Then I made the mistake that destroyed my mother’s trust in me once and for all. I used Bab al-Azizia as a cover for slipping away with Hicham for a few days at the end of the year 2010. Really ironic, isn’t it? I used a phone call from Mabrouka as an excuse and said to my mother: “I’ll probably be three or four days.” It was abhorrent, but I had no other way to grab a little bit of freedom.
When I came home, war was declared. Bab al-Azizia had asked for me while I was away. In the eyes of my family I was truly a lost cause this time.
11
LIBERATION
On February 15, the population of Benghazi went out into the streets. It was a crowd of women. Mothers, sisters, wives of political prisoners who’d been assassinated in 1996 in the Abu Salim prison while protesting the sudden incarceration of their lawyer. The news stunned everyone, although I knew that many people in Tripoli were preparing to demonstrate two days later, on February 17, decreed the “day of anger.” This impulse of exasperation and revolt I began to sense in the people was fascinating. I had no idea what it might all lead to. Muammar seemed eternal to me, someone who could never be ousted. But in astonishment I noticed more and more demonstrations of disrespect against him. Mockery and sarcasm. People continued to be afraid, aware of the fact that he had the life and death of every Libyan in his hands. But that fear was tinged with scorn and hatred. And the people of Tripoli were expressing it more and more openly.
On February 16, driven perhaps by the budding revolution, I left the house. It was my small personal revolution. Were they seeing me as a slut? So be it. I would add some grist to their mill. I had left my family to go live with Hicham, a young man who was not my husband, something not only inconceivable but illegal in Libya, where any sexual relationship outside of marriage is strictly forbidden. But what should the law matter to me after all the violations I had seen, perpetrated by the very person who ought to personify that law? Did they dare condemn me for wanting to live with the man I loved, when the master of Libya had imprisoned and raped me for years on end?
Hicham and I moved into a little bungalow he had built himself in Enzara, in the suburbs of Tripoli. He was working for a fisherman, diving to catch octopus. I would wait for him and prepare the food. I didn’t ask for anything else. I would like to have attended the big demonstration of February 17, but that was impossible; I was too far away. And so I stayed glued to the television, where Al Jazeera was broadcasting the images of the rebellion live. I was thrilled! What a movement! What nerve! The Libyans were rebelling, Libya was waking up. Finally! I erased every number of Bab al-Azizia from my telephone. From now on they had greater emergencies to deal with than trying to find me.
And then one day, Al Jazeera showed a young woman, Inas Al-Obeidi, storming into the dining room of a luxury hotel in Tripoli where the Western press was staying, screaming that she had been raped by Gaddafi’s militia. It was an incredible scene. You could see her shout out her story as security or protocol men rushed forward to silence her. But she kept going—weeping, fighting. Journalists were trying to intervene, but in the end she was carried away forcibly, leaving the entire world speechless. Her courage astounded me. Surely, they would call her a madwoman. Or a prostitute. But she was lifting the veil from the case of thousands of women, for I didn’t doubt for a second that Gaddafi’s troops committed rape, emulating their master.
Then some friends of Hicham passed him the message that Bab al-Azizia, now on its guard, wanted to eliminate those “girls” who had become troublesome and beyond redemption. I learned that some armed men, paid by Gaddafi—the famous Kataebs—had come looking for me at home and had threatened my parents. Terrified, Mama had taken refuge in Morocco. Interrogated harshly, Papa had said that I had followed her. “Make her come home!” he’d been ordered. Some Kataebs had also gone to the house of Hicham’s parents and asked where I was. The family had answered that they didn’t know me, but Hicham was summoned to the police station there. “I need to take you to Tunisia,” he told me. “There’s not a moment to lose.”
