The Dictator's Last Night

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.

Ground down by thirst and dizzying heat, Fezzan was like me. I was as naked and empty as the desert expanding the circle of its desolation.

Sitting under an acacia, I daydreamed about nomads, brigands, pilgrims, deserters, caravan drivers, adventurers, travellers who had lost their way, lords and servants who had paused under this tree, bristling with thorns, wondering what roads they had taken after their rest and whether they had arrived at their destination.

I was more unhappy than it is normally possible to be, as miserable as the skeletal shadow of the acacia brushing away the sand, as frantic as the wild, spindly roots tangled around me, not knowing where to bury their sorrow.

The furnace around me was nothing to the furnace that was burning my soul.

What had I come to find in the desert? The retreat of silence or the agony of time passing? There was nothing for me here. My points of reference had as much solidity as the mirages shimmering deceptively in the distance. Had I come to listen to the Voice, or to erase the sergeant’s voice? Neither seemed capable of reaching me in the tumult of my frustration. Like a tightrope walker I wobbled in the void, sure that flying away would be as tragic for me as falling.

I sat moping all day under the acacia tree, where my uncle, tired of waiting for me, eventually came to find me.

He said, ‘Why are you sitting here, Muammar?’

‘Where else should I go?’

‘Come home. You’ve been roasting in the sun for hours. It’s not good for you. You’ll get sunstroke.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Is it true what they’re saying, that you’ve been dismissed from the army?’

‘They have suspended me.’

‘How is it possible?’

‘I punched an officer.’

‘You punched an officer?’

‘I would have punched the king himself.’

‘What has got into you, my son?’

‘I am not anyone’s son.’

I faced him.

With his spine stooped under the burden of his years and his face like a halo of dust, my uncle looked like a cloth stuck on a pole. Poverty had sucked him dry, leaving him just his old hands to reflect his fate.

I challenged him.

‘Who is Albert Preziosi?’

He put a finger to his cheek, eyelashes lowered, and thought for a long time.

‘Is it a name from among us?’

‘It is a Christian name.’

‘I have never known a Christian in my life.’

‘Try and remember. It goes back a long way, to a time when the Christians used to turn up in our houses uninvited.’

‘The colonists preferred to be near the sea. The desert was not for them.’

I got to my feet, towering over him by a full head. He looked smaller than a gnome.

‘Are you telling me that not a single infidel soldier ever ventured into our territory? There are places here that still bear the traces of the Afrika Korps’s Panzers. Relics of tanks less than three kilometres from this spot. By the 1940s you were already a father. You must have come across a Christian or two. A deserter or a wounded man whom the clan looked after, out of Muslim charity.’

He shook his head, his brow furrowed.

‘You do not remember a plane shot down in a dogfight that crashed near here in 1941?’

He shook his head again.

‘The pilot was not killed. Our people went to his aid and hid him and nursed him … It is impossible that you can have forgotten an event of that kind. He was a Frenchman, a Corsican …’

‘No plane came down here. Not during the war, or before or after.’

‘Look at me!’

He stood in front of me, shaking his chin from left to right.

My voice snapped like an explosion.

‘Is it true that I am a bastard, the piss of some dog of a Corsican who passed through here?’

The crudity of my speech made him flinch. It is not in our upbringing to utter obscenities in front of those who are older than us. But he did not protest. He saw how angry I was and did not feel capable of confronting it. What he said next, in a whisper, he did not mean to say.

‘I don’t see what you mean.’

‘Do you ever see anything apart from the end of your nose? Go on, tell me the truth. Is it true that I am the runt of some dog of a Corsican?’

‘Who has said such an outrageous thing to you?’

‘That is not an answer.’

‘Your father died in a duel. I’ve told you a thousand times.’

‘In that case, where is his tomb? Why is his body not in our cemetery with the rest of our departed?’

‘I—’

‘Be quiet. You are nothing but a liar. You have all lied to me. I have no reason to be grateful to you in the slightest. If my father is still in this world I shall find him, even if I have to turn over every stone on earth. If he is dead I shall find his tomb eventually. As for all of you, I banish you from my heart and I will spend the rest of my days cursing you until the good Lord cries out, “Enough!”’

I never spoke another word to my uncle.

After I had overthrown the king and proclaimed the republic, I went back, my head still ringing with the crowd’s acclamation, to celebrate my revolution in my tribe. I was coming back to take my revenge on my clan. They had kept a secret from me, and I had proved that I could survive it. Fezzan changed its look for me that morning. The desert was offering its nakedness to me as a blank page, ready to receive the epic of my unstoppable rise.

Sitting cross-legged in the kheïma of the most senior elder, my smile wider than the crescent on the top of a minaret, I relished the rapture I aroused among my people. They no longer looked down on me, they were prostrating themselves at my feet. The kids were running all over the place, overexcited by my presence; the women spied on me from the depths of their hiding places; the men pinched themselves until they drew blood. In my tailored uniform, like a prince in his state regalia, I had drunk tea with my nearest relations and a few comrades. The desert rang with our bursts of laughter. A full moon graced the sky, heated white-hot. In the middle of the day. My uncle stood outside the tent, not knowing if he should rejoice at my return or feel its pain. I had not acknowledged him. It was no longer very important to me to know if I was a Corsican’s bastard or a brave man’s son.

I was my own offspring.

My own begetter.

Are we all our fathers’ children? Was Isa Ibn Maryam the son of God, or the child of a rape that went unacknowledged, or just the result of a rash flirtation? What does it matter? Jesus knew how to fashion his short young life into immortality, to turn his Calvary into a Milky Way and his name into the password for paradise. What counts is what we succeed in leaving behind us. How many world-class conquerors have fathered good-for-nothing kings? How many civilisations have disappeared the moment they were handed on to heirs of insufficient calibre? How many shackled slaves have broken their chains to build colossal empires? I had no need to know who my father had been, or to look for the grave of an illustrious stranger. I was Muammar Gaddafi. For me the Big Bang had taken place the morning I took over the radio station in Benghazi to announce to a drowsing populace that I was their saviour and their redemption. Bastard or orphan, I had transformed myself into a nation’s destiny by becoming its legitimate path and identity. For having given birth to a new reality, I no longer had anything to envy the gods of mythology or the heroes of history.

I was worthy of being only Myself.

9 During the clean-up operation, which I took personal charge of, to disinfect the republic’s institutions of the monarchist vermin, I forced Major Jalal Snoussi to dig his own grave with his bare hands.