Brute Force

84

There were still plenty of people on the main street as we hit Sharia Hara Kebir and made a left.

Lynn leant towards Lazy-Eye and asked him something.

Lazy-Eye made an uncertain gesture with his hand and muttered a reply.

Lynn asked more questions for a good ten minutes and they kept waffling between themselves.

'What the fuck's he on about?'

'I asked him if he speaks English. He said a little, so you can take that basically as a no – Arabs hate to lose face. Yes means no, no means yes and a little means next to nothing. His name is Fawad. Fawad Al-Waddan. You need to listen to his story.'

I glanced between Lynn and Fawad. Lynn looked at Fawad and seemed to be asking for the Libyan's permission to continue. Fawad gave an almost imperceptible nod.

'There's an Arab word – 'ayb – that's difficult to translate into English. I suppose the closest approximation is "disgrace" – but it's much, much more than that. It's to do with shame and it's to do with the family. Remember, family and tribe are everything here.

'The idea that you can get on in life by succeeding is not a concept that's readily understood here. Despite all Gaddafi's reforms, blood is still thicker than water and probably always will be. It's not what you do in the Colonel's Libya, it's who you are and, far more importantly, who your father is – or was – that determines what you will be. Which is what made our man Mansour all the more remarkable.'

He was talking as if the 'who you are' system only worked here. I doubted if Lynn had ever been to a job centre.

'When Gaddafi grabbed power in 1969, the Al-Waddan tribe was not a part of the elite, his power base – they were outsiders. But then Mansour came along. He was refined, cultured, educated and exceptionally smart. He knew how to broker arms deals, he knew how to deal with the Soviets, he knew how to handle groups like PIRA; he even managed to keep the Libyans one step ahead of us and the CIA. Let's not forget he was the man who put together the whole Bahiti package.'

I checked Fawad's face to see if any of this was registering with him as he stumbled along beside us, but either the guy was up for an Oscar or his English was as good as my Arabic.

'So what?'

'So, on his own merits, Mansour rose to become part of the power elite. And as he gained Gaddafi's favour, so did the Al- Waddan tribe. My bet is that this guy' – Lynn jabbed a finger at Fawad – 'was twiddling his thumbs and minding his own business, when one day somebody told him he'd won the jackpot – that he'd landed a job in some ministry or other in Tripoli with a five-figure salary and an apartment chucked in. Not only that, but his brothers and cousins and uncles were all coming with him and they all had jobs, five-figure salaries and apartments too. And I bet some of them could barely even read or write . . .

'This is what Mansour did for them. It was like winning the lottery. Every member of the Al-Waddan tribe ended up with a winning ticket.

'Mansour also bought them the one thing that money couldn't buy: he bought the tribe the respect that it craved. He brought them into the Gaddafi elite.

'So you can imagine how they all felt, when – having tasted what it was like, having tasted the high life – the Bahiti operation went pear-shaped. Mansour was thrown into jail and everything was taken away from them. You see, Mansour brought 'ayb upon the whole Al-Waddan tribe. He literally cast them back into the desert. It's clear that Fawad hates his cousin's guts.'

'He's Mansour's cousin?'

'Fawad's father is the brother of Mansour's father. He wants to help – and some cash reward at the end of it all, of course.'

Of course. We kept walking, away from the arch, edging ever closer to our point of entry into the Medina: Green Square.

Lynn and Fawad carried on walking and talking. It was as if they had known each other for years. The only words I understood were 'aiwa' – 'yes' – and 'la' – 'no' – which batted back and forth between them.

Eventually, Lynn seemed satisfied. He turned to me. 'After the Bahiti operation, Fawad and his family were woken in the middle of the night and taken to a detention centre at the edge of the city. Fawad was separated from his wife and children and he was tortured. If there's a cock-up the suspicion is always that it's deliberate, orchestrated in some way – a conspiracy; a conspiracy by the Al-Waddans against the Supreme Guide . . .

'By the time they were released, Fawad had lost the sight in his right eye. His wife had been raped. Because of the 'ayb on the entire tribe, it meant, too, that picking up work in the city was difficult, if not impossible. As a result, Fawad has relied almost entirely on charity for his and his family's survival for the past twenty-odd years. He's a proud man. You can imagine what it's done to him.'

'And they blame all of this on Mansour?'

Lynn put an arm around Fawad in a best mate sort of way.

'He's eaten up by his hatred of Mansour, but he's powerless to do anything about it. He can't kill him, because that would be a sin. However, if someone else were to do it for him . . . well, that would be God's will, wouldn't it?'

'That's why he thinks we're here – to kill his cousin?'

'I haven't exactly disabused him of that.'

'So where is he?'

Lynn stopped walking and gestured along the street with a sidelong glance. I followed his gaze. Ahead of us, at the end of the Sharia Hara Kebir, lay the Medina's boundary wall. In between I could see a mosque, a few tourist shops and a large square building festooned with balconies and shuttered windows. The building, which was around fifty metres away, immediately held my attention. With its onion domes and pencil-thin towers it was every Disney fan's idea of what a palace in this part of the world should look like. A crowd of people, all men, had formed around an archway that opened onto the street. There was a lot of jostling and some waved what looked like tickets.

Lynn spoke briefly to Fawad then he turned to me. 'Fawad does not know where he lives. The family has had no direct contact with Mansour for years. But that building ahead of us is a hammam, a bath house. According to Fawad, Mansour comes here on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.'

Fawad was treated to another hug.

'And if this cousin is to be believed, he'll be in there right now.'