He entrusted me to a friend who drove an ambulance and I crossed the border to meet up with my Tunisian cousins. I followed the news from Libya every single day. The NATO strikes, the advances the rebels were making, the savagery of the front lines. I was living in constant anguish and wanted to go back to Libya, but Hicham staunchly refused. He was afraid that the rebels would think me an accessory of the Gaddafi clique, a member of the first circle, which entailed suspicions of corruption and despicable conduct on my part. The thought seemed insane to me! Me, an accomplice? Me, who had been kidnapped and enslaved? Me, who, in order to set my life’s path right, had no other hope than to see Gaddafi destitute and finally judged for what he had done to me? I yelled into the phone that his fears were ridiculous and even insulting. That it was the last straw for them to liken me to the band of my torturer! Then I heard rumors that Najah and Farida had been killed. And suddenly I was frightened.
In August, as Ramadan began, I heard that a clairvoyant had predicted Gaddafi’s death and the liberation of Tripoli for February 20. So I went back home, first going to Hicham at his little bungalow. But the situation there was unbearable—there was no water, no gas, no electricity, no gasoline. The NATO strikes continued; it was total chaos. On August 8 a group of Gaddafi supporters came to ask Hicham and his brother to participate in a nighttime operation near Zawiya. I believe it had something to do with the evacuation of a family by boat, but I have to admit that I didn’t get all the details. Perhaps he didn’t want to upset me. He seemed distressed and I had the feeling that he had no choice. One evening he left and never came back.
Soon afterward I got a phone call telling me that a NATO strike had hit their boat. Shaken by the news, I rushed to Hicham’s mother’s house. She was crying and took me in her arms, although God knows she had always disapproved of our relationship. I inundated her with questions but she knew very little more than I did. The information was contradictory and patchy. All they knew was that Hicham was thought to be dead. His brother had swum for nine hours to get back to shore and was safe, though he had leg injuries. But he couldn’t tell us what had happened. Hicham was missing and probably dead, even though his body wasn’t found, unlike the others’. A funeral service was held. I was devastated.
Then came August 23 and the liberation of Tripoli. The people were in the street—numb, euphoric, and relieved all at the same time. Women came out with their children, displaying the colors of our new flag. Men were embracing, dancing, firing off bursts with their Kalashnikovs toward the sky and shouting “Allahu Akbar.” Loudspeakers everywhere were broadcasting revolutionary songs and the rebels, exhausted and happy, were welcomed as true heroes. They had opened up the prisons and besieged Bab al-Azizia! It was unimaginable. I ululated, applauded the convoys, thanked God for what would always be the greatest day in Libya’s history. But inside I was weeping. I was washed out and lost. Hicham wasn’t there to see this day with me.
All night long and over the next few days, the television aired fascinating images of rebel troops entering the citadel, searching the houses and villas of the Gaddafi clan, sporting objects that belonged to the Guide like so many outlandish trophies. They derided his bad taste and the ridiculous opulence of his sons’ properties. His busts and photographs were disfigured, stomped on, ripped apart. Safia’s house was presented as the “family home” in which the Guide’s bedroom presumably adjoined that of his wife. I shrugged my shoulders. Clearly, nobody had the slightest idea of what schemes went on behind the secured gates of Bab al-Azizia. Nobody would ever be able to imagine that a handful of poor wretches had been living in its basements.
At the time, I was being housed temporarily by the girlfriend of one of Hicham’s buddies, but Papa was worried for me. On August 28, when he told me that my brother’s newborn child needed urgent treatment in Tunisia, I asked to leave with them. I returned to Tripoli in late September.
But what to do with my life? How to get any control over it? I was only twenty-two but had the strange feeling that I’d already seen too much, lived through too much, had weary eyes and a spent body. That I was depleted forever. No resilience, no desires, no hope. My life was a dead end. I had no money, no education, no profession. Living with my family had become impossible—my brothers knew the truth. So where to live? No Libyan hotel is allowed to let an unaccompanied woman have a room. No respectable landlord will rent a room to an unmarried woman. Hayat, my sweet Tunisian cousin, had accepted my request to come with me to Tripoli for a while, but then what?
