‘Since when have your plans changed, General?’
‘Since this morning.’
‘Without informing me?’
The general’s eyes widen as he again looks dumbfounded by my question.
‘But, Rais, I’m telling you, it was you yourself who suggested evacuating Sirte.’
I do not remember having suggested such a perilous manoeuvre. In order not to lose face, I nod.
Mansour crouches down with one hand on the floor, the other to his forehead. He looks as though he is about to puke his guts up.
‘Colonel Mutassim still has dependable men in the sector,’ the general tries to mollify me. ‘He is putting a substantial convoy together. At 4 a.m. exactly we’ll aim to break through enemy lines. The rebels’ withdrawal is a stroke of luck. It gives us a small window, at last. The militias have lifted their roadblocks at points 42, 43 and 29. Probably to take cover, as the signals operator said. We’ll retreat southwards. If Mutassim has been able to put together forty or fifty vehicles we’ll have a chance of getting through. Any skirmishes, we disperse. It’s chaos in the city. No one knows who commands who any more. We’ll exploit the confusion to get out of Sirte.’
‘Why not now?’ I say. ‘Before the bombing raids start.’
‘It will take Colonel Mutassim several hours to round up the vehicles we need.’
‘Are you in contact with him?’
‘Not by radio. We’re using runners.’
‘Where is he exactly?’
‘We’re waiting for the reconnaissance patrols to come back and tell us.’
Mansour lets himself slide down the wall to sit on the floor.
‘A little decorum,’ I shout at him. ‘Do you think you are resting on your mother’s patio?’
‘I’ve got an appalling migraine.’
‘No matter. Get a grip on yourself, and do it fast.’
Mansour gets to his feet. His face is scored with deep lines across his cheeks, giving him the look of an animal in agony. Abu-Bakr pushes a chair in his direction. He declines it.
‘Do you really believe they are about to bomb us?’ I ask him.
‘It’s obvious.’
‘Perhaps it’s a diversion,’ Abu-Bakr suggests, more to show himself on my side than from conviction.
‘They wouldn’t order their ground troops to evacuate their advance posts if they weren’t going to.’
‘You think they know where we are?’
‘No one knows where you are, Rais. They strike at random and wait for us to give ourselves away.’
‘Very well,’ I tell him. ‘I am going to rest. Let me know as soon as there is anything to report.’
3
Someone has cleaned my room, covered the windows with pieces of tarpaulin and cobbled together a light from a torch powered by a car battery.
Under the couch I use as a bed I found, a while ago, a slender gold bracelet that must have belonged to a little girl. It is a pretty piece of jewellery, finely worked and with an inscription engraved on the inside: ‘For Khadija, my angel and my sunshine’. I tried to put a face to Khadija and looked for a photo of her in the drawers and on the shelves. Nothing. Not one forgotten snapshot, not a trace of the family who once lived in the house, apart from the portrait of the father — or the grandfather — in the living room. I tried to imagine the life that the vanished family led within these walls. They were probably well-off people living in comfort and peace, with an attentive mother and happy children. What wrong had they done for their dreams suddenly to be wiped out? I have spared no effort in Libya to ensure that joys, celebrations and hopes are my people’s pulse, that angels and sunshine are inseparable from a child’s laughter.
I saw danger coming from a long way off, was absolutely clear about just how greedy the predators were, licking their lips at the prospect of the riches of my territory. But what alarm bells could I ring? In vain I warned other Arab leaders, those pleasure-seeking gluttons who only listen to the fawning and simpering of those who owe them favours. There was a full complement of them at Cairo, lined up like onions, spying on each other on the sly, half of them so conceited they could not stop behaving like constipated patriarchs, the other half too thick to be able to look serious. Arrivistes who thought they had really arrived, comic-opera presidents unable to shake off their country-bumpkin reflexes, petrodollar emirs looking like rabbits straight out of the magician’s hat, sultans wrapped in their robes like ghosts, disgusted at the blathering eulogies the speakers were trotting out ad infinitum. Why were they there? They cared for nothing that did not concern their personal fortunes. Busy stuffing their pockets, they refused to look up to see how dizzyingly fast the world was changing or how tomorrow’s storm clouds of hate were gathering on the horizon. The misery of their subjects, the despair of their youth, the pauperisation of their people, were the least of their concerns. Convinced that hard times would never trouble them, they ‘dealt with it’, as the saying goes. And they had nothing to fear, because they never stuck their necks out or played the tough guy. At the last summit of the League, while they hid their feelings behind their condescending smiles, I warned them: what had happened to Saddam Hussein could happen to them too. In private they laughed up their sleeves at me. And Ben Ali … my God, Ben Ali! That creep in his big shot’s suit, flexing his muscles to his henchmen, then folding like a pancake at the first envoy sent by the West! He sat right in front of me, red in the face from stifling his giggles. I amused him. I should have stepped off the stage to spit in his face. Wretched Ben Ali, dressed to the nines, so proud of his pimp’s paunch and willing to prostitute his country to the highest bidder. I have never been able to stand him, him and his mannered, pumped-up foppishness. I detested the way he cut his hair and his cheap charisma.
I was at Saif al-Islam’s the evening it happened. I was playing with my grandson in one corner of the living room. Saif was standing in front of the TV, his arms folded, stunned by the spectacle on the giant screen. The demonstrations in Tunis were getting bigger and bigger. The crowd was wild and hate was written on everyone’s face. Foaming mouths were screaming for the death penalty. The police were scattering like rats at the inexorable advance of popular fury. No amount of ultimatums or tear gas could stem the human tide.
I paid little attention to the commotion that the Tunisians were making. All the same, I was delighted to see Ben Ali challenged by his citizens. That evening I was the one stifling my giggles while he, in his quavering voice, begged his people to return to their homes. His panic was a treat. It filled me with pleasure. Ever since his bizarre inauguration I had known that he would only fly higher in order to fall further. A gangster elevated to the rank of rais! I was almost ashamed to have him as a fellow leader.
Suddenly Saif punched his fist into his other hand in a gesture of disbelief.
‘He’s gone … Ben Ali’s cleared out.’
‘What did you expect, my son? The man is just a pig in shit. He would mistake a cow’s fart for a gunshot.’
‘It’s unbelievable!’ Saif swallowed indignantly. ‘That’s not how it works. He can’t leave now.’
‘It is always time to leave for those who do not know how to stand up for themselves.’
Saif could not get over it. He kept punching his palm, astounded and outraged at once by the speed of the rais’s departure from the scene.
‘He shames us all, all of us. He has no right to throw in the towel. An Arab chieftain should never give up. That wet rag is humiliating every single one of us.’
‘Not me!’
‘Dammit! He’s the one in charge. He only has to frown to bring everyone back in line. What are his police and army doing?’