Since I was born in Libya, some have asked what I think of the situation there now, and I’ve been reluctant to speak out in depth mainly because I was so very young when I left that country. Yet as part of my memoir takes place in Libya it seems appropriate for me to say something, especially as I read that Libyan U.N. Deputy Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi has asked NATO not to dissolve the no-fly zone due to the question of internal stability in the wake of Moammar Gadhafi’s death and subsequent declaration of Libyan Liberation.From what my parents recounted over the years, our time in Libya was actually very good. Our Libyan neighbors were both friendly and helpful, and Libya itself had much to offer. But when the war broke out and the Israelis trounced the Arab forces, Libyans went on the rampage, directing their frustrations against anyone they deemed a target.
“We moved to the city of Tripoli when he was about a year old. His father was with an oil company and I was in the Libyan Diplomatic Service, working with the Prime Minister, H.E. Mohammed Majib. My housekeeper, an Italian woman married to a Libyan, Anna adored Roger Jonathan, and often took him to a farm to see the animals and play with the butterflies.
The Six-Day Arab-Israeli war was the first experience the boy had of what gentle people, kind people, are capable of doing when there is someone strong to lead them into hell. Our street beside the palace of King Idris was a battleground and the boy watched the burning of most of the surrounding homes and businesses, the disappearance of Jewish friends, the bitterness of our close neighbours who lived in a complex of apartments specially designed for foreign-Arab diplomats.” Helene Nixon, The Boy the Butterflies Kissed.
My only memory of Libya was falling down in the Sahara desert somewhere and cutting my thigh on a broken Fanta bottle. So how do I feel about what’s happened in Libya?
Moammar Gadhafi came to power through a bloodless coup d’etat on my birthday, 1969. He was responsible for the terrorist attack on Pan Am 103, and, to a large extent, for funding, arming, and training the Irish Republican Army, too. But in recent years he’d renounced terrorism altogether. Then the “revolution” came along, and with our government’s support, it looks like Libya may become another Iran, or worse. But I’m an optimist, so I hope Libya becomes a free country, a place I could visit again, if I wanted to.
