Moe and I on our last outing this past winter to " Beauty Street" where there are are roles upon roles of wholesale shops with beauty products for sale.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Todays News
I got my 1st instant message on my phone from a friend tonight . The 1st since I think May?So great to send a ms, stating what you want to say and not having to make conversation when you are really not in the mood or busy .Loving it.
The neighborhood shooter is still at large, shooting at will . We never see him . He is like a ghost. We certainly can hear him though. I wish they would catch him soon. We thought they might have this morning when we heard a lot of gunfire but since he has been walking around tonight and shooting , I guess they didn't. Oh well , soon ???
My daughter started a Facebook page for me and my cause. I am so proud of her for her support !It is for the organization of a legal petition to present to the NTC eventually when the new Libyan constitution is drawn up asking for certain rights for (women like me ) foreign spouses/ and children of Libyans married to foreign spouses . I will post the page for you to sign up and /or just show your support even if you are not in either of these categories , later on when I have the page ip here .So exciting to think that after 40 years, the many sacrifices made to live here and raise a family, may actually be acknowledged by giving me and so many others like me, rights that most Libyans take for granted in Libya. I have high hopes that the NTC will add this new law to the new constitution when drafted and ratified.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
What NOW ?
Just re read what I wrote in the previous post . Please excuse the glaring mistakes. It was 4 a.m. when I wrote and believe it or not , proof read it. BUT now , I am completely unable to access ANY of my email addresses or Facebook. It says "temporary moved to here" but won't open up to any web page . Now what ? Are we going back to no internet service or is this a "thing" ?
Snapped @ 60
Yesterday ( the 6th of Sept. ) was my 60th birthday.This has never been a problem before for me , birthdays. In fact I have almost always looked forward to birthdays. I have never lied about my age . I mean why bother and what is the point ?It is just silly to lie about how old you are , I think .But now I am 60 years old and I do mean old ! I am a senor citizen now . OMG !!! Although my youngest daughter in the States tells me I have until the age of 62 , maybe even 65 until I am officially a senor citizen. I think she was just trying to cheer me up.I am falling apart at a most alarming rate here.The first two months of the war I was house bound due to my arthritic knees not allowing me to walk or stand more than a few minutes at a time.
Which in around about way brings me to another topic I have wanted to discuss and haven't got around to yet, the simple kindnesses Moe and I were shown by family , friends, neighbors , and strangers during the war.Our son and his family came to take care of us the 1st week I was crippled. That was a huge help as I couldn't walk at all then. Moe still needs his care even if I can't walk.Neighbors volunteered to take Moe shopping to stock up on meds and grocery's , even carrying the things up 4 flights of stairs at times for him as he is unable to do that anymore.
Even when gasoline became scarce they still continued to drive him here and there when I couldn't. One day there was a knock at the door.I opened it to find a neighbors son standing there smiling . He asked for my car keys. He said Aunty Haga (I have all sorts of names, lol ) I want to put 7 liters of gas into your car for you .I know you can't wait in line for 3 days for gas. He refused to let me pay for the gas which cost as much as gold.
I have a friend that lives near us and her husbands family has a thousand young guys in it that all have helped us in one way or another .One would take my car for me and wait in line with it to get gasoline. Sometimes it would take as long as 3 or 4 days of waiting in line . This would be during bombings by NATO over head , fighting in lines with guns and knives by others waiting as well. Very dangerous .My son called one day and asked me did we have gasoline in the car. It just so happened that we didn't and I had hesitated asking the boy to take the car to the gas station for me because it had become too dangerous, so I told me son no . He showed up in one hour with enough gas to fill the car up half way, for free.Now that is love !
Hot plates of food , loaves of bread would magically appear ,when bread was as hard to find as an Easter egg in a Easter egg hunt .Shop keepers would come to the car , take the grocery list and then bring it all to the car for us when neither one of us were able to walk far or for long.Knocks on the door at odd times but always just when we needed them with offers of help. I am not too sure how we would have made these months with out all these angels.
