‘Keep it short,’ Mansour orders him. ‘Just tell us how your boss died.’
‘I’m coming to that, sir.’
‘We’re not here to wait for you, scum. Stick to the facts.’
The traitor clears the frog from his throat and says, ‘The general was accused of being a double agent, of working for you, Rais, and for Sarkozy. I was with him when he was served with the arrest warrant, signed by Abdul Jalil in person.8 He was spitting with rage, shouting that he had been betrayed. I escorted him to the military tribunal where the charges against him were read out. The general protested, then said that he did not recognise the court’s legitimacy and attempted to return to his headquarters. A cousin of mine, who had joined the Islamists and was at the tribunal, stopped me from going with the general. He advised me to go to our aunt’s house in Tripoli and not to show myself on the street. The general was held by the Islamists as he left the tribunal and driven away in a 4×4. He was executed the same day.’
‘How?’
‘My cousin came to our aunt’s house in Tripoli afterwards. He had been one of the abductors. He told me that the general had tried to jump out of the 4×4. They knocked him out and took him to a shed to be interrogated. He was tortured with pliers and a blowlamp. They cut off his toes, put one of his eyes out and cut his stomach open with a hacksaw.’
‘Your cousin’s seen too many slasher movies,’ Mansour says sceptically.
‘He recorded it on his mobile and he showed me how the general was killed. I spent three days throwing up and three nights screaming in my sleep. I’m still shaking …’ Suddenly raising his head, he goes on, white-faced, ‘These people aren’t human, Rais. Just coming across them in the street gave me the shivers. They call themselves Muslims but they hardly leave any work for the Devil to do. They kill kids as if they were squashing flies. I’ve never seen anything more horrible than their expression. It’s like they’re looking at you with the eyes of death itself. When my cousin suggested I join his squad, I said yes on the spot. He’d have slashed my belly open, like the general, in front of our aunt and without a qualm, if I’d hesitated for a second. But I couldn’t live with those barbarians. I was scared to death just at the thought of sitting down to a meal with them. That night, after my cousin had gone to sleep, I ran away without looking back, as fast as my legs could carry me. I intended to get back to Sirte to rejoin your troops, Rais, but the town was swarming with rebels who were shooting up anything that moved. I wandered for days and nights, hiding in cellars. When I recognised the lieutenant-colonel on the ring road, it felt like I was waking up from a nightmare.’
‘Don’t worry, you’re still in it,’ the lieutenant-colonel promises him.
‘Rais,’ the prisoner begs, raising himself on his knees, ‘I didn’t betray you. From the beginning my only thought was to rejoin your forces. It’s the truth, I swear it.’
‘There’s no such thing. People believe what suits them, and your story doesn’t suit me.’
He crawls after me.
‘I worship you more than my father and my ancestors, Brotherly Guide. I’ve got four kids and a wife who’s half mad. Spare me, for the love of the prophet. I want to take my place among your soldiers again. I’ll show myself worthy of your trust—’
Trust?
That old chestnut!
I banned that poisonous word from my vocabulary before I learnt to walk. Trust is a little death. I had to be wary of everything and everyone, especially the most loyal of my loyalists, because they are the ones best informed about my faults. To guarantee my own longevity I did not confine myself to listening in on people’s thoughts or bribing their consciences – I was ready to execute my twin to keep my siblings at arm’s length.
And yet, despite the draconian measures I took, the elaborate precautions and the purges, I have been betrayed. By the most loyal of my loyalists. General Younis, whom I considered my partner in crime, whom I loved more than a brother, the man who boasted of being godfather to my son, who never forgot me in his prayers and took my lapses to be coded signs: he betrayed me. How can I not view his tragic end as a divine punishment? By rejecting my blessing, he signed his own death warrant. I do not even feel contempt for him, just a vague sadness, a kind of pity made of elusive ingredients, which simultaneously calms and comforts me.
