Gone, but not forgotten

The novelist Laila Lalami reminded me that 40 years ago today, Muammar al-Qaddafi overthrew the Libyan ruler King Idris I.

At the time, my friend Muna was living in Libya. Years later in Amman, she told me the story;  how they awoke at dawn, horrified to find tanks trained on the palace.

Muna's mother worked for the Queen; her Palestinian father for an American oil company. The family fled with just the clothes on their backs. They spent some time in Malta, before working their way to Jordan, where they ultimately obtained Jordanian passports. To this day, they live in Amman.

Laila Lalami wrote: "It seems to me that coverage of Gaddafi is broadly limited to two topics: his social antics (e.g. the tent he set up in the garden of the Hotel Marigny, his all-female bodyguard corps, his ridiculous outfits and so on) and the Lockerbie bombing. One rarely hears about all the political prisoners who have been rotting in his jails for several decades.

"A couple of years ago, the novelist Hisham Matar wrote a very moving piece about his father, Jaballa Matar, who was allegedly kidnapped by Egyptian security forces in March 1990 and then rendered to Libya. He has not been seen in nineteen years and has not been heard from in ten.

How does one remain free from becoming a symbol or a victim? How do we remain whole and free from hate, yet truthful to our memory?

Life attempts to teach us about loss: that one can still find peace in the finality of death. And yet, my loss gives no peace. My father is not incarcerated, yet he is not free; he is not dead, yet he is not alive either. My loss is self-renewing, insistent and incomplete.

I was always told to expect to lose my father. Many Libyan political dissidents have been assassinated or kidnapped. But now I know that I had no comprehension of the danger he was in. If I had, I would have held on to him with all I could, or tried harder to persuade him not to engage in political dissent, perhaps. Regret is the cruellest companion for those of us who are left behind.

I did try to persuade him to leave his political work, because I loved my father more than I loved my country; or, to put it another way, I had learned by then to live without my country, but not without my father.

When Father was taken, the world did feel empty. For the first couple of years, our ship was lost, then we recovered our bearings and learnt that the speed by which one resumes living is no indication of the depth of one’s grief."

I knew Jaballa Mater personally. When I was a UN correspondent, I was introduced to Jaballa by a mutual friend at the US-Arab Chamber of Commerce in New York. The friend asked me to take Jaballa shopping for presents for his family. I remember him purchasing a wallet and other gifts at the Cartier counter at Macy's. A group of friends accompanied him to dinner at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center and the waiter snapped our picture. Jaballa with his shock of grey hair and mustache was laughing, wearing a suit with his signature white silk fringed scarf draped around his neck. There were other dinners, always an eclectic group, whose livelihood or lives were rooted in the Middle East.

Jaballa was living in Switzerland at the time and didn't like to discuss Middle East politics; certainly not the minefield of Libyan politics, which had caused such grief for him and his family. Years later, I was dismayed to learn Jaballa had been kidnapped, while living in Egypt. Widespread speculation was that Egyptian security forces had turned him over to Libya, another victim of Qaddafi's thugs. Until reading Laila's piece today, I hadn't known Jaballa had been heard from at all during the last 19 years. It's possible he is still alive, although who knows in what condition, along with Qaddafi's numerous other political prisoners. Human rights seem to have been forgotten in the West's renewed quest for lucrative oil and business partnerships in Libya.

Another friend, Mansour Rashid Kikhia, the former Libyan Ambassador to the UN, was kidnapped from his hotel in Cairo in December, 1993. Kikhia had resigned his job at the UN and was head of the International Arab Jurists Association. Despite the intervention of the US government and the United Nations, no information about his fate has been forthcoming.

Many political prisoners died in a massacre June 29, 1996 at Abu Salim prison in Benghazi.

In December 2006, I wrote a poem, "Dead or disappeared" about these two men and other activists - and one special friend - I came to know.

Bright young thing
in New York watching
history unfold amidst chaos
key players crossed my path
some became friends
admired for their selfless courage


The last time I saw him
he took off his shoes
and put his feet on the table
at a UN press conference
so we could see the pattern of scars
calling card of the Shah's SAVAK*

He got our attention.
Two weeks later he was murdered.


