Libya.
Gaddafi followed me everywhere I went—peering down from billboards lining the highway, dangling from the rearview mirror of taxis, accosting me in hotel lobbies and restaurants. Each street was marked with Gaddafi’s signature green: doors, lampposts, window frames of otherwise stately buildings that recalled Italy’s colonial presence. At a museum filled with artifacts of the Roman Empire, I found a marble bust of Gaddafi standing conspicuously beside one of a Roman emperor. One day, as we passed a large mural bearing his profile, my daughter turned to me abruptly. “Is that man a movie star?” she asked, pointing to his cartoonish face. Then she screwed up her face with distaste. “I’m glad we don’t have that movie star at home, Mom. He’s not handsome at all—and he doesn’t look funny, either.”
Later, Ismail translated as I shared this story with my mother-in-law. We were seated on the floor drinking syrupy green tea; only the four of us were at home. Her hand flew reflexively to her face to hide her smile, and then, for the only time during our visit, she fixed me with a severe expression. In a forceful whisper, with her finger pressed to her lips, she admonished me to never, ever speak this way in Libya again.
When Ismail asked me what I thought of his homeland, I tried to choose my words carefully, knowing how much he loved this country and its people, how desperately he wanted me to see its beauty. He’d told me stories about the pristine beaches of his hometown, but all I saw were decrepit buildings along a littered coastline. He’d told me stories about celebrations that filled the streets, about falling asleep to the sound of drumming and chanting, about women who cooked feasts big enough to feed an entire village. But I saw only barren homes, empty cabinets lacking basic necessities, and subdued women. So I learned to lie. I never admitted that the country he loved existed only in his imagination or that I could not find a moment of peace in Gaddafi’s shadow or that his family’s desperate generosity filled me with sadness. I never told Ismail that under Gaddafi his homeland had become a prison, and that as long as he remained in power, I never wanted to return to this country. How could I tell him I would not allow his children to maintain a relationship with their Libyan family?
Ismail’s passport was finally returned to us. After Ismail had spent weeks inquiring with government officials, his brother showed up one day and handed it over, never explaining its disappearance or how it had arrived on his doorstep. The day before we left Libya, Ismail’s mother and sisters sat in a tight circle and wailed as if they were at a funeral. Their tears flowed on and on, and I knew that as much as they loved us, they were grieving for themselves as well. The next day we would pack our suitcases, flash our passports, and soar away to a different world, abandoning them to this one. Though I tried to conceal my feelings, I couldn’t wait to leave; in spite of their extraordinary hospitality, ever since we had arrived in this country, I had felt increasingly desperate to escape.
The morning of our flight, Adel and Fauziya stood outside their home, their arms crossed against their chests, their shoulders curled inward. I did not want to say good-bye, so instead I told them I would see them in Europe one day; that we would reunite in the former Yugoslavia and they would guide me through the streets of Belgrade. Adel smiled weakly, and then he reached out for Fauziya and clung to her as if, without her support, the slightest wind could topple him.
None of us dreamed that morning that Adel would leave Libya in only a few short years. The last time I spoke to him, over the crackling of a faulty phone line, he told me he had been ill for quite some time. Several Lib
yan doctors had failed to diagnose his cancer, and in spite of the country’s massive oil wealth, Libyan medical facilities were not equipped to provide the treatment he needed. He spent the following months navigating the Libyan bureaucracy, filing paperwork for a travel visa, awaiting permission to travel, and preparing to undergo chemotherapy abroad. By the time he finally arrived in Jordan several months later, found an apartment, and began treatment, it was too late for him. Just before he died, he’d been trying to get back to Libya to spend his last days with those he loved.
The morning we left Libya, we said good-bye to Ismail’s family in the crowded living room of his parents’ home. Only his father followed us out to the narrow dirt alley behind his house, where a taxi idled beside a concrete wall, waiting to take us to the airport. He was wrapped in a long white cloth like a toga, its bright white hem floating inches above the mud. He had just returned from the mosque. He put his hand over his heart to say good-bye and then, as we squeezed into the backseat of the taxi, he leaned down at the open window and began to chant in a low murmur. “He’s praying for our protection,” Ismail whispered beside me. His blessing hung in the air between us, and I imagined it drifting back out the open window and staying behind with our loved ones in Libya.
My Accidental Jihad Page 14