The Dictator's Last Night

12

I am cold.

In the cavern in which I find myself it is as black as if no light had shone there since the beginning of time. I grope my way, fear clawing at my stomach; I have no idea where I am going, but I know that I am not alone. An intangible presence is hovering around me. I hear the sound of footsteps. When I stop, the sound stops too.

‘Who is there?’

Silence.

‘Who is there? I am not deaf. Play hide-and-seek as much as you like, I can hear you.’

‘All you can hear is the echo of your own fear, Muammar.’

I turn towards the Voice; it rings through the cavern, ricocheting off the stone, washing over me and dying away in a yawning sigh.

‘I am not afraid.’

‘Yes you are.’

‘Who should I be afraid of? I am the dauntless Guide, and I walk with my head held so high that the very stars draw back from me.’

‘In that case, why do you retreat in the darkness?’

‘Perhaps I am dead.’

‘Having skipped your punishment? Too easy, don’t you think?’

‘Who are you? Angel or devil?’

‘Both. I was even God, once.’

‘Then show yourself, if you are brave enough.’

Something moves in the depth of the cavern and comes closer. I can just make out a human form. It is a wretch dressed in rags, with a shaggy tangled beard and an endless rope tied around his neck that he drags with him, among his chains.

‘Who are you?’

‘Don’t you recognise me? No more than a minute ago you were heaping curses on me.’

‘Saddam Hussein?’

‘Or what is left of him: a poor devil wandering in the darkness.’

‘Then I am dead.’

‘Not yet. For your soul to rest, it must first make sure it undergoes the suffering of your flesh.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘To look you in the face and read the terror that’s written there now. You’ve insulted me, cursed me and spat on me. Let me remind you that I was hanged by America and its allies, but you will be lynched by your own people.’

‘Your people betrayed you too.’

‘It’s not the same, Muammar. Under my reign Iraq was a great nation. Harun al-Rashid was no greater a ruler than I was. My universities produced geniuses. Every night Baghdad made merry, every seed I sowed sprouted before it touched the ground. But you, Muammar, what did you turn your people into? A starving mob who’ll devour you whole.’

‘I can’t know your fate, Hussein. But my destiny is in my hands. And God’s too.’

‘God is with no one. Didn’t He let His own son die on the cross? He won’t come to your aid. He’ll watch you die like a dog under a hail of stones. And when your soul departs your body He won’t even be there to meet it. You’ll wander in the darkness, as I do, until you become no more than a shadow among the shadows.’

‘Perhaps, but I am not dead yet. I have the strength to fight and to turn the situation to my advantage. I shall not end up like you. My throne is summoning me back, and in less than a week people will be celebrating my victory and no one will ever raise their voice against me again.’

‘No one celebrates the wind. Wherever it shows itself, all it does is pass by. What it takes with it is of little importance, and what it leaves behind will be erased by time.’

‘I am not the wind. I am Muammar Gaddafi!’

My shout awakens me. The ceiling spins in slow motion; my senses slowly return. I am lying stretched out on the couch in my bedroom, feeling woozy, exhausted, my throat raw. A small table has been placed next to me with a tray on which there is a cold meal: an egg sandwich, a chocolate bar, some jam and a carafe of water.

‘You must get your strength back, Rais,’ Abu-Bakr tells me. ‘The doctor has diagnosed mild hypoglycaemia. You haven’t eaten anything since yesterday lunchtime.’

‘What happened to me?’

‘A mild attack of exhaustion. Nothing serious. Eat, please. It will do you good.’

Around me, in addition to the minister of defence, sit Mansour and Lieutenant-Colonel Trid. They watch me closely.

‘I am not hungry.’

‘You’re dehydrated, Brotherly Guide, and undernourished. You won’t last long like that.’

‘I made the sandwich myself,’ Trid says, as if to prove that the food is not poisoned. ‘I brought a bit of food back with me.’

I push the tray away.

‘I am not hungry.’

‘Rais—’

‘I am not hungry, dammit! What are you going to do, hold my nose and force-feed me?’

‘The doctor—’

‘I do not give a damn about the doctor. He is not going to teach me how to run my life … What is the time?’

‘Nearly 4.30, sir.’

‘Should we not have left by now?’

‘Colonel Mutassim has not come back yet, sir.’

‘We cannot let that stand in our way. It will soon be daylight. How are we going to get out of the city?’

‘At present we only have thirty vehicles, sir,’ the general argues. ‘It won’t be enough to break the siege.’

I clap my hands in exasperation.

‘The things I have to listen to! I am surrounded by cripples. You are my chief of staff, General, my minister of defence. It is up to you to find the solution. That is your job. Do you want me to do it for you? What have you been doing for the last twenty-four hours? Are you waiting for Gabriel to come and fan you with his wings? Is that it?’