Now on to another topic I have wanted to talk about , prayer.I have always prayed, just haven't been very public about it as some people.When we moved here I noticed that many would say Alhumduliallah all the time, which means Thanks to God .Inshallah was said a lot too . That means God's Will o,r if God Wants It To Be.People said that whenever they were asked something , go somewhere , or do something. Other circumstances as well but I just can't think of examples right now.Well , even when I was a Christian I was never one of those people that went around yelling those sorts of things , so it was quite awkward when I started to doing it after becoming a Muslim.Now I do it all the time and am not even aware of say them. Khadijateri and I were talking the other day about saying Alhumduliallah so much since the war started ,that hardly a sentence is stared without starting with it .
Now that I have rambled on here , I will get to the praying part ;before I sleep I say my prayers.Afterwords I give thanks . I list them on my fingers ;thank you God for the electricity today , for our good health , for the help of our friends and family. For they and their families good health . Thank You for our safety .For our families and friends safety .Thank You for our home . Thank You for our car. Thank You for Your forgiveness, and so on , until I fall asleep.Even when I lie down for a nap I say these prayers.The list got longer as the war wore on. Sometimes during the day I will say thanks to God for the sunset , the food we ate,the gentle cooling breeze that came in off the sea when the electric was off. The large and the small things are all worth saying thank you to God .And you know what ? He acknowledges them all .
I said a lot of prayers the day our oldest son was kidnapped and sent to Sirt to be a human shield.We had been trying to contact our son for a few days . Phone contact was off and on about this time , so we marked up the fact that we had been unable to reach him due to poor phone service when we were unable to reach him for several days . Then we called our daughter in law to ask her to have him call us . She hemmed and hawed about having him call us until after 5 days I penned her down about why he hadn't called us back and the story came out in her tears.He had rented a taxi to drive from some people after the foreign company he worked for left town when the war started . People still needed to work so they could eat. They have 2 little boys to feed and cloth. It was about this time Ghadffy forces was stopping people on the streets , in their cars, and picking them up . Mostly young men but sometimes other older people as well. We had all heard about these things happening.This is what had happened to our son as he drove his taxi. Long story short , he was sent to Sirt to act as a human shield for Ghadffy ,but since our son has worked all over Libya over the years,he knows the most unlikely people in the oddest out of the way places.He managed to get help from some people he found in Sirt that he knew and escape from there after almost 10 days of being missing.There was a point when I thought , due to mis-communication with Moe, that someone was on their way to our house to tell us he was dead.I think that was one of the worst days of my life.He returned home to us safe and sound .Alhumduliallah !By the way , that is a very difficult word to spell.
Now , during these last almost 8 months, I have had good days and bad days , Moe as well .We decided early on that it was just easier to have the good days rather than surfer through bad days , so we tried to see the bright side to most things , laugh off others ,kiss one another a lot , say I love for no reason at all ,as often as possible.Sometimes we did this through a veil of tears but we managed to stay positive as much as possible in the circumstances.It has helped us get through some very bad times.
That is until yesterday. I haven't been able to get my required 25 hours of sleep the last few days and I am not a very nice person with out them .Yesterday I woke up in a foul mood and it just got worse as the day and news wore on.Everything was awful.Moe went into town and came back with tales of a ghost town . Shops mostly closed.The few that were open were nude of merchandise.No coffee cafes open . Now , you know things are bad when they are closed. People here live on caffeine.Moe said that the trash that had been colected had been dumped on the beach here in Tagura. On THE BEACH , I SAY! Don't know if that is a temporay thing or what, and yes I KNOW there are a lot of things that need doing .I KNOW everything can't all get done at once , they need time.But the beach ?
