The Dictator's Last Night

1

The orderly walks ahead of me into the next room. In the candles’ unsteady light, magnified by the tarpaulins that have been put up to black out the windows, the place is even more depressing. A cabinet lies on its side, its mirror splintered; a slashed banquette has the stuffing coming out of it; drawers lie broken on the floor; on the wall there is a portrait of the head of the family in a sorry state, riddled with bullets.

It was my son Mutassim, responsible for the defence of Sirte, who chose a disused school in the middle of District Two as my troops’ headquarters. The enemy imagine me holed up in a fortified palace somewhere, unable to adapt to spartan conditions. It will never cross their minds to suspect I might be in an awful place like this instead. When did they forget that I am a Bedouin, lord of the meek and meekest of lords, who knows how to be at ease with the most frugal resources, comfortable on a bare dune of sand? As a child I knew what hunger was, what it meant to wear patched trousers and old shoes with holes in them. For years I walked barefoot over burning stones. Misery was my element. I skipped every other meal and always ate the same food, tubers when rice happened to be in short supply. At night, with my knees pressed into my stomach, I would sometimes dream of a chicken leg so intensely that my mouth could not stop watering and I would nearly drown in my saliva. Since then, if I have lived in splendour it has been only in order to disdain it, and to prove by doing so that nothing that has a price is worthy to be called sacred, that no grail can elevate a mouthful of wine to the status of a magic potion, that whether a man is dressed in silks or rags he is only ever himself … and I am Gaddafi, sovereign, as happy sitting on a milestone as a throne.

I do not know whose house this was, next to the school, where I have been living for several days — probably a loyal compatriot, otherwise how can one explain the ruined state into which it has fallen? The signs of violence are recent, but the building already looks like a ruin. Vandals have ransacked it, looting anything of value, smashing what they could not take with them.

The orderly has gone to extraordinary trouble to brush an armchair clean and lay a table worthy to receive me. He has draped sheets over both to camouflage their scars. On a tray salvaged from who knows where a china plate offers a semblance of a meal: bully beef in jelly, sliced with care, a square of processed cheese, hard biscuits, some slices of tomato and a peeled and chopped orange in its juice at the bottom of a bowl. Our supply lines have been cut, and the standard rations are scarcely enough to feed my praetorian guard.

The orderly invites me to be seated and stands to attention, facing me. His solemnity would be absurd among all this mess if his weather-beaten features did not speak of his sacrosanct loyalty to me. This man loves me more than anything in the world. He would give his life for me.

‘What is your name?’

He is surprised by my question. His Adam’s apple twitches in his craggy throat.

‘Mustafa, Brotherly Guide.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty-three, Brotherly Guide.’

‘Thirty-three,’ I repeat, moved by his youth. ‘I was your age an eternity ago. It is so far away now, I can hardly remember those days.’

Not knowing whether he should reply or not, the orderly starts wiping the table around the tray.

‘How long have you been in my service, Mustafa?’

‘Thirteen years, sir.’

‘I do not believe I have seen you before.’

‘I’m filling in for the others … I used to look after the car park.’

‘Where has the other one gone, the redhead? What was his name?’

‘Maher.’

‘No, not Maher. The tall red-headed one, who lost his mother in a plane crash.’

‘Sabri?’

‘Yes, Sabri. I haven’t seen him lately.’

‘He’s dead, sir. A month ago. He was caught in an ambush. He fought like a lion. He killed many of his attackers before he died. A rocket hit his vehicle. We couldn’t bring his body back.’

‘What about Maher?’

The orderly bows his head.

‘Is he dead too?’

‘He surrendered three days ago. He took advantage of a resupply operation to give himself up.’

‘He was a good boy. Funny, bursting with energy. We are surely not talking about the same person.’

‘I was with him, sir. We saw a rebel roadblock, and as our truck turned back Maher jumped out of the cab and ran towards the traitors with his hands up. The sergeant fired at him but he missed him. The sergeant says anyhow Maher’s got no chance. The rebels don’t take prisoners. They torture them then stiff them. Maher’ll be rotting in a mass grave right now.’

He does not dare raise his head.

‘What tribe are you from, my boy?’

‘I was born in … Benghazi, sir.’

