is Mutassim?’
‘Gone to requisition vehicles,’ Abu-Bakr says, getting to his feet. ‘We can’t stay dug in here any longer, waiting for some happy surprise to save us. We’re running out of food, ammunition and options. Our units have been knocked out or neutralised. Sirte is practically blockaded. The noose is tightening by the hour.’
‘I thought Mutassim had gone to reinforce his garrisons. Why the sudden turnaround?’
‘It was you yourself who decided to break out, Rais.’
‘What? Are you saying my memory is playing tricks on me?’
The general frowns, taken aback by my forgetfulness. He starts to explain.
‘There won’t be any reinforcement, Rais.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because Saif al-Islam is too far south of us. We need to evacuate Sirte as fast as we can. That will give us a chance to reach Sabha, which the insurgents have abandoned, to reorganise ourselves and, with Saif’s support, move up and encircle Misrata. The southern tribes are still loyal to us. We’ll take our supply lines through them.’
‘Since when have your plans changed, General?’
‘Since this morning.’
‘Without informing me?’
The general’s eyes widen as he again looks dumbfounded by my question.
‘But, Rais, I’m telling you, it was you yourself who suggested evacuating Sirte.’
I do not remember having suggested such a perilous manoeuvre. In order not to lose face, I nod.
Mansour crouches down with one hand on the floor, the other to his forehead. He looks as though he is about to puke his guts up.
‘Colonel Mutassim still has dependable men in the sector,’ the general tries to mollify me. ‘He is putting a substantial convoy together. At 4 a.m. exactly we’ll aim to break through enemy lines. The rebels’ withdrawal is a stroke of luck. It gives us a small window, at last. The militias have lifted their roadblocks at points 42, 43 and 29. Probably to take cover, as the signals operator said. We’ll retreat southwards. If Mutassim has been able to put together forty or fifty vehicles we’ll have a chance of getting through. Any skirmishes, we disperse. It’s chaos in the city. No one knows who commands who any more. We’ll exploit the confusion to get out of Sirte.’
‘Why not now?’ I say. ‘Before the bombing raids start.’
‘It will take Colonel Mutassim several hours to round up the vehicles we need.’
‘Are you in contact with him?’
‘Not by radio. We’re using runners.’
‘Where is he exactly?’
‘We’re waiting for the reconnaissance patrols to come back and tell us.’
Mansour lets himself slide down the wall to sit on the floor.
‘A little decorum,’ I shout at him. ‘Do you think you are resting on your mother’s patio?’
‘I’ve got an appalling migraine.’
‘No matter. Get a grip on yourself, and do it fast.’
Mansour gets to his feet. His face is scored with deep lines across his cheeks, giving him the look of an animal in agony. Abu-Bakr pushes a chair in his direction. He declines it.
‘Do you really believe they are about to bomb us?’ I ask him.
‘It’s obvious.’
‘Perhaps it’s a diversion,’ Abu-Bakr suggests, more to show himself on my side than from conviction.
‘They wouldn’t order their ground troops to evacuate their advance posts if they weren’t going to.’
‘You think they know where we are?’
‘No one knows where you are, Rais. They strike at random and wait for us to give ourselves away.’
‘Very well,’ I tell him. ‘I am going to rest. Let me know as soon as there is anything to report.’
Someone has cleaned my room, covered the windows with pieces of tarpaulin and cobbled together a light from a torch powered by a car battery.
Under the couch I use as a bed I found, a while ago, a slender gold bracelet that must have belonged to a little girl. It is a pretty piece of jewellery, finely worked and with an inscription engraved on the inside: ‘For Khadija, my angel and my sunshine’. I tried to put a face to Khadija and looked for a photo of her in the drawers and on the shelves. Nothing. Not one forgotten snapshot, not a trace of the family who once lived in the house, apart from the portrait of the father – or the grandfather – in the living room. I tried to imagine the life that the vanished family led within these walls. They were probably well-off people living in comfort and peace, with an attentive mother and happy children. What wrong had they done for their dreams suddenly to be wiped out? I have spared no effort in Libya to ensure that joys, celebrations and hopes are my people’s pulse, that angels and sunshine are inseparable from a child’s laughter.
I saw danger coming from a long way off, was absolutely clear about just how greedy the predators were, licking their lips at the prospect of the riches of my territory. But what alarm bells could I ring? In vain I warned other Arab leaders, those pleasure-seeking gluttons who only listen to the fawning and simpering of those who owe them favours. There was a full complement of them at Cairo, lined up like onions, spying on each other on the sly, half of them so conceited they could not stop behaving like constipated patriarchs, the other half too thick to be able to look serious. Arrivistes who thought they had really arrived, comic-opera presidents unable to shake off their country-bumpkin reflexes, petrodollar emirs looking like rabbits straight out of the magician’s hat, sultans wrapped in their robes like ghosts, disgusted at the blathering eulogies the speakers were trotting out ad infinitum. Why were they there? They cared for nothing that did not concern their personal fortunes. Busy stuffing their pockets, they refused to look up to see how dizzyingly fast the world was changing or how tomorrow’s storm clouds of hate were gathering on the horizon. The misery of their subjects, the despair of their youth, the pauperisation of their people, were the least of their concerns. Convinced that hard times would never trouble them, they ‘dealt with it’, as the saying goes. And they had nothing to fear, because they never stuck their necks out or played the tough guy. At the last summit of the League, while they hid their feelings behind their condescending smiles, I warned them: what had happened to Saddam Hussein could happen to them too. In private they laughed up their sleeves at me. And Ben Ali … my God, Ben Ali! That creep in his big shot’s suit, flexing his muscles to his henchmen, then folding like a pancake at the first envoy sent by the West! He sat right in front of me, red in the face from stifling his giggles. I amused him. I should have stepped off the stage to spit in his face. Wretched Ben Ali, dressed to the nines, so proud of his pimp’s paunch and willing to prostitute his country to the highest bidder. I have never been able to stand him, him and his