‘I beg you, Rais,’ the renegade sobs, ‘I tried to rejoin your forces; I swear it on the head of what is most precious to me in this world.’
‘The only precious thing left to you in this world is your head, and it is not worth a radish,’ I tell him.
I turn to the two soldiers.
‘Send him straight to hell.’
The traitor attempts to resist the arms restraining him, he writhes and struggles, his face contorted. They drag him without ceremony into the courtyard. I hear him begging me and weeping. His lamenting turns to shrieks of terror as he disappears into the night, then, having exhausted every appeal, he starts to blaspheme.
‘You’re nothing but a madman, Muammar, a raving bloodthirsty madman. Cursed be the womb that bore you and the day you came into this world … You’re nothing but a bastard, Muammar, a bastard …’
Someone must have knocked him out then, because he suddenly stopped.
In the silence that follows, the word ‘bastard’ goes on ringing in my ear in a chorus of heart-rending echoes so monstrous that my cosmic Voice, which has always known how to speak to me in my moments of solitude, has curled up into itself like a frightened snail.
Around me, Mansour, the minister and the lieutenant-colonel look down, their heads bowed, paralysed by the obscene insults proffered by the supplicant.
I go back up to my room to recover from the affront.
8 Mustafa Abdul Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council (NTC).
10
Bastard, bastard, bastard …
The insult ricochets around the walls, pierces me from all sides, making a million toxins explode under my skin. At every bang that rings out from the town, at every door that shuts downstairs, at every object that falls on the floor, I hear bastard. If I filled my ears with concrete or burst my eardrums, I would still hear it above the noise of the war that is raging in my country.
Yet it has always been there, that degrading word, waiting to ambush me on sleepless nights and pin me to my pillows. Whenever the roistering died down and the shutters closed on my private moments, whenever my concubines, drunk on my seed, drifted into sleep, whenever van Gogh retreated into his canvas and silence merged with darkness in my palace, that word kept me company beneath the sheets and stopped me sleeping, sometimes until morning.
It is a word with a history that has ruined mine.
I had just heard about my promotion to captain. That evening, outstretched on my bed, I could not decide whether to celebrate my new rank at home, with my wife and a few friends, or in Fezzan, among my tribe. In my sleep van Gogh appeared to me as a knight in armour, trapped at the bottom of a frozen lake … In the morning, a jeep stopped me outside my building. The driver, a young red-headed NCO in a scruffy uniform, told me he had been ordered to drive me to HQ. I thought I was being summoned to a ceremony or to some honour of that sort and climbed up next to the driver, smoothing my tunic and straightening my cap.
At HQ they directed me to Block B, a sinister-looking building belonging to His Majesty King Idris as-Senussi’s special services. Never having hidden my desire to be appointed to an embassy in a land of plenty somewhere, I climbed the stairs to the third floor with high hopes – so high, I nearly caught my foot in the carpet and went flying.
A corporal greeted me like a dog at a bowling alley. His disdain corresponded to the attitude I thought every flunkey in a repressive system had to have; I did not attach any importance to it. I was led into a waiting room, austerely furnished with a pedestal table and a row of iron chairs whose paint was flaking off. I waited there, getting more and more bored, for three hours without anyone coming to see if I was still
there or even still in this world. By the time the corporal reappeared I was on the point of losing my temper completely.
Major Jalal Snoussi was waiting for me in his office. He was a pockmarked, red-faced officer with a wisp of hair and grotesque ears. His hog-like features pointed to the insatiable glutton concealed beneath his uniform, but his expression would have silenced the blackest of sheep with a glance. In my eyes he represented everything I deplored in an officer: pot-bellied, crude, traducing the essence of the martial calling that his tunic was supposed to confer on him.
There was no love lost between us. I had known him since the Academy, where I had had him as an instructor during my second year as an officer cadet. He taught topography, but was incapable of finding his way with a map and a compass. His real task at the Academy consisted in identifying the bad apples among the cadets and writing daily reports on the acts and movements of new recruits: he was the army’s official informer.
