Gaddafi's Harem

by Cojean, Annick

  Once again I was on the street. I didn’t know who else I could turn to. I thought of the Egyptian man. He welcomed me into the large apartment that he shared with several other people. He asked me no questions, but I felt ill at ease. I was dead weight. What was my future? What space could I expect to fill in Paris? I hadn’t learned any French. My papers weren’t in order and I ran the risk of being stopped at any time. I was not settling anything. That’s when Hicham phoned. Just seeing his name on my cell phone gave me a smidgen of hope. He was thinking about me at the very moment the bottom was falling out for me. “When are you coming?” I asked. “I need you!”

  “Never, you hear? Never! You couldn’t even manage to be faithful to me!”

  I was shattered and called my mother: “Everything is your fault! My life is in shambles. I’m totally lost, Mama. Lost! I don’t know what to do, whom to trust, or where to go. I’m screwed. All because of you.”

  “Because of me?”

  “I wouldn’t have left if you’d accepted Hicham!”

  “Oh, Soraya, don’t say such foolish things. Just come home. France isn’t working out for you. Come back to us.”

  The thought of going back to Libya hadn’t even crossed my mind. Go back home? But I wasn’t a tourist; I wasn’t even a willing emigrant! I was on the run! And sought by one of the most powerful men in the world. It was all very well and good to let my aggression out on Mama, but the real reason for my departure was Gaddafi.

  “But coming back would be so risky, Mama. They’ll come and look for me. They’ll never leave me in peace.”

  “We’ll figure out a way to hide you. Your father had some trouble, but you can live with me in Sirte. At first they were really looking for you constantly, but I think they’ve calmed down. I don’t want you being miserable in Paris.”

  And so my decision was made. In just a few seconds. Based on what passed through my head and a moment of the blues. I had no way of making a living in France; the country fascinated me but it wasn’t my home. I didn’t even know any French! I went to see Warda, who agreed I should go. But she did warn me: since my visa had expired I would need to pay a huge fine at the airport. To help me out, she called a friend who was a police officer at Roissy–Charles de Gaulle Airport. Three days later I would give him fifteen hundred euros so I wouldn’t be prohibited from coming back into French territory again—at least that’s how I understood it. Fortunately, Mama had sent me two thousand euros the night before.

  On May 26, 2010, I took a plane back to Libya with an almost empty suitcase. Very few clothes, not a single book, not even a photograph. I had nothing left from the fifteen months I’d spent in the City of Light. Not even the small portrait some illustrator had made of me one spring evening at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, which Adel had kept as a souvenir.

  10

  COGWHEELS

  No one was waiting for me at the Tripoli airport. I’d been very careful not to alert anyone at all. Not a single acquaintance in the arrival hall. No suspicious looks from any soldier or police officer. I was coming back incognito. Perhaps Bab al-Azizia had lowered its guard.

  I called Hicham, who was blown away. “You’re here? In Libya? Stay where you are, I’m on my way!” He came charging over in a 4x4 with two friends. He came out smiling and took my small case. Being affectionate or embracing in public was out of the question. But when I looked at Hicham, I immediately felt more confident. He had put on a bit of weight and seemed slightly older than I remembered him, and that made him all the more reassuring. We went to the same bungalow one of his friends had lent us before and talked things through. He had harsh words to explain how disappointed he was in me for having lived with another man in Paris. “He was just a friend,” I insisted.

  “Friendship is not possible between a man and a woman!”

  There you had it. Typical Libyan male. Then he told me that the people from Bab al-Azizia had come looking for me at his parents’ house. That they had imprisoned his brother while he himself had gone to Tunisia. That he had been the target of all sorts of harassment: he had received death threats, his telephone had been bugged, he had been tailed. He’d been denounced at work, and our relationship, widely known, had now earned him the label “lover of one of Gaddafi’s whores.” Even his close friends told him that he really couldn’t marry a slut.

  Then I grew scared. What about my parents? What had been done to them? What sorts of pressure, threats, punishments? Too busy with my own struggle to survive, I’d neglected them. How had the Guide made them pay for letting me escape? I wanted to see them right away. “Take me back to the airport,” I said to Hicham. “I will call my parents and tell them I’ve just landed.”

  We drove in silence. From time to time he threw me a few sad glances, but I was absorbed in my own thoughts. How could I imagine that Bab al-Azizia would ever leave us alone? I called my parents, who were also astonished at my unexpected return, and then I sat down in the arrivals hall to wait for them. That’s where I suddenly ran into Amal G., who was leaving for Tunisia with her older sister.

  “Soraya! What a surprise! Where are you going? I heard you were in Paris.”

  “Not at all!”

  “Don’t lie to me. I did my investigating. I met Hicham, and a friend at the airport told me you had left.”

  “So much for solidarity!”

  “You’re wrong. I kept my information to myself. But you can imagine how furious Mabrouka and Muammar are . . .”

  Papa arrived with my little sister, whom I hadn’t seen in a very long time. He admitted that Bab al-Azizia had looked for me relentlessly and put all kinds of pressure on him to find me. But he said nothing more. Theoretically, my little sister wasn’t supposed to know anything and Papa was more preoccupied with what I would tell my brother Aziz, who had just come back from England. The most important thing was for me to stick to my story—I was coming back from a lengthy stay in Tunisia with my uncles and aunts.