The last time I saw him
he seemed a little drunk and flirtatious,
escorted by aides and guards
in an Amman hotel lobby
talking about an upcoming meeting
promising an interview

A sobering phone call followed:
felled on his front porch in a hail of assassin's bullets.


The last time I saw him
he was impassioned about
his human rights work
looking forward to an international conference
to expand the jurists' scope and focus
helping secure rights for all

Newspaper headlines reported his disappearance in Egypt;
UN and governmental inquiries produced no answers.


The last time I saw him
I took him shopping
for family gifts at Cartier
they snapped our picture at the Rainbow Room
and we went to a dinner party with friends
then he went home to Geneva

Vanished without a trace in Cairo;
more UN inquiries; no answers.


The last time I saw him
he told me he loved me
and kissed me goodbye
then boarded a plane to Amman
to do his father's bidding
and work in the family business

Less than five months later he was dead,
shot three times in the head.


For those still here
an obligation to tell their stories
remember what they held dear
the struggles and small victories
undying commitment to causes
greater than themselves


*Secret police during the reign of the Shah of Iran

Note that Qaddafi is spelled in a number of ways. At the UN, we spelled his name Muammar al-Qaddafi.

Photo of bas relief sculptures over a doorway in Amsterdam.

Comments

[Di Overton]

What an awful World this is. I watched a programme on BBC2 last night about Romanian Gypsy Children in Europe - heartbreaking stuff.

[Gillian daSilva]

OH Tara, you must lie awake and wonder sometimes, all these loving souls who've crossed your path, befriended you, loved you are now missing or dead. My heart breaks for you, for them.

As I blog about the trivial, the tomatoes...the world turns around me at such a furious and frightening pace...I have so much trouble keeping up with it all.

Qaddafi was a name plucked from the newsheadlines at the supper table...it still echoes in my mind along with other phrases such as 'cold war' and 'Gaza strip', the 'PLO' and more...all of these to me were fear inducing. I understood none of it but the fleeting images on our television were very scary. I was reminded of Qaddafi when I worked ten years ago for a woman whose family had fleed Libya, she impressed me with her strength and sense of calm and could speak fluent Swahili. In my adult life that was the first real information I'd had brought to my attention about it...!

It seems that everytime I visit here you give me an education. Your links send me off on a tangent of information gathering. Thanks for that. And accept my heartfelt condolences for the ones you've lost.

xoxo

[Kay]

We need to be aware of and to remember these things, so that we don't become too complacent and uncaring - too self-centred. Unfortunately a motif of sadness and injustice runs through our world.

[Marilyn]

My heart is sad for these lost stars that cared. Your words were very touching. I also wonder "what can we do". You help us to be aware. Thanks so much.

[Yoli]

All I can do is cry.

[julochka]

there was a retrospective article on him today in our daily newspaper, which explored how he became "clean enough for the living room" (stueren in danish) due to oil in libya. the world is a cynical place...and people like jaballa the forgotten victims.

[Katie]

Wasn't John McCain just in Libya meeting with Qaddafi a few weeks ago?
I recall he Twittered about meeting with Qaddafi and tweeted that he was intense and engaging.

I thought it odd that McCain would be visiting but I guess no odder than the whole Lockerbie release for oil farce.
I guess even odder still is the timing of it all.

Best to you,
Katie

[jeanie]

Oh, Tara, this is such a hearbreaking story. I cannot imagine the fear, the pain. The post is a tribute and a beautiful one to a man who sounds very special and certainly one who made a significant impact. It puts so much of what we do each day into perspective, doesn't it?

[Christina]

Such painful, loving and moving memories. You have reminded me, that there is a certain respect and love that we must carry in our hearts forever, and know it's okay to do so. We must carry these beautiful feelings, along side of compassion for the people that are woven in and out, of our life.
Beautiful!

I love you.

[Rebekah]

Tara, I am so moved. We refer to traffic as chaotic. We have the audacity to be frustrated by the smallest inconveniences. We are - I am - an American largely untouched by horror, unless I choose to look. And day to day, I forget to look or think. I just swish through life without awareness of the tentative edge so many people live on. This piece you have written, the words of perpetually grieving children, the echoing poem - this has cut my conscience. I'm left with the question, "What can I do?" I don't know the answer, but remaining isolationist does not seem like an option.