‘Gabriel died at Hira, and I’ve got a canteen to cool me down.’

It is the first time General Abu-Bakr has uttered a profanity in my presence: his piety is beyond belief. It is also the first time he has ever answered me in anything like a critical way. His retort is hardly audible, but somehow it calms me. I understand that my men are under too much stress to deal with my sudden changes of mood, and that the situation demands from me a modicum of wisdom and consideration for my closest collaborators.

The general goes on staring at the floor. He regrets having spoken to me in an inappropriate tone. He knows that I am hypersensitive and that if I sometimes forgive a moment’s rudeness, I never forget it.

Mansour starts scratching his head, embarrassed.

As for the lieutenant-colonel, he goes on watching me, a smile playing on his lips.

I study each of them, one at a time, let out a sigh, and ask if there is any news of my son Mutassim.

‘No, sir,’ the general informs me, in a more conciliatory tone. ‘The bombardment has been severe. The colonel has had to stay put.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘We don’t know, sir.’

‘What are you waiting for? Send someone to his position immediately.’

‘I’ll go,’ Trid volunteers.

‘No, not you. I need you here. Find someone else to go.’

‘How can we find the colonel, Rais?’ the general says. ‘We don’t know his position. He has evacuated his garrison.’

‘“We don’t know, we don’t know” — that is all you can say. Ask the driver of the reconnaissance patrol to go.’

‘He’s wounded, sir.’

‘He is pretending. I saw no blood on him. Kick him in the arse, and if he is incapable of holding a steering wheel then put him on the dead man’s seat. All he has to do is show whichever officer you send the way to where my son is.’

The general promises to remedy the situation immediately and hastens to carry out my orders. He returns a few minutes later.

‘I’m extremely sorry, Rais. The driver has died from his wounds.’

‘Good riddance. He was quite obviously a slacker without a brain in his head. The officer can go on his own. He will manage. I wish my son to be back at headquarters before daybreak.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ Mansour says.

‘I suppose you have a better one.’

‘The bombardment’s over. The rebels are going to redeploy along the line they occupied before their withdrawal. Their scouts will already be back at their forward positions. Our messenger could fall into an ambush. If he’s taken alive, they’ll torture him until he tells them our position.’

‘I asked you if you had another idea.’

The general pulls out his mobile and starts to make a call.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ I shout.

‘I’m trying to get hold of my sons. They’re with the colonel.’

‘Switch it off, you fool. Our phone signals go via satellite. Do you want to tell the whole world where we are? That was how they managed to track me down at Bab al-Azizia.’

The general apologises profusely and puts his mobile away. I order him to dispatch an officer to my son and dismiss him.

Mansour is hunched in the corner. I do not understand why he stays there, adding fuel to the rage smouldering inside me rather than getting off his arse and helping the general.

‘You would be better off commanding your men,’ I say to him. ‘Leaving them to their own devices will only sap their morale. Get a grip, dammit. You are depressing me.’

He nods his head, hoists his carcass to its feet and shuffles out.

‘The laziest of men,’ I tell the lieutenant-colonel, once we are alone. ‘If you want a man to swagger at your parades you will not find his equal anywhere, but when the going gets tough he will drop you like a hot brick. War reveals so many negative sides to people. A truly sad business!’

‘You’re hard on him, sir. Mansour has discovered that his nephew was captured by the rebels at Misrata.’

‘Mansour’s nephew has been captured?’

‘Two days ago.’

‘Has it been confirmed?’

‘That’s the rumour that’s going around, which of course adds to his uncle’s despair. The nephew’s a brave lad. I know him. Mansour loves him more than his own children. He feels guilty because he was the one who sent him to Yafran to join Saif al-Islam. According to a survivor, the nephew was caught in an ambush and taken alive.’

‘Why was I not told?’

‘Bad news only complicates situations, sir. General Abu-Bakr is anxious about his sons too. Mutassim told me they have been missing since he evacuated the garrison.’

‘Does the minister know?’

‘No.’

I put the Koran down on the couch’s arm and rest my chin on my thumb and index finger to think.

‘This war has taken everything from us,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Our children, our grandchildren … but of all the families in mourning, mine is the one it has exacted the greatest price from. I no longer want to live among my ghosts. A while ago on the roof I talked about paradise and houris and crowns on my tomb. My head was clear, I was lucid and weighing my words. I truly wanted to finish with it all. I was praying for a sniper’s bullet.’

‘You were just angry.’

I look at the lieutenant-colonel. He holds my gaze, not facing me down, with just that sort of perplexed questioning look schoolboys have when they are not sure they have given their teacher the correct answer.

‘Are you afraid of dying, Colonel?’