I’d heard that the International Criminal Court had ordered a warrant for the arrest of Gaddafi for crimes against humanity. So then I put all my hopes on the strength of my testimony. I had to be heard. I had to tell my story and draw up a merciless indictment against my torturer myself. For I wanted to see him behind bars. I wanted to confront him in a last face-to-face—look him straight in the eye and ask him coldly: “Why? Why did you do that to me? Why did you rape me? Why did you incarcerate me, beat me, drug me, insult me? Why did you teach me to drink and smoke? Why did you rob me of my life? Why?”
And then he was dead, executed on October 20 by the rebels, having barely made it out of a sewer where he was hiding. How ironic for the person who had treated his people like rats! I saw his bloodied face and his body displayed in a cold storage room in Misrata, like a piece of damaged meat. I don’t know what I felt most strongly—the relief of knowing him to be defeated once and for all, the terror of seeing all that violence, or the anger of seeing him get away from any sort of judgment. It must have been the anger, I’m sure. Gaddafi died without having to account to the Libyan people he had trampled on for forty-two years, without appearing before any international court, without having to answer before the entire world. And, above all, before me.
Some of the rebels, to whom I told my story, took me to the former Military Academy for Women, where one of their brigades is now located. They questioned me for a long time, promising me justice. They told me: “There are lots of girls in the same position as you.” They assigned me temporary housing, former apartments of Gaddafi’s mercenaries. Mistakenly, I felt safe there. But a rebel abused me sexually. A girl with a past like mine . . .
This time I brought charges. In spite of excoriation and threats, I stuck to my guns. Libya today thinks of itself as a state of law, and I try to have faith. But I had to move. And hide. And attempt to ignore the insults on my cell phone, whose violence increased twofold.
There you have it. I think I’ve told you everything. For me, this was something I had to do, maybe even my duty. Believe me, it wasn’t easy. I still have to do battle with an overload of feelings that are clattering away inside my brain and won’t give me any peace. Fear, shame, sadness, bitterness, disgust, rebellion. What a combination of emotions! Some days these feelings coalesce into a strength that brings me back a little confidence in my future. But more often they overwhelm me, push me into a well of sadness from which I don’t feel I can emerge. A lost girl, my parents sigh. A girl who doesn’t deserve to live, according to my brothers, whose honor is at stake. And that thought chills my bones. Cutting my throat would make respected men of them. Crime would wash away shame. I am defiled, so I defile others. I’m a deadbeat, so who would cry over my death?
I would like to make a life in the new Libya, but I wonder if that’s possible.
PART TWO
THE INVESTIGATION
1
IN SORAYA’S FOOTSTEPS
Soraya doesn’t make things up. She recounts what she has seen, experienced, felt, without hesitating to recognize what she doesn’t know, doesn’t understand, or is unfamiliar with. There’s no desire to exaggerate the story or expand her role in it. She never extrapolates or makes guesses. Frequently, when I asked her for details, she’d say: “Sorry, I know nothing about that. I wasn’t there.” She doesn’t wish to be credible, she wants to be believed. And within that demand lies something crucial. Besides, those were the terms of our agreement: better some silence than an approximation. The slightest misrepresentation would ruin the credibility of the whole testimony. So she told it all, even correcting her father when he wanted to play with the facts a bit. At times, when she described scenes with Gaddafi, she would apologize for using crude words, which she deemed degrading for a woman. But what else could she do? On the other hand, it amused her to think about the problems of translating her Arabic to my French: “I really wonder what word you’re going to use there! I’m not making your task any easier, am I?”
What a wonderful storyteller! She took part in the interview very willingly and with a courage that touched me. We met every day, early in the year 2012, in the apartment in Tripoli where she was temporarily living, as well as (though less often) in my hotel room. She’d dive into her account passionately, immersing herself in the situations, miming the scenes like a series of skits as she reconstructed the dialogues, waving her hands, raising her voice and her eyebrows, sometimes getting up to play all the characters, from Gaddafi to Mabrouka, or even Tony Blair.
I will never forget what it felt like to watch her relive certain crucial moments of her life, the horror of which hasn’t left her, nor the distress I felt hearing the despair in her voice at times. Nor will I ever forget the anxiety I felt for her future, or how we would laugh together, madly, when at the end of a long conversation she’d turn on the television to a channel with Egyptian videos, tie a scarf with metallic sequins around her hips, and—sexy and irresistible—would try to teach me how to belly dance. “Stand up straight, Annick! Arms wide, chest forward, big smile! That’s right! Sway and roll your hips!”