Then I talked to my daughter in law.She told me that she and our son had driven by the wadi ( dry river ) near their house yesterday . There had been intense fighting there by both sides during the battle for Bab Al Azizia and Tripoli.Evidently many people were shot and killed at this place. Up to at least 150 or 200 people killed there.The Ghadffy people had set up an ambush check point disguised as the rebels by this wadi. As the people came to them , they were executed , thrown over the barrier wall of the wadi to hide them from the next victims as they came up to the check point.So , for the last week or so , in 105+ heat these bodies of victims have been lying in the wadi dead, waiting for some one to show them some decent kindness and humanity .Let's just forget about human kindness and decency here for a minute , or how un-religious this is , or disrespectful, but rather on disease spreading. Rats everywhere,wild dogs , flies breeding on these bodies. Where is WHO when you need them?A lot to do huh? My daughter in law said the smell from decomposing bodies that were no longer in the wadi was so strong they couldn't get within 2 blocks of the wadi.She was in tears as she described the scene on the phone.
We went to bed with a heavy heart last night after hearing that news.The stalemate in Bani Walid left us to wonder.So, off to bed we went , only to be woken up by loud explosions outside our condo in the little ally below us.Gunshots , cannon fire,geletine, running feet ,whistling ,signaling some one else doing the same things several streets over from us.Then, a car driving up, talking to them , a confederate, confirming a plan of action. More explosions . Strangely enough no one from any of the many check points up and down the main road that is situated at the end of the ally came running up to try to stop them . To keep the peace , as is their duty .Not one of the 7 policemen that live in the condos went running out to uphold the peace at 3 a.m. No one , that is until 45 minutes well after the entire incident was over and the shooters went home.THEN , everyone came running out to see what was going on , after the fact.There went any thought of sleep for the rest of the night.Interestingly enough, the NTC had sent a message out to everyone yesterday ... AGAIN...telling people to turn in their guns and NOT to shoot them AT ALL .Uh huh .
Then ..... as if all that was enough to put me in a foul mood, I turned 60 today ! AND......the news of a invisible (evidently) convoy of cars that managed to some how elude all the AWAK airplanes flying over Libya, and every single spy satellite that is focused on Libya at the moment .Now that is just AMAZING ! I mean NATO was able to see a tank parked underneath a tree from how many thousands of feet up in the air, but a convoy of cars driving across the empty Sahara desert was an impossibility , I guess .Not ONLY did the convoy drive across the empty Libyan Sahara desert from the north of Libya to the south of Libya ( which is a considerable distance), BUT.....it then crossed the Libyan boarded into Niger , illegally .It continued to drive almost entire length of Niger , to the capital .Word has it ,the convoy of invisible cars has moved onto a more southernerly town that is closer to the boarder of ANOTHER country , Bakino Faso.This convoy of invisible cars is suspected of having " senor officials " of the Ghadffy regime , possibly the man his self , but no one thought to stop them .I was told they couldn't because they didn't have a reason . What about searching for a possible war criminal wanted by the Hague? Or ascertaining that the cars were not snuggling hundreds of millions of cash and gold stolen from the Libyan people out of the country?
So , I just snapped today. Gone are all the long months of working so hard to stay positive and cheerful .I am a senor citizen and the world has gone to hell in a hand basket. There, I said it.I am feed up with it all.I am so ready to go shopping , visit my friends ( IF they are still talking to me after today) , go for a drive in the country side , have a decent nights sleep uninterrupted by gun fire, bombs or explosions of any sort.I want to drive to a gas station and say , fill her up please.I want to feel safe again. So far , 60 really sucks.
Which in around about way brings me to another topic I have wanted to discuss and haven't got around to yet, the simple kindnesses Moe and I were shown by family , friends, neighbors , and strangers during the war.Our son and his family came to take care of us the 1st week I was crippled. That was a huge help as I couldn't walk at all then. Moe still needs his care even if I can't walk.Neighbors volunteered to take Moe shopping to stock up on meds and grocery's , even carrying the things up 4 flights of stairs at times for him as he is unable to do that anymore.
