Dear Readers,
“For days, I felt extremely sorrowful by what happened in the final dying minutes of the late Libyan dicatator Col. Muammar Gaddafi‘s partly-wretched and vanquished life and in the ensuing days when his corpse and that of his son, Moutassim and an aide, were displayed as a global spectacle – I’m thinking YouTube – from a freezer in an old Libyan market in Misrata.
What joy could after all, have been retrieved at the hands of a lynch mob or what it seemingly appeared to be for me anyway… from all that amateur mobile footage that demonstrated a weak, bloodied man… his matted hair being tugged at violently while the frail despot himself, being pinned down and repeatedly beaten in a primitive fashion, by a near-hysterical crowd that was said to make for a part of the Libyan Rebel Army in Sirte.
How could I cheer such barbarism and the gruesome pictures that were splashed in the papers the next day? How could such a revengeful conscience be haloed and rewarded while accompanied by a thunderous applause from certain Governments? Why did the initial disgust of the West slip down to a whimper? What did it mean when Gaddafi, his son and aide were later buried secretly in an unknown location, said to be home to the crushed dictator’s Bedouin tribal ancestors? Gaddafi had himself in June, 1942, being born in a Bedouin tent.
Did anyone really relish staring down at Moutassim left alone to moan a nasty wound in his chest? And this…bearing that effect of sensationalism that the pictures were meant to convey? Were you able to smile at seeing a young man openly suffer while isolated in a small dark room, even if he may have deserved some of his trials? What if that happened to someone we knew as a friend or acquaintance? Or even family…
I know from being born and raised in Malaysia that Muslims are supposed to bury their dead before sundown or otherwise, as soon as possible.. Why did the West suddenly go all silent over the lengthy, lingering burials if they had no intention of bothering with a post-mortem? To me, that would straightaway suggest a cover-up for the initial protest of the Army’s denial at execution, that was possibly placated at the end to allow for a n uneasy truce… a reluctant and distorted, I shall add… world peace.
Overall, if those grisly photographs were meant to shock, in that aspect they failed. The internet has been around for a long while now and I have from years ago, already been subdued to a cold numbness by bizarre graphics that continue to show up on Facebook and seemingly innocent advertisements etc. So basically, the media’s lavish photography of the macabre, did nothing for me. On the contrary, it was the chilling reportage that gave me the shivers.
How removed Gaddafi must have been from the present sphere of time that brings with it, the all-revealing digital age. The defeated ruler seemed unaware of how any failed strategy at fighting his bloodied battles for a land he refused to give up, could in an instant, bring about extreme humiliation worldwide. It is after all, no longer 1969.
Such stories make me question my own upbringing and the ethics from childhood, that has since governed my destiny. Over the years, I have met so many frauds in my own life’s occupation as a writer and these among supposed fellow-writers. I have also witnessed how by way of superficial appearances and by such a desperation to be recognised as writers even if one had to self-publish or even if one had to cheat and plagiarize other peoples’ stories. From what I have silently observed of a few people, the idea is to just cheat along the way first and eventually, find adequate ways to cover it up. I have seen a Malaysian plagriarist where family and friends helped cover her crime. Where she publicly declared scribbling and publishing original stories that were actually stolen from a dead prize-winning author, she has never taken responsibility for her fraud and continues to this day, to advertise those stories as her own. And that those around her have all helped keep up her silence. It helps her case that the stories are not seen outside Malaysia. This episode alone so close to home changed my views of the world in a major way. I questioned if even the subject of criminology had turned murky…the very real act of a fraud and theft observed as a vague grey area measured by a string of of rights and wrongs, all in hasty conflict with one another.
In this way, I have recognised that some of the most upright of us are not as upright as we like the public to believe. I must lament that so many of us have discarded our principles for a minor glory, so many of us no longer respect the human conscience. Where have our hearts gone? And in the case of Libya, do mobile phone videos and photographs embody new representations of our morbidly curious and craving souls?
I suspect anxiously that right now, if I cheered the recent vulgarity with a similar vindictive sense of joy, what does that make me? If I shush over a fair trial and allow cruel acts of revenge to have their day, does that make me more lawful, innocent and righteous than what the Libyan despot once was? If I stepped down to his level in the treatment of another human being, why should I be applauded? Because if I receive a standing ovation for actions that could have represented Gaddafi’s own brutal treatment of others, then shouldn’t the former dictator also have been applauded? Or are there double standards for the world’s practice of its laws and perceived sense of justice?
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In this way, I stayed troubled for a long time. But oh…how magical the world of literature as always and it was Libyan Tuareg novelist and now Swiss resident Ibrahim al-Koni‘s Gold Dust translated by Elliott Colla and published by Arabia Books London, that saved the day for me.
Unfortunately, I have only read one al-Koni’s varied brilliant works but Gold Dust did get under my skin and into my tearful, burnt eyes with a newer, profound understanding of the more painful and disturbing culture and history that marks the sometimes savage ways of Libya’s desert tribes. In this case, that of the respected if not enigmatic, Tuareg peoples.
Please do click on the link and you would learn more about the book. as I am unable to review it at this present time.
An abandoned youth, Ukhayyad and his much-treasured piebald camel flit along their tragic destiny and there are many adventures to be gleaned along the way in the harsh Libyan desert that often bows to severe seasonal environments.
What uncovers through the story, are the jutting, underlying layers of savage brutality – told in a somewhat kindly fashion – in a thirst for revenge and barbaric justice. From this gripping and electrifying novella, I learnt that the Libyan desert tribes featuring in the case of the book – the Tuareg clan – do adhere to an ancient, traditional and straitlaced protocol. Justice is cloaked by an open revenge that may be metered out systematically. Murder and theft of another’s property are considered despicable crime. After much discussion, a punishment is handed out without question. Often, the men who seek revenge are persistent and stubborn in their chase of the criminal. They will not give up but stay resilient to their cause, combing the land for the hunted, no matter how tedious the journey. They will rest only when the revenge for a crime has been executed immediately and without disruption. Through such episodes, I learnt of the abiding sacredness that appears to crown the laws inherited by desert kinsmen and hunters as once long ago, was so diligently followed by their ancestors.
There is so much more to this profound, yet tragic tale that defines the lasting relationships and strangely-adorable complexities of people and their individual relationships with animals. Or of a novel that sketches legendary desert culture. Gold Dust by Ibrahim al-Koni certainly helped me to broaden my perspectives and to keep an open mind on the different sets of justice, that continue to prevail on the paths of different countries. I do understand the workings of the Libyan Rebel Army as a vast, individual group of their own, a lot better now. I might not agree with the way Gaddafi and his son were killed, nor the way his inner circle had their legs tied up before being beheaded one by one and then for each head to be waved and paraded in the air like Halloween lanterns with boorish yells and celebratory shouts.
But I understand now, far better why things were conducted the way they were. Readers, please do read Ibrahim al-Koni’s Gold Dust, if you ever get the opportunity. It serves as an excellent education of how the ancient laws of desert tribes continue to hold the fort and blood of its people and for that alone, the Libyan Rebel Army does have my respect. I don’t condone their actions in the killing of Gaddafi, his son and the last inner circle of his men but I accept with the twinned bottled knowledge of both melancholia and my own love for world cultures, residing in the depths of my soul… the route to Gaddafi’s death. Yes, now I do.”
Susan Abraham