After Gaddafi’s death, Soraya’s relationship with her family continued to get worse, which isolated her even further. So she didn’t want me to see her parents before leaving Tripoli. Fortunately, I had already met her father in January 2012. A small man with stooped shoulders, balding head, and a look of despondency. One evening, almost on the sly, without having told his wife, he came to visit his daughter and was watching her with infinite affection.
“She’s the one,” he told me, “who used to create the atmosphere in our home ever since she was very little. She was a born comedian! From the day she disappeared the house sank into a sadness from which it has never emerged.” He was angry with himself for not having been in Sirte the day the Colonel visited his daughter’s school. “If you only knew how I’ve imagined the scene of the bouquet of flowers and replayed it in my head—hundreds of times! I’m sure that some of Gaddafi’s people had already gone to the hair salon to take a look at Soraya. And I suspect that the principal of the school was in cahoots with the Gaddafi clique to line up a band of girls that would definitely please him. Then all that was needed was any old pretext for introducing them to him. I now am certain that Gaddafi had a gang of criminals in every region of Libya do this dirty work.”
He was still furiously stewing over what had happened and shaking his head, lost in his thoughts, his regrets, and his remorse. “If I’d been there I would never have let Soraya leave with those three women under such a stupid pretext! It made no sense whatsoever! When my wife alerted me, without daring to say too much over the phone—all of Libya knew the phones were bugged—I rushed from Tripoli to Sirte and shouted at her for what she’d done, insofar as is permissible. We didn’t sleep for one night, two nights, three nights, and I felt like I was going mad. I wanted the earth to swallow me up. Soraya’s friends, her teachers, our neighbors, the customers at the hair salon, everyone kept asking: ‘Where is she?’ Then I went back to Tripoli so her mother could tell the story that she was there with her Papa.”
And the idea of making an official complaint? To whom? Why? Soraya had left in an official car, surrounded by bodyguards who worked for the Guide. Any protest was unthinkable. “Who would dream of bringing charges against the devil wh
en you are in hell?” And when her parents received confirmation that their worst fear was true and that Gaddafi had very much made Soraya his prey, they were distraught. “The choice was obvious: dishonor or death. Criticizing, protesting, or complaining was equal to a death sentence. So I holed up in Tripoli and lost the taste of happiness forever.”
He so wanted justice to be done to his daughter, so she could come back with her head held high, her “honor cleansed” before the whole extended family. But that was impossible, as he knew. “Everyone around us doubts Soraya’s story and sees me as almost ‘subhuman,’ and I can see why—there is no shame more dreadful than what Gaddafi did to us. It affects my sons as well. They are shadows of their former selves, so self-conscious they are, incapable of thinking of any way to look like real men other than killing their sister. It’s horrible! Soraya has no chances whatsoever in Libya anymore. Our society is too stupid, too traditional, and too unforgiving. You know what? As painful as it would be for me as her father, I wish a family abroad would adopt her.”
I felt I had to go to Sirte, Gaddafi’s city. I wanted to see the building where Soraya had grown up, the hair salon that her mother had kept going so single-mindedly, the school where the scene with the bouquet of flowers had taken place. Soraya wasn’t enthusiastic and refused to come with me, but she understood why I needed to go. She herself was wondering what was happening to the city, a Gaddafi stronghold located 360 kilometers from Tripoli, once just a small fishing village, but a place the ruler of Libya had dreamed of transforming into the capital of the United States of Africa. Instead, in the fall of 2011, it had become the location of a tough and bloody siege, as it underwent bombing by NATO. From then on people would talk about it as a ghost town, eroded by resentment and sick with its now destroyed dreams of grandeur. Having decided to take refuge there in the final hour, thereby bringing a deluge of steel, gunpowder, and fire down upon it, Gaddafi had certainly not done it any favors.
Gaddafi's Harem Page 11