Yasmina Khadra - The Dictator's Last Night

‘The only people I clamped down on were traitors, Colonel. I loved and protected my people.’

‘You shouldn’t have, Rais. You cosseted them too much and it made them lazy and cunning. They wallowed in their sense of entitlement to the point where they couldn’t be bothered to shoo a fly off a cake any more. They thought work, knowledge, ambition were a waste of time. Why worry about anything when the Brotherly Guide is there to think for everyone? The average Libyan has no idea of how generous you’ve been to him. He’s just taken advantage of you. He thought he was a little prince and expected it to last for ever. From the moment he sees that people are working so he doesn’t have to, operating his machines so he can knock off, why should he wait for a lunch break? He gets tired just looking at his Africans working like dogs for him. Now he’s trying to prove he’s worth more than he was originally valued at, and so how does he do it? By biting the hand that fed him. If you’ll allow me, sir, I think you should have treated your people the same way you treated your dissidents. They are not worth the time and concern you have lavished on them, sir. They’re a nation of shopkeepers and smugglers who only know how to do dodgy deals and doss around. Tomorrow’s Libyans will miss you the way that they miss Stalin in Russia, because with the gang we’ve got here, knocking our cities flat and lynching its heroes in public, our grandchildren are going to inherit a country that’s been handed over to puppets and incompetents.’

I feel both hurt and relieved by the lieutenant-colonel’s words.

‘What I like about you, my boy, even more than your courage, is your frankness. Not one of my ministers or concubines has ever opened my eyes to the reality you have just described. Every one of them flattered me that I had made, out of a rabble of Bedouins, the proudest people on earth.’

‘They weren’t lying to you. From a ragtag of tribes who were all hostile to each other you made a single body and a single spirit. But the real truth was more than that.’

‘Why was it hidden from me?’

‘Because it wasn’t nice, sir.’

At that moment the bedroom door opens with a crash. It is Mansour who has come to brief us, breathless and feverish, his face flushed. He informs us that the officer ordered to contact Mutassim has returned and that it is time for us to set out.

I turn to the colonel.

‘It is the moment of truth.’

On the ground floor there is general mobilisation. Soldiers are running in all directions. Officers are shouting to gee themselves up and manhandling the slower men, caught off guard by the turn of events.

I detest messes. One breeds another; they make my nervous tension worse.

I suspect the general of not having briefed his subordinates. I look for him in the mêlée but cannot see him anywhere.

Mansour brings over to me the officer whose return has sparked everything off. He is young, probably only just out of the Academy. He salutes me and practically falls over, unnerved by the expression I must have on my face.

‘Where is my son?’

‘He is on his way, sir.’

‘You have seen him?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Personally?’

‘Absolutely, sir. He handed over to me the twenty vehicles I’ve brought back with me and ordered me to tell you that we must leave at once.’

‘Why did he not come with you?’

‘He is commanding the third — the last — section of the convoy. At least thirty vehicles. It’s being slowed down by the two Shilka batteries.’

‘Is he safe and sound?’

‘Yes, sir. He says he’ll catch us up en route, after we’re clear of District Two.’

My armoured 4×4 is lined up in the courtyard. Lieutenant-Colonel Trid is organising the column, summoning the drivers and issuing orders about the procedure to follow.

‘There will be four cars in front for reconnaissance. I’ll be in the fifth vehicle, which will travel two hundred metres back. The rais will be in the sixth. On no account are you to stop if you are attacked. If I leave the convoy, you will follow me. Do not let me out of your sight for a second. You are there to ensure the rais’s safety at all times.’

The drivers click their heels and return to their vehicles.

Mansour and I take our seats in the armoured 4×4.

‘Where is the general?’

‘He went to see if his two sons had arrived,’ the Guard commander informs me.

‘Get him. I want him to travel with us.’

Someone runs to find the general. The minutes drag on. I swear in the back of the 4×4, thump the back of the driver’s seat.

Abu-Bakr finally arrives, panting and sweating.

‘Where did you get to, damn you?’

‘I was looking for my sons.’

