And now, paradoxically, all hell has broken loose because I did not let go.
I stare at the light at the end of the tunnel, unable to breathe.
I refuse to think about my son, about what I myself will go through; I empty my head; I must not torment myself.
The minutes pass.
I hear bursts of gunfire that intensify, rockets replying to grenades, vehicles coming and going in a screech of tyres.
I am alone.
Alone in the world.
Left high and dry by my guardian angels and the marabouts who predicted a thousand victories for me in return for a few extra noughts on their cheques.
Where have my servants gone, my Amazons and my supporters who were so ardent they would whip themselves in public to show their devotion to the world? … Vanished into thin air! Puff! Melted into the background. Did they really exist? And my people, once loyal to my cause, standing behind me for better or worse, who took an oath to follow me wherever the Voice led me, what do they hope to raise over my bones?
My people have lied to me from the start, since that morning when on the radio from Benghazi I broke their chains and gave them back their dignity. My people have never loved me, they have just flattered me to receive my gifts, following the example of my courtesans, my kin and my whores.
I should have known: a sovereign can never have friends, he just has enemies who plot behind his back and opportunists he keeps close to his heart the way you nourish a viper in your bosom.
I should have listened to Bassem Tanout, a Libyan poet I knew a very long time ago, in London, during my training with the British Army Staff. He was a maverick, a lovely man as frank and open as a child’s laughter. He lived in exile: his country was his dog-eared library of books and a wad of paper that he covered with lines of rebellious verse. He came back to Libya the day after the coup and we continued to meet. In the early years of my rule he regularly came to my house. Then the intervals between his visits started to get longer. I did not see him any more. He declined my official invitations, did not respond to my letters. I decided that some harm must have come to him and I launched a search to find him. One night my agents brought him to me. As poets go, he did not look like much. He was as crumpled as his clothes; you could smell the alcohol on him a mile away and he was shivering like a junkie in withdrawal. When I asked him if he had problems, he retorted that I was his problem. ‘You disappoint me, Muammar,’ he announced from the heights of his inebriation. ‘You’re in the process of destroying with your left hand what you have built with your right. Don’t rely on the people’s clamour. The people are a siren song. Their fervour is a pernicious addiction. It is the vice of choice for exalted egos, their nirvana for a night and then their certain downfall.’ I was so wounded by his words that I banished him from my sight. For weeks afterwards his reproaches obsessed me. To ward them off I locked their author up in a dungeon. Three days after his arrest his gaolers found him hanged in his cell, a verse from Omar Khayyam carved on the wall as his legacy.
Thinking back to that time, as yesterday’s ovations turn into the baying of the arena, Bassem Tanout is the one and only friend I have ever had.
Other people come back to me. Each more crippled than the next. They drag themselves over the flagstones that pave the prison yards I consigned them to. All have the same look about them, the look that says one-way ticket, that says they will never be seen again. That one was a minister, he finished up at the end of a rope. This one is a dissident, he succumbed under torture. There were legions of them rotting in my dungeons, there for not having been worthy of my trust or my charity. They were my enemies. They only got what they deserved. But the people, my people, that mass I made with my own hands, that I gave birth to with forceps as I bit my lips, that I boosted in every one of my speeches and raised in the community of nations, what malignancy possessed it so that from one day to the next, without warning, it discarded what I had built for it and decided to crucify me on my own pedestal?
I have no regrets about clamping down.
It was legitimate and necessary.
A guide, though entrusted with a messianic mission, when he has official responsibility for a country, does not turn the other cheek. Quite the opposite: if he wants to fulfil his function properly, he must cut off the hand that was raised against him, even if the slap came from his father. From that perspective my conscience is clear, I am satisfied that I carried out my duty. I have killed, tortured, terrorised, hunted down, decimated families — because I had no alternative. But I did no wrong to the innocent. I only punished the guilty, the traitors and spies. I am ready to confront them on the day of reckoning and I shall make them bow their heads because they were at fault … Will the people have the audacity to look me in the face in God’s house? What will they have to say when they are asked, ‘What have you done with our elected one?’ … Words will fail them, just as the courage to look me in the eyes will fail them. The Devil take repentance when it produces damnation. He who burns his bridges burns every chance of forgiveness. Libya will never see the day light its way again; nowhere will it bask in sunshine, because darkness is its destiny.
Suddenly, a cracking noise … some pebbles clatter into the ditch, then a shadow falls across the circle of light at the end of the tunnel. I make out a weapon first, then a head leaning in … He’s here! I’ve found him! He’s here, sir … Running steps return. Rebels spring into the ditch, their weapons aimed at me. They do not dare come any nearer and remain some distance away, startled and indecisive.
An individual in paramilitary uniform jumps down.
‘Where is he?’
‘In there, sir. He’s crouched down at the end, on the left.’
The commander takes off his helmet and looks at me in silence.
‘I can’t believe my eyes,’ he exclaims. ‘Is it really you or is it your twin?’
He takes a step forward, then another, with all the caution of a mine clearance expert. He is afraid to come closer, and lowers his head as if he cannot believe his eyes. It takes him some time to be certain that he is not hallucinating.
‘No, it’s really him,’ he shouts. ‘It’s really Muammar Gaddafi. Only he could end up like this: making like a rat … like a sewer rat at the bottom of a drain.’
Behind him men pass the word back: It’s Gaddafi … it’s Gaddafi …
The commander opens his arms.
‘I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. What a picture! What a moral! The man who thought he could ride the clouds is trapped in an old drainpipe … You’ve gone back to your roots, Brotherly Guide. You were born out of camel dung and you’re going to die in your own shit … Amr,’ he yells at one of his companions, ‘get your mobile out and film this exceptional curtain call for me.’
Shadows start to mill around the mouth of the tunnel. Mobile phones are held up to immortalise the scene.
The commander allows several flashes to streak the tunnel before raising his hand to put an end to the ritual. He crooks his finger to order me to join him.
‘Get your carcass over here, Brotherly Guide. I can’t wait to squeeze you in my arms so tight I’ll have you pissing out of your arse.’
His crudity shocks me, more than my capture.
‘Come and get me,’ I challenge him.
‘Just watch me.’
‘He might be armed,’ a rebel warns, taking aim at me.
‘The Brotherly Guide doesn’t need to burden himself with weapons,’ the commander says. ‘The Force is with him.’