Even when gasoline became scarce they still continued to drive him here and there when I couldn't. One day there was a knock at the door.I opened it to find a neighbors son standing there smiling . He asked for my car keys. He said Aunty Haga (I have all sorts of names, lol ) I want to put 7 liters of gas into your car for you .I know you can't wait in line for 3 days for gas. He refused to let me pay for the gas which cost as much as gold.
I have a friend that lives near us and her husbands family has a thousand young guys in it that all have helped us in one way or another .One would take my car for me and wait in line with it to get gasoline. Sometimes it would take as long as 3 or 4 days of waiting in line . This would be during bombings by NATO over head , fighting in lines with guns and knives by others waiting as well. Very dangerous .My son called one day and asked me did we have gasoline in the car. It just so happened that we didn't and I had hesitated asking the boy to take the car to the gas station for me because it had become too dangerous, so I told me son no . He showed up in one hour with enough gas to fill the car up half way, for free.Now that is love !
Hot plates of food , loaves of bread would magically appear ,when bread was as hard to find as an Easter egg in a Easter egg hunt .Shop keepers would come to the car , take the grocery list and then bring it all to the car for us when neither one of us were able to walk far or for long.Knocks on the door at odd times but always just when we needed them with offers of help. I am not too sure how we would have made these months with out all these angels.
Now on to another topic I have wanted to talk about , prayer.I have always prayed, just haven't been very public about it as some people.When we moved here I noticed that many would say Alhumduliallah all the time, which means Thanks to God .Inshallah was said a lot too . That means God's Will o,r if God Wants It To Be.People said that whenever they were asked something , go somewhere , or do something. Other circumstances as well but I just can't think of examples right now.Well , even when I was a Christian I was never one of those people that went around yelling those sorts of things , so it was quite awkward when I started to doing it after becoming a Muslim.Now I do it all the time and am not even aware of say them. Khadijateri and I were talking the other day about saying Alhumduliallah so much since the war started ,that hardly a sentence is stared without starting with it .
Now that I have rambled on here , I will get to the praying part ;before I sleep I say my prayers.Afterwords I give thanks . I list them on my fingers ;thank you God for the electricity today , for our good health , for the help of our friends and family. For they and their families good health . Thank You for our safety .For our families and friends safety .Thank You for our home . Thank You for our car. Thank You for Your forgiveness, and so on , until I fall asleep.Even when I lie down for a nap I say these prayers.The list got longer as the war wore on. Sometimes during the day I will say thanks to God for the sunset , the food we ate,the gentle cooling breeze that came in off the sea when the electric was off. The large and the small things are all worth saying thank you to God .And you know what ? He acknowledges them all .
I said a lot of prayers the day our oldest son was kidnapped and sent to Sirt to be a human shield.We had been trying to contact our son for a few days . Phone contact was off and on about this time , so we marked up the fact that we had been unable to reach him due to poor phone service when we were unable to reach him for several days . Then we called our daughter in law to ask her to have him call us . She hemmed and hawed about having him call us until after 5 days I penned her down about why he hadn't called us back and the story came out in her tears.He had rented a taxi to drive from some people after the foreign company he worked for left town when the war started . People still needed to work so they could eat. They have 2 little boys to feed and cloth. It was about this time Ghadffy forces was stopping people on the streets , in their cars, and picking them up . Mostly young men but sometimes other older people as well. We had all heard about these things happening.This is what had happened to our son as he drove his taxi. Long story short , he was sent to Sirt to act as a human shield for Ghadffy ,but since our son has worked all over Libya over the years,he knows the most unlikely people in the oddest out of the way places.He managed to get help from some people he found in Sirt that he knew and escape from there after almost 10 days of being missing.There was a point when I thought , due to mis-communication with Moe, that someone was on their way to our house to tell us he was dead.I think that was one of the worst days of my life.He returned home to us safe and sound .Alhumduliallah !By the way , that is a very difficult word to spell.