Benghazi! Just the sound of the name makes me want to throw up so violently I would set off a tidal wave that would flatten that damned city and all the villages round it. It all started there, like a devastating pandemic that infected the people’s souls like the Devil himself. I should have flattened it, on the first day of the insurgency, I should have hunted down its renegade insurgents alley by alley, house by house, and skinned them alive in public to bring every ill-intentioned citizen to his senses and make him draw back from suffering the same fate.

The orderly senses the fury welling up inside me. If the earth were suddenly to open up at his feet, he would not hesitate to leap into the chasm and be swallowed up.

‘I’m very sorry, sir. I’d prefer to have been born in a sewer, I would, or on a felucca. I’m ashamed to have come into the world in that city of ill omen, to have sat at the same café tables as those traitors.’

‘It is not your fault. What does your father do?’

‘He’s retired. He was a postman.’

‘Have you heard from him?’

‘No, sir. All I know is that he has fled the city.’

‘Any brothers?’

‘Only one, sir. He’s a warrant officer in the air force. I heard he was wounded in a NATO air raid.’

His head is bowed so far that his chin is about to disappear into the hollow of his neck.

‘Are you married?’ I ask him, to spare him any more embarrassment.

‘Yes, sir.’

I notice a leather strap around his wrist, which he hastens to conceal under his sleeve.

‘What is that?’

‘A Swahili charm, sir. I bought it in the African market.’

‘For its talismanic properties.’

‘No, sir. I liked its red and green plaited strands. I wanted to give it to my elder daughter. She didn’t like it.’

‘One does not refuse a gift.’

‘My daughter doesn’t see me very often, so she sulks at my presents.’

‘How many children do you have?’

‘Three girls. The eldest is thirteen.’

‘What is her name?’

‘Karam.’

‘Pretty name … When did you last see your daughters?’

‘Maybe six or eight months ago.’

‘Do you miss them?’

‘As much as our people miss their Brotherly Guide.’

‘I have not gone anywhere.’

‘That’s not what I meant, sir.’

He is shaking, though not from fear. This man worships me. His whole being is trembling with reverence for me.

‘I am going to ask Hassan to send you home.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘Your daughters are crying out for you.’

‘A whole people is crying out for you, Brotherly Guide. My family is just one drop in the ocean. To be at your side at this moment is an absolute privilege and joy.’

‘You are a good boy, Mustafa. You deserve to be with your daughters.’

‘If you send me I would disobey you for the first time in my life, and it would wound me so badly I would die.’

He means it. His eyes gleam with the tears that are only ever found in the pure in heart.

‘But go you must.’

‘My place is at your side, Brotherly Guide. I wouldn’t exchange it for a place in paradise. Without you there is no salvation for anyone, let alone my daughters.’

‘Sit down,’ I say to him, pointing to my armchair.

‘I could not possibly do that.’

‘I command you.’

His face is twisted in acute embarrassment.

‘Show me your tongue.’

‘I have never lied to you, Brotherly Guide.’

‘Show me your tongue.’

He gulps again and again, his face slightly turned away. His lips part to reveal a tongue as white as chalk.

‘How many days have you been fasting, Mustafa?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Your tongue is the colour of milk. It proves that you have not eaten for a considerable time.’

‘Brotherly—’

‘I know that my meals are made from your rations and that many of my guards are fasting so that I can go on eating.’

He lowers his head.

‘Eat,’ I tell him.

‘I could not possibly do that.’

‘Eat! I need my faithful servants to stay on their feet.’

‘Strength comes from the heart, not the stomach, Brotherly Guide. If I was starving or dying of thirst or had my legs cut off, I would still find the strength to defend you. I am capable of going to hell and back to fetch the flame that would reduce to ashes any hand daring to touch you.’

‘Eat.’

The orderly attempts to protest, but my expression stops him.

‘I am waiting,’ I say.

He sniffs noisily to work up his courage, clenches his jaws, and a feverish hand comes to rest on a hard biscuit. I sense him digging deep into his soul to find the courage to close his fingers around the biscuit. I hear him breathing shallow staccato breaths.

‘What happened, Mustafa?’

He is choking on the biscuit and still trying to chew it. He does not understand my question.