‘Since I made the choice to take up arms I’ve been guided by one principle: you can’t be afraid of dying, because if you are you risk dying of fear. And isn’t death the final objective of existence, anyway? Whether you own half the world or live from hand to mouth, it makes no difference; one day you’ll be called on to leave everything where it is, all your treasures and your vale of tears, and vanish.’

The vibes this young man gives off are good. They revive me.

‘Are you a believer?’

He glances pointedly at the Koran.

‘You have nothing to fear,’ I reassure him. ‘I have an open mind.’

He says, ‘In that case, sir, with all the great respect I feel for the devout man I know you to be, I cannot accept the idea that there is a Last Judgement after what we have lived through here on earth. Death can have no value unless it puts a final end to what has ceased to exist.’

‘Do you not want to go to paradise?’

‘What for? I can’t really imagine enjoying, or putting up with, doing the same thing for the whole of eternity. Anything that doesn’t come to an end is exhausting or boring or both.’

‘If you have no faith, you cannot have any ideals, Colonel.’

‘I had faith once, sir. I have no ideals any more. I gave up the first so that I wouldn’t have to share it with hypocrites, and the second because I couldn’t find anyone to share them with.’

Suddenly emboldened, he adds, ‘Do you know why I became a soldier, Brotherly Guide? Because of a speech, or perhaps more of a diatribe. One of yours, sir. I forget what the occasion was or where you delivered it, but there was a phrase that marked me for life. You were furious, wherever it was. With our brothers from the Mashriq and the Maghreb, all the Muslim countries. And you came out with a phrase that should have woken the dead but had no effect on any of those it was aimed at. You said, “There are 350 million sheep out there!”’

This young man has entirely won me over. He knows my anger by heart and has made it his own.

‘We don’t even produce the spoons we stir our tea with. An army of high rollers who only care about blowing wads of cash or helping ourselves to it, that’s what we are. Our great handicap, sir, is the absence of the faculty of thought. It is a tool that’s completely foreign to us. And without thought, how can we think about tomorrow, how can we look to the future? We live from day to day, without caring about the generations to come, and one day we’re going to wake up without a dinar to our name and ask ourselves, “Where did it all go?”’

He goes on, blushing now, but determined to lance the abscess that has apparently been festering in his mind for years.

‘Whatever I’ve accomplished in the course of my career as a soldier, Rais, I did for you. At no time have I ever had the feeling of working for a national or ideological ideal — or for any sense of identity — because I have never given any credit either to Arab policy-makers who, with every step they take backwards, claim to be advancing against the tide.’

‘I’m one of those Arab policy-makers.’

‘You have nothing in common with the ones I’m referring to. You’re a guide, a real, unique guide, who cannot be replaced. That’s why you are alone today.’

‘I don’t feel my efforts are in vain, Colonel.’

‘One can always preach in the desert, sir, but one cannot sow in the sand.’

Two bursts of gunfire ring out from inside the school complex.

The lieutenant-colonel asks me not to leave my room and dashes into the corridor. There is another gunshot and then silence …

I walk over to the window and pull back a piece of tarpaulin, but it does not look out onto the playground. I step into the corridor, listening. Muffled shouts reach me. There is no sound coming from the ground floor, nothing moving. I hear running feet crunching on the gravel of the playground and I wonder if we are being attacked or if there is a mutiny taking place.

‘What’s going on?’ I shout out, in the hope that someone will show themselves on the ground floor.

No one answers me.

Holding firmly on to the banister, I go downstairs one step at a time, keeping a lookout.

Outside the shouts have stopped.

I do not dare venture any further and stay standing halfway down the stairs, ready to go back up to my room and collect my gun at the first sign of danger.

‘Who was shooting? Who was shooting?’

The general’s voice.

Soldiers burst into the sitting room downstairs. They are carrying two wounded men. Lieutenant-Colonel Trid shows them where to put them.

‘Lay them over there. On the floor, there.’

Mansour and the general appear, looking bewildered. They stand over the two bloodied bodies. I join them. Both wounded men are in a critical state. One has been hit in the neck, the other in the chest: he stares at the ceiling, shocked, a gurgling noise coming from his mouth.

‘An auxiliary flipped out,’ the lieutenant-colonel explains. ‘He shot his comrades then turned his weapon on himself. He’s lying outside in the yard.’

‘What do you mean, flipped out? He might have been trying to kill me.’

‘He wanted to go and fight,’ another officer says. ‘I think it was the shelling that got to him. He’d been in a bad way for several hours. He’d refused to take cover. Then he cracked. He got hold of a weapon and said he couldn’t bear to wait any longer and he wanted to fight to the finish. These two tried to disarm him. He shot them, then killed himself.’

He takes me into the courtyard, showing the way with a torch.

A man is lying awkwardly on the ground, a few steps inside the school gate, arms and legs outspread. Half his skull has been blown away. I know who he is from the bracelet around his wrist: it is Mustafa, the orderly who brought me dinner.