Now , during these last almost 8 months, I have had good days and bad days , Moe as well .We decided early on that it was just easier to have the good days rather than surfer through bad days , so we tried to see the bright side to most things , laugh off others ,kiss one another a lot , say I love for no reason at all ,as often as possible.Sometimes we did this through a veil of tears but we managed to stay positive as much as possible in the circumstances.It has helped us get through some very bad times.
That is until yesterday. I haven't been able to get my required 25 hours of sleep the last few days and I am not a very nice person with out them .Yesterday I woke up in a foul mood and it just got worse as the day and news wore on.Everything was awful.Moe went into town and came back with tales of a ghost town . Shops mostly closed.The few that were open were nude of merchandise.No coffee cafes open . Now , you know things are bad when they are closed. People here live on caffeine.Moe said that the trash that had been colected had been dumped on the beach here in Tagura. On THE BEACH , I SAY! Don't know if that is a temporay thing or what, and yes I KNOW there are a lot of things that need doing .I KNOW everything can't all get done at once , they need time.But the beach ?
Then I talked to my daughter in law.She told me that she and our son had driven by the wadi ( dry river ) near their house yesterday . There had been intense fighting there by both sides during the battle for Bab Al Azizia and Tripoli.Evidently many people were shot and killed at this place. Up to at least 150 or 200 people killed there.The Ghadffy people had set up an ambush check point disguised as the rebels by this wadi. As the people came to them , they were executed , thrown over the barrier wall of the wadi to hide them from the next victims as they came up to the check point.So , for the last week or so , in 105+ heat these bodies of victims have been lying in the wadi dead, waiting for some one to show them some decent kindness and humanity .Let's just forget about human kindness and decency here for a minute , or how un-religious this is , or disrespectful, but rather on disease spreading. Rats everywhere,wild dogs , flies breeding on these bodies. Where is WHO when you need them?A lot to do huh? My daughter in law said the smell from decomposing bodies that were no longer in the wadi was so strong they couldn't get within 2 blocks of the wadi.She was in tears as she described the scene on the phone.
We went to bed with a heavy heart last night after hearing that news.The stalemate in Bani Walid left us to wonder.So, off to bed we went , only to be woken up by loud explosions outside our condo in the little ally below us.Gunshots , cannon fire,geletine, running feet ,whistling ,signaling some one else doing the same things several streets over from us.Then, a car driving up, talking to them , a confederate, confirming a plan of action. More explosions . Strangely enough no one from any of the many check points up and down the main road that is situated at the end of the ally came running up to try to stop them . To keep the peace , as is their duty .Not one of the 7 policemen that live in the condos went running out to uphold the peace at 3 a.m. No one , that is until 45 minutes well after the entire incident was over and the shooters went home.THEN , everyone came running out to see what was going on , after the fact.There went any thought of sleep for the rest of the night.Interestingly enough, the NTC had sent a message out to everyone yesterday ... AGAIN...telling people to turn in their guns and NOT to shoot them AT ALL .Uh huh .
Then ..... as if all that was enough to put me in a foul mood, I turned 60 today ! AND......the news of a invisible (evidently) convoy of cars that managed to some how elude all the AWAK airplanes flying over Libya, and every single spy satellite that is focused on Libya at the moment .Now that is just AMAZING ! I mean NATO was able to see a tank parked underneath a tree from how many thousands of feet up in the air, but a convoy of cars driving across the empty Sahara desert was an impossibility , I guess .Not ONLY did the convoy drive across the empty Libyan Sahara desert from the north of Libya to the south of Libya ( which is a considerable distance), BUT.....it then crossed the Libyan boarded into Niger , illegally .It continued to drive almost entire length of Niger , to the capital .Word has it ,the convoy of invisible cars has moved onto a more southernerly town that is closer to the boarder of ANOTHER country , Bakino Faso.This convoy of invisible cars is suspected of having " senor officials " of the Ghadffy regime , possibly the man his self , but no one thought to stop them .I was told they couldn't because they didn't have a reason . What about searching for a possible war criminal wanted by the Hague? Or ascertaining that the cars were not snuggling hundreds of millions of cash and gold stolen from the Libyan people out of the country?