  When we were alone, he gave free rein to his anger and bitterness: “Why did you come back? Why are you here sticking yourself in the lion’s maw? Why, Soraya? I was ready to take any risk, ready to die so you could be saved. But here there’s nothing I can do to protect you. Nothing, and that makes me crazy! I managed to find you shelter in a free country and you ruined your chance. It’s madness to come back to Libya. Madness to expose yourself to the insanities of Bab al-Azizia!”

  Very early the next morning we drove to Sirte. We said very little during the four- or five-hour journey. I could see that my father was still angry. We found Mama in her hair salon, where she took me in her arms. “You’ve lost weight. You’ve become very beautiful . . .” Stepping back a little, she looked at me, both my hands in hers. “But a little too tanned.” I didn’t tell her that this new color was because Warda had made me go to a tanning place just before my trip. I know Hicham hadn’t liked my new “African” complexion either.

  “You work too hard, Mama! You keep on slaving away. Why don’t you stop? You look tired.”

  “What world are you living in, Soraya? How would the family get fed? How would you have received any money in Paris if this salon weren’t here?”

  In our apartment on Dubai Street I had barely put down my suitcase when Mabrouka’s number appeared on my cell phone. It was like being stabbed with a dagger. I ignored the call. But she called back a second time, and then a third. I was terrified, feeling she was in the room with me. And finally I picked up: “Hello?”

  “Well, hello there, Princess!”

  I didn’t answer.

  “So how was your little trip to France?”

  “Who told you I was in France?”

  “You forget that we are the State. Our services know everything about you. Come to your master immediately!”

  “I am in Sirte.”

  “You’re lying! We looked for you in
Sirte.”

  “I am there right now.”

  “Fine. We, too, will be there—next week, with your master. Believe me, he will find you.”

  A few days later she phoned again. “Where are you?”

  “In my mother’s hair salon.”

  “I’m coming.”

  I’d been tracked down. There was just time enough to say a word or two to Mama, who was dismayed. She called again: “I am here. Come out right now!”

  Her car was parked in front of the salon, the back door open. I got in. The driver took off at flying speed. The nightmare was beginning all over again. I knew where we were going. I could guess what was awaiting me. But what else could I have done if I didn’t want my whole family to suffer because of me?

  Salma received me with a contemptuous smile and Fatiha grabbed my arm: “Quick, to the lab. We need a complete analysis.” I didn’t resist, didn’t protest; my urge to live had been obliterated. I’d become like a robot. They made me wait two or three hours, and then Salma snarled: “Go upstairs to your master!” He was wearing a red tracksuit, his hair was tangled, and his look was satanic. He growled: “Come here, you whore.”

  I spent the rest of the night in what had been my temporary room once before, next to Farida. I was bruised all over, bleeding, and filled with hatred. I hated myself for having come back to Libya. I really regretted not having succeeded in building a life in France. I hadn’t known how to handle myself, how to find the right people, how to land a job. It was as if from the very first day on the Champs-Elysées they had taken me for a loose woman, just an object, a whore, as Gaddafi said. As if that label were glued on my forehead. Farida began to snigger and to be deliberately annoying. “I know other girls who went abroad to be whores,” she said. “So pathetic! No honor, no loyalty, no values, no backbone. Guttersnipes who come back to see Papa with their tail between their legs.”

  I lost it. I jumped on her, hit and shook her furiously. I felt an absolute rage I’d never experienced before. I had no control over myself; I was boiling inside. Mabrouka emerged and tried to separate us, but I was like a lioness that won’t let go of its prey. I was holding on to Farida, who was crying with fear, when Mabrouka raised her voice and tried to remove me. I screamed: “Oh, you, just shut up!” It petrified her. No one had ever spoken to her like that. All the girls fell in line in front of the great mistress. Salma came running and slapped me hard across the face; the mark was visible for a long time afterward. “Who do you think you are to take that tone with Mabrouka?” I thought she’d twisted my head off.

  They led me through a maze of unfamiliar hallways to a tiny, dark, disgusting room, without a window or air conditioner, although it was almost a hundred degrees. A musty smell almost suffocated me and there were cockroaches. I sobbed, tore my hair out until I had no strength left, and then collapsed on the straw mattress.

  A few hours later Fatiha opened the door: “Your master wants you.” I went upstairs to find Farida nestled against the Guide, with her head on his torso, which she was caressing and kissing. She moaned: “Soraya is mean and she’s crazy. If you had only seen, Master, how she hit me!” Directing his gaze at me, he said to her: “Go ahead, whore. You may give her a smack back.” She leaped at me and gave me two. “Let go! I told you one only!” He dismissed her with his madman’s eyes and turned to me: “Ah, I like that! You are a wild beast. Oh, I really like that, that fury inside you! That passion!” He ripped off my clothes and threw me on the bed.

  “I beg you! Don’t do anything to me, I’m in too much pain! I beg you!”