It did not surprise me in the least to find him in an office on the third floor of Block B, except that I understood immediately that my dream of a foreign posting was not on the agenda.
The major did not offer me a chair. He hitched up his belly to sit down, leafed disdainfully through a few papers that made up my file, then, after rubbing his nose, stared intensely at me.
‘Do you know why I have summoned you, Lieutenant?’
‘Captain,’ I reminded him.
‘Not yet. Your promotion will only take effect two months from now, which gives me the opportunity to oppose it.’
‘You would oppose a decree, Major?’
‘Absolutely. It’s one of my prerogatives. His Majesty’s special services have the right to annul any decision up to the highest level if it puts the kingdom in danger.’
He was exaggerating. He was just an underling mouldering in a cupboard through which soldiers who had come from the people had to pass in order to be intimidated; a bootlicker, happy to be trodden on like bird shit whenever he was faced with those stronger than him but ready to send an innocent man to the gallows to show his master how good he was at keeping an eye on things.
Because his name sounded like the king’s, Major Jalal Snoussi liked people to think that he was also from Algeria, as was His Majesty, and that he had excellent relations with the crown prince.
In reality he was as noble as a worm-infested jackal. He had a finger in every rotten pie, his eyes were always bigger than his stomach, and he demanded that his palm be greased for the slightest of favours. He filled his belly at the monarch’s expense, never putting his hand in his own pocket, and replenishing his supplies at every garrison where he had the chefs at his mercy: every night he took delivery of enough to feed a family for a month – poultry, a whole sheep, skinned and jointed by a master butcher, crates of fruit and vegetables, cases of tinned food – and every morning the ravenous waifs would fight like hell around his bins, which army wits had dubbed ‘the canteen of miracles’.
I loathed him and he knew it.
‘You’re here because that tentacle in your mouth is so long we could hang you with it,’ he shouted, slapping the file down on his desk.
I did not react. If this fat pig had any evidence against me, he would have sent me straight to the firing squad. I was convinced he was making it up.
‘I’ve got my eye on you, Muammar.’
‘Which one, Major? The one that squints or the one that swivels from side to side?’
‘Both of them, Lieutenant. The ones that will end up sending you six feet under. I know about your little schemes, you fucking devil. You fill the heads of cretins with your pathetic revolutionary theories, and you dare speak ill of the monarchy that has seen fit to make an officer out of the snivelling beggar you once were. You still stink of the shit of your camels, you know that?’
‘The important thing is not where one comes from, but the road one has taken. No one has ever done me any favours. I have studied without a single grant and I have made myself who I am. Your rank does not give you permission to insult me, Major.’
‘It gives me permission to walk all over you. In your shoes I would not play the hero. You’re not cut out for it. A bigmouth is all you are. A fine talker who believes in his own wild imaginings. I’ve been told about the secret meetings you have been holding all over the shop. You’re whipping up a band of hot-headed fools in your unit. Try and deny it.’
‘I challenge you to produce the proof, Major. Your accusation is extremely serious. I am a competent officer of integrity. I carry out my work according to regulations and I know my rights. I do not steal my men’s rations and I do not ask for a dirham from anyone I do a favour for.’
He looked as if he was about to burst into flames, and nearly ripped the papers in his hands to shreds.
‘Exactly what are you insinuating, Lieutenant?’
‘I am not insinuating anything, I am being perfectly clear and I am ready to defend my words in front of a tribunal. Are you ready to do the same?’
‘No, no, go back to what you just said. What is this tale of rations and dirhams?’
‘Do you want me to draw you a picture, Major? Everyone knows about your trafficking. As for whoever has put you up to this, I do not know what he seeks to gain from it, but I shall not let myself be walked all over. I have done nothing wrong, and your allegations are as far-fetched as they are dangerous. Do you realise what you are suggesting? That I am an agitator?’