So , I just snapped today. Gone are all the long months of working so hard to stay positive and cheerful .I am a senor citizen and the world has gone to hell in a hand basket. There, I said it.I am feed up with it all.I am so ready to go shopping , visit my friends ( IF they are still talking to me after today) , go for a drive in the country side , have a decent nights sleep uninterrupted by gun fire, bombs or explosions of any sort.I want to drive to a gas station and say , fill her up please.I want to feel safe again. So far , 60 really sucks.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
English "Crazy" Language
| I think a retired English teacher was bored. THIS IS GREAT! Read all the way to the end. This took a lot of work to put together!
|
Past, Present, And The Future?
Things are still very much a toss up here in Libya. I hear this one or that one expressing their concerns.There are worries about Ghadffy and his sons still being at larger.Anger that his son Hannibal was , as some insist , "allowed" to escape to Algeria .Gunfire is heard sporadically too often. Too many guns out in all the wrong hands.This talk of tribes, I have lived here off and on for 40 years and this is the first time I have ever heard that word incorporated into conversations.
Insecurity over the future making many anxious .Will we become like Iraq ? Car bombs, tribal insurgency's,Islamic extremist ,guerrilla warfare from Ghadffy loyalist are some of the whispers I hear in the wind.If asked most will say that in Tripoli things are improving day by day.People are working hard to get things back to normal.But no one remembers what that is any more.
Everyone wants things back to normal for all of Libya. All of Libya ,the people will tell you this is one Libya , for all Libyans , no matter which way their loyalties lie.But underlying all this is the fear that foreign troops will try to come in to Libya and take over as in Iraq.That would be a fatal mistake , as it would unite and mobilize the population as nothing else has been able to up to this point ,against any foreign intervention.
People want to believe that things will be different.They want to trust things will change.They want a chance for democracy to work here in Libya.They need time. They need education as to how theses things are done . They need their expats to come home and help make a difference with the skills and knowledge they have gained living abroad.Libya is a beautiful country, but it needs everything , most especially , love and care.The Libyan people ,despite the atrocities we hear about in the news , are a generous people.Libya can become a great country if give half a chance.
Painting by : L.C.Neil " Dream"
Friday, September 2, 2011
Congratulations For Eid Al Fitr 2011
Thursday, September 1, 2011
A Day Of Tears
I think it was the 22nd of August ,the day after the "rebels" had come to Tripoli. It was a hot summers day outside and again the electricity was out.Moe and I decided that we would just stay in bed since it was way too hot to do anything around the house. We had been up all night long glued to the TV watching all the news channels .Al Jezeera, BBC, and CNN gave us blow by blow details of what was happening all around Tripoli , all but the news we so wanted to hear , that Ghadffy had been captured along with his sons.
We could hear in the distance car horns honking , gun fire hammering away at who knew what.On and on this continued through out the morning making sleep difficult as our imagination ran wild with all sorts of conjectures.After several hours of trying and failing to find sleep , we got up. I decided I would risk being possibly shot by sitting next to the living room balcony doors that over looked the main road that runs in front of the Condo building.It was apparent that there were many cars and trucks to-ing and fro-ing but to what purpose I couldn't tell.Did this extra activity mean Ghadffy was caught?