‘Now is not the time. Get in the front; everyone is waiting for you.’

As soon as the general climbs into the 4×4, the convoy sets off.

We drive out of the school in an almighty roar. In their haste vehicles drive into each other, some scrambling onto the pavement to get to their place in the column as fast as they can.

The convoy sorts itself into a disciplined file as it turns onto the ring road that leads to the coast. As we reach the first junction, I realise I have left my Koran and my prayer beads in my room.

We drive, exposed, along the coast road, at the mercy of ambushes and air raids.

Rarely has the day been so radiant. Despite the pall of smoke from the fires, it has a dazzling clarity. It feels as though the sun has chosen the traitors’ side — it illuminates me like a target.

I am not calm, but I am not excessively concerned. I have no idea where they are taking me or what is waiting for me around the next bend, yet I do not have the feeling that it is essential to know either of these things. What would it change?

Mansour, on my right, is tense. He hugs his gun as though clinging to a rope that will pull him out of the chasm his silence has become. His fingers are white at the joints. Immense olive-coloured bags darken the skin under his eyes. I suspect he is praying as profoundly as he has ever prayed.

Inside the cabin the burbling of the engine is a gloomy sound.

The general looks in the rear-view mirror to see if there is any sign of the third section of the convoy, the one commanded by my son, in which he hopes he will see his two sons again.

‘Can you see anything?’

‘Not yet, Rais.’

‘Why did Mutassim want to overload himself with the Shilkas?’ Mansour grumbles. ‘They’re tracked and too heavy: they’re going to slow us down. In any case, what can 37s do against the coalition’s planes? Their range is nowhere near great enough. You could use them for hunting bustards, and that’s all.’

‘They’re better than nothing,’ the general says.

‘They’re not even credible as decoration,’ Mansour persists. ‘Those vultures carrying out the air strikes are using long-range weapons. They don’t have to come anywhere near our coastline.’

I prefer not to listen to them.

I try to think of nothing; I dive deep inside myself in search of that Voice that promised me mountains and marvels when I was a disillusioned lieutenant and beginning to stink in the shadow of my own bitterness, the Voice that soothed and graced my solitude with its promises and challenges. Where has it gone? Why has it fallen silent? I visualise it curled up somewhere in the blackness that is slowly overtaking me, but I find only the echo of my prayers. The Voice has left the ship, and there is no one at the helm.

I am alone with destiny, and destiny is looking elsewhere.

Even Sirte, the city of my adolescence — the cradle of my revolution — has turned its back on me.

There was a time when its squares and stadiums teemed with people come to acclaim me. Pavements and platforms overflowed with fervour and pennants. People held up portraits of me and sang my praises until they were hoarse. It was here, in this city where memories are already being rewritten, that I took an oath to bring fate to her knees. Then it was just a quiet little medina that did not know how to sell itself or make itself desirable. Along its corniche the wealthy dreamt of the casinos that glittered on the Mediterranean’s northern shore; at its roadsides the poor dreamt of nothing, having been stripped of everything. A gulf as deep as an abyss kept the two classes so far apart that when they happened to pass each other in the street they did not even see one another; they went on their respective ways like ghosts, each in their parallel world. I remember the low-class cafés that stank of piss and privation, the souks infested with beggars and scrawny pickpockets, the kids with heads swollen with ulcers who rolled in the dust giggling as if they were possessed, their noses streaming and their pus-clogged eyes swarming with flies; I can still smell the sickening stenches that rose from the open sewers, see the women in rags chanting in doorways in voices more tragic than any funeral dirge, the stray dogs roaming the rubbish tips with their fangs bared, trying to assuage their hunger, the old people pinned to the walls like scarecrows nobody wanted, the alleys that were as narrow and dark as twisted minds. It was here, in this town, that I grabbed a police officer by the throat when I saw him slap a man in front of his children just because he asked for directions. I have never forgotten the expression on those children’s faces; nothing has ever infuriated me more. It was boom time for feudalists, for middle-class Muslims who spoke Italian, from their grand cars that did not stop when they ran pedestrians over.