‘Why are they doing this?’

He grasps the meaning of my words and puts down the biscuit.

‘They have lost their senses, sir.’

‘That is not an answer.’

‘I don’t have any others, sir.’

‘Have I been unjust to my people?’

‘No!’ he exclaims. ‘Never, never in a thousand years will our country have a more enlightened guide or a gentler father than you. We were dusty nomads that a good-for-nothing king treated like a doormat, and then you came and made us a free people that the world envied.’

‘Should I imagine, then, that those rockets exploding outside are no more than firecrackers from a party I cannot quite locate?’

The orderly hunches his neck into his shoulders as if, all at once, he finds himself having to carry all of the traitors’ shame.

‘Surely they must have a reason, do you not think?’

‘I can’t see what it is, sir.’

‘You must have gone home when you had leave. To Benghazi, right where the rebellion started. You went to the café, to the mosque, to the parks. You must have heard people criticising me.’

‘People weren’t criticising you in public, Brotherly Guide. Our security services were listening in everywhere. I only heard people say good things about you. In any case I wouldn’t have let anyone show you a lack of respect.’

‘My security services were deaf and blind. They failed to see anything coming.’

Confused, he starts wringing his hands.

‘Very well,’ I concede. ‘People say nothing in public. That is normal. But tongues loosen in private. You must have been completely detached from reality if you did not hear, at least once, someone in your family, a cousin or an uncle, saying something bad about me.’

‘We all love you deeply in our family.’

‘I love my sons deeply. It does not stop me disapproving of them sometimes. I do not dispute that I am loved by your family. But some of your family members must have criticised me for small things, hasty decisions, ordinary mistakes.’

‘I’ve never heard anyone in my family challenge anything at all that you’ve done or said, sir.’

‘I do not believe you.’

‘I swear to you, sir. Nobody in my family criticises you.’

‘It’s not possible. The prophet Muhammad himself has his critics.’

‘Not you … not in my family anyway.’

I fold my arms and study him in silence for a long moment.

I return to the charge.

‘Why are people rebelling against me?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Are you a complete idiot?’

‘I’m just the person who looks after the car park, sir.’

‘That does not exempt you from having an opinion.’

He is sweating now, and short of breath.

‘Answer me. Why are people rebelling against me?’

He is desperately looking for the right words, the way people look for shelter in a bombing raid. His fingers are nearly knotted together and his Adam’s apple is bouncing wildly. He feels that he is caught in a trap and his destiny depends on his response.

He ventures, ‘Sometimes, when things are too quiet, people get bored, and some of them try to stir things up to make their lives more interesting.’

‘By attacking me?’

‘They think the only way to grow up is to kill their father.’

‘Go on.’

‘They challenge his birthright in order to—’

‘No, go back to the father … You said “kill their father”. I would like you to develop that idea further.’

‘I don’t really know enough to do that.’

‘You do not need to be a genius to understand that you do not kill your father, whatever he does, whatever he says,’ I shout, outraged. ‘To us the father is as sacred as the prophet.’

An explosion rattles the few panes of glass still left in the windows. Another bomb. In the distance there is the sound of a fighter plane climbing away. The hush that follows is like the silence of ruins, as deep as the tomb.

In the adjoining rooms life starts up again. I hear an officer giving orders, a door creaking, footsteps back and forth …

‘Eat,’ I say to the orderly.

This time he leaves the biscuit, shaking his head.

‘I can’t swallow anything, Brotherly Guide.’

‘Then go home. Go back to your daughters. I do not want to see you around here any more.’

‘Have I said something to displease you?’

‘Go. I need to pray.’

The orderly stands up.

‘Clear away first,’ I tell him. ‘Collect this miserable meal and share it with those who think that they have to kill their father in order to grow up.’

‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘Out of my sight.’

‘I—’

‘Get out!’

His expression changes from that of a serving soldier to a death mask. He is finished. He has no life left to give me. He knows that his existence, his being, faith, courage, everything good that he believed he embodied, is worthless now that my anger has banished him from my confidence.

I hate him.

He has wounded me.

He does not deserve to follow in my footsteps. My shadow will for ever be for him an unfathomable valley of darkness.