  “She’s fighting back, the tigress! I like this new temperament. So it was France, eh, that gave you this rage!”

  Since I was bleeding profusely, he took the red towel to catch the blood: “This is good. Oh, this is really good!” “Stop,” I screamed. “Please, I beg of you! I am in too much pain!” He pulled me to the shower and urinated on me. I was hollering in agony. He rang the bell and a Ukrainian nurse came in. Claudia. A busty redhead with the face of an angel. She took me to the laboratory and gave me painkillers and a soothing lotion. Her gestures were unerring; she was used to this part of the job. I wanted to go back to my room but had to turn around to avoid a large delegation of Africans who had come to meet with the Guide in his tent.

  The next day everyone was supposed to leave for Tripoli. I planted myself in front of Mabrouka, knowing something was broken deep inside of me. I felt hard and rigid now.

  “I’m staying. I am sick. Going with you is out of the question.”

  “You’ve become hardheaded, arrogant, and intolerable. You’re not worth anything anymore. Go home to your mother!”

  Salma tossed me a thousand dinars, as if to a whore after her work is done. “Get the hell out! The driver is waiting!”

  I dashed into the car. My phone showed about a dozen calls from Hicham. And a message: “If you don’t answer it’s because you’re with the other one. He will always triumph. I have no desire whatsoever to have such a squalid affair. I’d rather break it off.” I opened the window and threw out my cell phone.

  They dropped me off at home and I found my mother there. She, too, had tried to reach me and seemed at the end of her rope.

  “I have to change my life, Mama,” I told her. “I have to start from scratch. Bab al-Azizia, Hicham—that’s all over and done with.”

  “Hicham? You saw that guy again? You lied to me again?”

  “Mama! That ‘guy’ is the one who gave me the strength to survive. I will never forget that.”

  Mama gave me a disgusted look. As if suddenly I was the guilty one and not the victim any longer. As if Hicham and Gaddafi belonged to the same perverted universe. It was unbearable.

  The atmosphere at home was becoming heavily charged. My mere presence exasperated my mother. No longer was I her daughter—I was a woman who’d been touched by men and lost all her value. Her looks, her sighs, her thoughts—everything screamed of my guilt in her eyes. But she kept herself from stating what was on her mind, until one day she let all her resentment explode: “I can’t take it anymore. We have no life this way. Your father and I don’t deserve this. Nor do your brothers! The whole family has become a target of ridicule for the neighborhood.”

  “Who are you talking about? If people know anything it’s because you told them!”

  “They’re not stupid, Soraya! Everyone has noticed the merry-go-round—your disappearance, the dance of cars from Bab al-Azizia. What a disgrace! We used to be a respectable family but now we have to hug the walls. It’s too much to bear—such a waste!”

  I preferred the idea of going back to Tripoli with Papa. The city was bigger and I’d feel a little less stifled. Hicham tried to get in touch again. He turned up in front of the house, honked his horn, then called me, putting his hands around his mouth like a loudspeaker. I was afraid of the neighbors’ reactions and preferred calling him from my new phone. But what was the point in seeing him? Why risk exposing him to the wrath of Gaddafi and his henchmen? I knew they were perfectly capable of killing for less than what he’d done.

  When Mama came to Tripoli for Friday, the day of prayer, in confidence I gently hinted at a problem I was having with my chest. Because they had been pushed, crushed, and bitten, my breasts were drooping and very painful. I was twenty-one years old and had the chest of an old lady. It threw her into a spin. I had to see a doctor, of course. Find a specialist. In Tunisia, of course. She gave me four thousand dinars and arranged for me to travel to Tunis with my little brother. A respectable young woman never travels alone, after all.

  When I came home, another ordeal was awaiting me: Aziz was about to get married to a young girl from Sirte. I should have been happy—wedding celebrations are joyful occasions, where new encounters can take place. Every girl my age loves them. You get dressed up, have your hair done, put on makeup. You meet a cousin for the fi
rst time . . . it’s a place to be seen . . . But that was just it: how could I not dread the looks, questions, rumors that my absence must have aroused at previous family gatherings? I was growing anxious. And then, I was jealous as well, why not just admit it? The young bride would be a virgin, beautiful and respected, whereas I felt completely dried up.

  At the wedding, I acted restrained, tried not to be noticed. Mama was appalled that I didn’t want to wear a long dress. I preferred a pretty colored shirt over a pair of elegant black jeans. I served everyone unobtrusively and had my answers ready for the inevitable questions: I’d been in school in Tripoli, then to the university to study dentistry. Yes, everything was fine. Would I get married? One day, of course . . . “I have a husband for you,” some of the aunts then whispered. It made me smile. I had saved the day.

  In Tripoli life went back to its routine. Aziz came back to live there with his wife. They took the large bedroom and I had to pretend to be a little girl again. All the more so because my brother began to play the role of head of the family, horrified by my cigarettes—which I smoked only in the bathroom ­anyway—and often ready to hit me. I didn’t recognize him. And he must have felt the same way. On several occasions a driver from Bab al-Azizia came to pick me up, but he left without me. They said I wasn’t there. I was surprised that they weren’t more persistent.