Going crazy sitting there staring out the doors at the street below, my mind went over the many things we ,our friends and family here had witnessed or experienced the last 6 months.I thought back to the time when Ghadffy promised to go from street to street, house to house, room to room searching for "rats" vowing to kill all he found.Our blood ran cold for we knew he would do as promised.He did in Misarata ,destroying the once lovely city.Thank God it didn't happen to Tripoli I thought selfishly.I remembered sneaking out on the balcony at 4a.m.one time to hang the laundry to dry because it was quite in the neighborhood. I had assumed all were sleeping and it to be safe.Well , we all know what happens when you assume things.I was incorrect in thinking I would have that time all to myself.I heard scuffling noises in the ally below our condo.Hidden by the hanging sheets I looked over them to see 20 mercenaries marching in the alley below with walky talky's carrying guns , knives , and machetes.I backed back into the condo as quietly as I was able, collapsing onto the couch shaking uncontrollably, wondering how long it would be before they would come to break down our door? That was when Moe and I started to stay up all night , every night, so that we would be dressed and fully alert in case something like that did ever happen. Better to be awake than sleepy if your door is kicked in at 4a.m.In any case, that night we where saved.No one came to our door. We heard that they went further down our street to other families ;that they kicked in their doors killing some , taking away others.Then there was the time we had a shoot out in broad daylight one day in the street below. I was almost hit by a bullet from a shooter in the street below.One of the worse nights was the night we heard the distinctive creaking-squeaking sounds of tanks rolling down the tiny alley behind our condo.We sat in the dark waiting for the tanks to fire on the condo building.Luckily for us , they kept rolling on down the street to close it off , not to fire on us.
Many more things rushed through my mind that day as I sat looking out those doors.My mind turned once again to Ghadffy and all the sorrow and suffering he had caused our family. He had arrested Mohamed's father , tortured him , publicly humiliated him on state TV, forcing him to confessing to crimes he never committed,and caused him to go blind in one eye while in prison due to no medical treatment.He had a hit put out on Moe in the early 1980's that thankfully was unsuccessful .Tried to kidnap our children at one point when we lived in the US in order to get at Moe.That didn't work out either.The list just went on.
For more than 40 years that man had controlled our lives in one way or another.Maybe the honking horns outside meant he had been captured?I noticed that my nose was dripping and that I had begun to cry at some point and wasn't even aware that I was crying.I cried thinking that this evil was over and he could never hurt anyone else again.I felt so odd thinking that, no more worry about what you said to whom, where , or when.How a life so free will be here in Libya. How wonderful.How liberating!
Then I thought of all the exiled Libyans outside of Libya , how they must be feeling right at that moment.All the times they had said if only he were gne . If only things would change , I want to go home but can't live in Libya as long as Ghadffy is in power.Well, he was finally gone.Their diaspora had an end at last. So I sat and thought.I cried for them , that they were not in Libya to live this magnificent moment in history. I was so sad for them being on the outside looking in on this long awaited day none of us thought would ever come.I cried because Mohamed's generous and loving father didn't live to enjoy this day.I cried because I thought it was all over.
So , Moe and I went back to bed to sleep off the euphoria in the heat not really caring that it was melting inside the condo because we were so happy .Several hours later the lights came on . We rushed to turn on the TV news channels to see if our assumptions were true.All our hopes came crashing down. Ghadffy was still at large , free to wreck havoc in our lives, unchecked .The tears flowed down both our checks this time in unstoppable despair .Maybe tomorrow we will wake up to learn Ghadffy has been arrested and is in custody.Maybe.
The sadist thing was when our oldest grandson who just turned 4 years old tried to describe the fighting that took place around his home last week to me when he came to wish us Happy Eid yesterday.The sounds of machine guns , the smoke in the air that burned his little nose, the fire shooting in the sky from cannon fire, and the dead bodies he was able to see from his window, lying below in the street.No child should ever have such stories to tell .
We could hear in the distance car horns honking , gun fire hammering away at who knew what.On and on this continued through out the morning making sleep difficult as our imagination ran wild with all sorts of conjectures.After several hours of trying and failing to find sleep , we got up. I decided I would risk being possibly shot by sitting next to the living room balcony doors that over looked the main road that runs in front of the Condo building.It was apparent that there were many cars and trucks to-ing and fro-ing but to what purpose I couldn't tell.Did this extra activity mean Ghadffy was caught?