I was shouting now, to unnerve him.
He asked me to calm down and have a chair. I refused and remained standing, trembling with anger. There was very little in the file that was burning his fingers and was probably not even mine.
He mopped his face with a handkerchief, breathing heavily.
I had him.
‘I want your informer’s name. He will answer for his calumnies in front of a court martial.’
‘That’s enough,’ the major said. ‘Be quiet. I summoned you because I have your best interests at heart. I hear word that you’re indulging in reactionary statements …’
‘“I hear word”. Who from?’
‘I’m doing my job, like you. I am not allowed to leave anything to chance. I’ve heard that—’
‘That what?’
The major really lost it then.
To shut him up, I clicked my heels and left his office, promising loudly that I would take the whole story to the head of the service prosecuting authority. The truth was that I was so scared, I was doing everything I could to confuse him. The next thing I knew was a sergeant stopping me in the corridor.
‘Muammar Gaddafi, come into my office.’
He had not saluted; he stood in front of me with his jacket over his belt and his sleeves rolled up, which was against regulations. For someone like me, a stickler for discipline, the NCO’s provocatively careless turnout bordered on sacrilege. And not only had he addressed me by name without using my rank, he had practically ordered me to follow him to his office. I could hardly contain my fury.
Slim and blond, the sergeant had the look of the élite, blue eyes and a girlish mouth, one of those cosseted young go-getters from the old Libyan bourgeoisie employed in His Majesty’s special services so that they learnt how to trample ordinary people underfoot. I had met dozens of them at the lycée, where I had had to put up with their overblown arrogance, which was so inflated I felt like killing every one of them. The deep hatred I felt towards these golden boys had been the seed of my diatribes. Every time I came across one of them, I spat secretly to ward off evil spells.
The sergeant was only interested in a single detail.
‘There is a minor problem with your filiation, Muammar.’
‘What problem? And say “lieutenant” when you address me. We did not grow up herding goats together.’
‘I have never herded goats, I’m glad to say,’ he retorted sourly, with heavy emphasis. ‘I don’t need to remind you that function trumps rank, Lieutenant. In this office it is I who decide what happens,
like it or not. My department has ordered me to verify the information on your identification form. You will be aware that the higher you rise in rank, the more important the duties you will be called on to fulfil. In consequence it becomes imperative not to make an error about the applicant …’
‘And the problem is?’
‘Your father …’
Already outraged at being pushed around by this little NCO, I was doubly outraged to have to answer to him about my family.
‘He died honourably.’
‘That is not what I have on your form. According to the inquiry we have carried out in your clan, you are the son of an unknown father. Certain loose talk suggests that you are the natural child of a Corsican by the name of Albert Preziosi, a pilot rescued and nursed in your tribe after his plane was shot down by a German fighter in 1941.’
My fist had a mind of its own. The sergeant got it full in the face and fell backwards, his nose broken. I did not have a chance to finish him. Four men leapt on me and threw me on the floor. Major Jalal Snoussi stood sniggering in the doorway, his arms folded. He was in heaven, delighted at having outwitted me. I had fallen into his trap. The summons to his office had been merely the first stage of his plan, which had been to make me lose my composure, so that I would react as I had done to his subordinate’s provocation.
‘What did I say to you, Bedouin? That I will oppose your promotion. Do you believe me now?’
I had thought that he was just a zealous penpusher with a lot of lard where his brain should be. But the major could have shown the Devil a trick or two.9
I was brought before a disciplinary hearing. After a period of close arrest and the deferment of my promotion to captain, I travelled home to Fezzan to settle an old score with my clan.
Hostile and harsh, Fezzan is a version of hell which, because there was nowhere better or because they were damned, the Ghous had claimed for themselves the way a starving hyena claims a leftover piece of rotting carcass. There was a time when I took it for hell itself.
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