Tense Time for Libyan Diaspora
Longtime Libyan exile in London worries about friends and family and recalls a recent “horrific” visit to her homeland.
Tense Time for Libyan Diaspora
Longtime Libyan exile in London worries about friends and family and recalls a recent “horrific” visit to her homeland.
My body is here, but my heart and soul is in Libya. My life is at a standstill. I can’t work. I feel sad and angry and sometimes can’t even bear to watch the news. Some days I start on a high, then after a few hours I feel deflated. Back home - we are from Benghazi - I have three brothers and three sisters, all married with children and some of them even have grandchildren. But I haven’t managed to get in touch with any of my family because like most people, they don’t have a landline – they don’t work very well and the rumour was they were easier to bug – and the mobile phone networks are still down. Even before the revolution, the internet wasn’t very good there either. I managed to speak to one friend in Benghazi yesterday, February 24, who said she would contact my family – but today I have been calling her and haven’t managed to get through.
The fear now is that, if a no-fly zone is not implemented, many cities could be bombed by Gadaffi, or he may bring in more mercenary troops. So there still is a danger. I hope in a couple of days I will be able to speak to them.
I have been living in London for 16 years. Once after I left, my brother phoned me and said that the security forces came to the family home to interrogate them because I lived in London which was the location of a lot of opposition groups. I never got involved in any opposition movements in London because I was worried what would happen to my family and people I was connected with back home, because the regime uses collective punishment. Another brother was in prison for two years without charge. In Libya, you could be picked up from work or off the street and no-one ever hears from you again - that’s it.
I have only been back once, travelling on my British passport two years ago. It was horrific. I contacted the British ambassador to Libya before I left, and told all my friends where I was going, and if they hadn’t heard from me after a month, to raise the alarm. After I arrived, my brother told me that the police had been to see them to let them know that they had a file on me – but that I was allowed to visit. It was really shocking to see how people were there. My cousin told me, “We are not living, we are existing.”
There were no jobs for young people, people were so oppressed, so terrified of each other, so hopeless. People younger than me looked elderly. There was a sense that “Libya is not ours” – it belongs to Gaddafi and his sons and his thugs and his clan.
It feels to me that the world is worrying more about the price of oil than how many people are dying in Libya. Libya is not Iraq, Libya is not Afghanistan. Yes we are a tribal society but we are not going to have a civil war or an Islamist government. People are sick and tired of dictatorship - they want freedom, especially now they have had a taste of it. People in the diaspora, along with people already inside the country and from all parts of Libya are going to have to work together in leading the country into a peaceful transition. It will take time because the dictatorship destroyed everything over the decades. I would love to go back; I would love to help rebuild Libya, at least for a year, to volunteer, maybe.
But I won’t breathe a sigh of relief until Gaddafi is either out of the country or dead.
Soad El-Rgaig is a London-based writer and freelance translator.