Going crazy sitting there staring out the doors at the street below, my mind went over the many things we ,our friends and family here had witnessed or experienced the last 6 months.I thought back to the time when Ghadffy promised to go from street to street, house to house, room to room searching for "rats" vowing to kill all he found.Our blood ran cold for we knew he would do as promised.He did in Misarata ,destroying the once lovely city.Thank God it didn't happen to Tripoli I thought selfishly.I remembered sneaking out on the balcony at 4a.m.one time to hang the laundry to dry because it was quite in the neighborhood. I had assumed all were sleeping and it to be safe.Well , we all know what happens when you assume things.I was incorrect in thinking I would have that time all to myself.I heard scuffling noises in the ally below our condo.Hidden by the hanging sheets I looked over them to see 20 mercenaries marching in the alley below with walky talky's carrying guns , knives , and machetes.I backed back into the condo as quietly as I was able, collapsing onto the couch shaking uncontrollably, wondering how long it would be before they would come to break down our door? That was when Moe and I started to stay up all night , every night, so that we would be dressed and fully alert in case something like that did ever happen. Better to be awake than sleepy if your door is kicked in at 4a.m.In any case, that night we where saved.No one came to our door. We heard that they went further down our street to other families ;that they kicked in their doors killing some , taking away others.Then there was the time we had a shoot out in broad daylight one day in the street below. I was almost hit by a bullet from a shooter in the street below.One of the worse nights was the night we heard the distinctive creaking-squeaking sounds of tanks rolling down the tiny alley behind our condo.We sat in the dark waiting for the tanks to fire on the condo building.Luckily for us , they kept rolling on down the street to close it off , not to fire on us.
Many more things rushed through my mind that day as I sat looking out those doors.My mind turned once again to Ghadffy and all the sorrow and suffering he had caused our family. He had arrested Mohamed's father , tortured him , publicly humiliated him on state TV, forcing him to confessing to crimes he never committed,and caused him to go blind in one eye while in prison due to no medical treatment.He had a hit put out on Moe in the early 1980's that thankfully was unsuccessful .Tried to kidnap our children at one point when we lived in the US in order to get at Moe.That didn't work out either.The list just went on.
For more than 40 years that man had controlled our lives in one way or another.Maybe the honking horns outside meant he had been captured?I noticed that my nose was dripping and that I had begun to cry at some point and wasn't even aware that I was crying.I cried thinking that this evil was over and he could never hurt anyone else again.I felt so odd thinking that, no more worry about what you said to whom, where , or when.How a life so free will be here in Libya. How wonderful.How liberating!
Then I thought of all the exiled Libyans outside of Libya , how they must be feeling right at that moment.All the times they had said if only he were gne . If only things would change , I want to go home but can't live in Libya as long as Ghadffy is in power.Well, he was finally gone.Their diaspora had an end at last. So I sat and thought.I cried for them , that they were not in Libya to live this magnificent moment in history. I was so sad for them being on the outside looking in on this long awaited day none of us thought would ever come.I cried because Mohamed's generous and loving father didn't live to enjoy this day.I cried because I thought it was all over.
So , Moe and I went back to bed to sleep off the euphoria in the heat not really caring that it was melting inside the condo because we were so happy .Several hours later the lights came on . We rushed to turn on the TV news channels to see if our assumptions were true.All our hopes came crashing down. Ghadffy was still at large , free to wreck havoc in our lives, unchecked .The tears flowed down both our checks this time in unstoppable despair .Maybe tomorrow we will wake up to learn Ghadffy has been arrested and is in custody.Maybe.
The sadist thing was when our oldest grandson who just turned 4 years old tried to describe the fighting that took place around his home last week to me when he came to wish us Happy Eid yesterday.The sounds of machine guns , the smoke in the air that burned his little nose, the fire shooting in the sky from cannon fire, and the dead bodies he was able to see from his window, lying below in the street.No child should ever have such stories to tell .
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