ESCAPE
The next morning a driver from Bab al-Azizia rang my parents’ doorbell at eight-thirty sharp. I was going to work, going to be a guard. I didn’t know what that was supposed to consist of and just hoped it meant I wouldn’t have any further contact with the Guide. What did a “revolutionary guard” actually do? How was I going to defend the revolution? The answer came very quickly: by serving drinks all day long to the Guide’s African guests! I was in the same house with the same people and the same mistress of the house as before! And at three o’clock in the morning I was still there. “This isn’t what the Guide told me I’d be doing,” I complained to Mabrouka.
“Maybe not. And what’s more, you’ll be spending the night right here.”
But I no longer had a room. A new girl had taken my place. So I got ready to sleep on one of the couches in the living room, as if I were just passing through. As soon as the last of the Africans left, I was summoned upstairs to the Guide, together with the new girl. None of this was “revolutionary.” I was as trapped as before.
The next day I called my father on the sly. It was a short conversation; I could tell he was nervous. “Soraya, this is important. Join me as fast as you can with your passport.” I still had it! It was amazing but I still had it. Carelessness on Mabrouka’s part when we returned from the African journey. I told one of the drivers that I had to run a pressing errand, asked him to wait for me for a moment, and then jumped in a cab to meet Papa, who was waiting for me in his car. He took off and drove me to the French Embassy to submit an application for an emergency visa; they had needed a photograph and my fingerprints. With a little luck and an old connection of my father’s at the embassy, they assured us that it would be ready in a week instead of a month. Less than an hour later, after taking small alleyways, avoiding the bigger roads, and looking in his rearview mirror a thousand times, Papa dropped me off in a taxi that took me back to the driver, and I returned to Bab al-Azizia.
The next day I was again playing the waitress role. The house was filled with famous people, even stars I recognized: a film director and a singer from Egypt, a Lebanese singer, dancers and television hosts. The Guide came out of his office to join them in the grand reception hall and sat down with them. Then he went upstairs to his bedroom. And quite a few of them joined him there, one after another. An overstuffed Samsonite waited for each of them before they departed.
I could go home to my parents’ house, but I understood quickly enough that I no longer belonged there. I was a stranger. A bad example for everyone. Now quite distant toward me, Mama spent most of her time in Sirte with my sister and my youngest brother, the two older ones having left to study abroad. So only Papa and my other two brothers were now living in Tripoli. But living with my parents didn’t work. In fact, it was a real disaster. “What kind of a life is this?” Papa would ask. “What sort of an example for your brothers and the rest of the family?” It was so much simpler when they didn’t see me. I would have been less of an embarrassment if I were dead. So something unimaginable happened—I began to prefer life at Bab al-Azizia to being at home.
Back to the lab. Blood test. Makeshift bed in the living room while waiting to be called for during the night. Then Papa phoned me: “Be ready. In four days you’ll have your visa for France.” So, taking my courage in both hands, I went to confront Gaddafi. “My mother is very sick. I’ll need three weeks off.” He gave me two. I went home again. But what an atmosphere! I had to hide to smoke cigarettes and phone Hicham, and I was getting on everyone’s nerves. I lied, pretending they’d called me back to Bab al-Azizia again, and went to meet my lover. I knew that this was serious, that I was out of my mind, but a little more, a little less . . . My whole life had gone off the tracks a long time ago! Lying became a way to survive.
I spent two days with Hicham in a bungalow lent to him by a friend. “I love you,” he said. “You can’t just leave me like this.”
“It’s the only solution. I can’t live in Libya anymore. Bab al-Azizia will never leave me alone and my family sees me as a kind of monster. And I’ll only cause you trouble.”
“Why can’t you wait so we can go abroad together?”
“No. Here I’ll always be hounded and put you in danger. My only hope to have Gaddafi forget me is to leave.”
I went home to pack my suitcase, moving like a sleepwalker, indifferent to everything happening around me. I’d been told that February in France was very harsh and that I would need real shoes and a really warm coat. In a closet, I found a stack of clothes that Mama had bought for me when she went to Tunisia. “That’s for Soraya,” she’d told my father. “I’m sure she’ll be coming back this year.” Mama . . . She’d been waiting for me to return for five years. During the day she’d face up to the insidious questions and keep the family firmly in hand. At night she would sob and pray to God to protect her little girl and bring her back safely. But I was not a little girl anymore, and I had disappointed her.
Papa made me get up very early. His face was white. No, really it was green, but his lips were white. I had never seen him like that before—he was scared stiff. He had used gel to comb his hair back. He was wearing a dark suit I didn’t recognize underneath a leather jacket. The smoky sunglasses completed the picture to make him look like a gangster or a spy. I quickly slipped on a pair of jeans and a shirt, and wrapped myself in a black veil and sunglasses that made my face disappear. I called Mama to say goodbye. It was a short, cold phone call. Then we grabbed a cab for the airport. Papa kept throwing me irritated glances. “What’s wrong with you, Soraya? You look as if you don’t give a damn!” Oh, no, I did give a damn. But I was calm. What could possibly happen to me that was more serious than what I’d already lived through? Get killed? That would have been a relief.
At the airport Papa was on his guard. He was looking at his watch, and became jumpy as soon as anyone brushed past him; I was afraid he was about to have a heart attack. He had asked a friend to take care that my name wouldn’t appear on the passenger list, not even my initials. He checked that again. As we passed through security and then went into the departure lounge, he threw anxious glances in all directions, suspicious that any solitary passenger was one of Gaddafi’s henchmen. He was in a spy film. Until the moment we took off, he just stared at the front door of the airplane, unable to speak. His mouth was dry, and his hands clutched the armrest until we reached Rome. As if an order from the Guide could still turn the plane around. But then when we landed, he laughed—for the first time in several years, he admitted.
He had chosen an itinerary through Rome just to confuse things. As we had a layover of a few hours, I went to the bathroom to get rid of the black veil I was wearing and put on some eyeliner, a bit of lip gloss, and some perfume. We were going to Paris, the city of beauty and fashion. My wretched existence had come to an end.
Or, at least, so I thought.