Yasmina Khadra - The Dictator's Last Night

And I said, ‘Enough!’

And I raised my voice and said, ‘Death to the king!’

And I founded a republic and brought justice back.

It was right here, in this city that is turning its back on its values, that I knocked down those stinking cafés, demolished the slums, put up buildings taller than towers, built hospitals equipped with ultra-modern facilities, attractive sparkling shops like aquariums, handsome esplanades and mosaic fountains; I laid out boulevards as wide as parade grounds and turned empty lots into municipal gardens where dreams and everyday joys merged.

Thanks to who?

Thanks to me, and me alone, father of the revolution, the Ghous clan’s chosen one, come from the desert to sow tranquillity in the hearts and minds of the people.

I was Moses, come down from the mountain with a green book as my tablet.

Everything I did worked.

The champions of Arab nationalism glorified me at the tops of their voices, the leaders of the Third World ate out of my hand, African presidents quenched their thirst from my lips, apprentice revolutionaries kissed my brow and were transported into ecstasy; all the children of the free world took pride in being associated with me.

Was there anyone who did not praise Muammar to the skies, scourge of kings and hunter of eagles, the Bedouin of Fezzan crowned rais at the age of twenty-seven?

I was young, handsome, proud, and such a phenomenon that I only had to pick up any old pebble for it to become the philosopher’s stone.

And what do I see today? I, the miracle-maker whose charisma bewitched women? What do I see after all my Pharaonic creations, all my crowning achievements? A town handed over to the pillage and vandalism of an army of jinn, villas with their shutters blown off, devastated squares, desecrated buildings and burnt-out cars — a city despoiled as far as the eye can see.

They have crossed out my slogans, disfigured the portraits of me that decorated the façades of buildings: I can see one on a billboard, slashed with a bayonet and smeared with excrement.

Is that how people show love for their guide? Did this people love me sincerely, or was it merely a mirror reflecting back to me my own exaggerated narcissism?

No, they could not identify with me; it was I who saw myself in them, taking their clamour at face value. Now I know: the people of Libya do not know very much about love. They lied to me, just as the profiteers and my mistresses mocked me. I was their open sesame: they sweet-talked me into holding the candle for them while they stuffed their pockets at my expense. From a pathetic rabble I made a happy and prosperous nation, and look at the thanks I get. I feared treachery inside my palaces, but it was creeping up on me unsuspected in the towns and villages. Lieutenant-Colonel Trid was not wrong: my people are a gang. Unlike me, who lived entrenched in my bunkers, Trid is a field soldier. He evolved among the people, got to know them inside out. I should have dealt with them the way I dealt with dissidents, been more severe with them, distrusted them more. Dissidents betray themselves; the people betrayed me instead. If I had my time again, I would exterminate half the nation. Lock them up in camps to show them what real work is, and watch them die in the attempt; hang the rest at the roadside to encourage the others. Stalin haunted the dreams of good and bad alike, great and small, did he not? He died in his bed, showered with laurels, and was so mourned by his people they drowned in their own tears. Stockholm syndrome is the only remedy for nations full of cheats.

How dare they knife me in the back?

Libya owes me everything. The reason it is going up in smoke today is because it is unworthy of my goodness. Go on, go up in smoke, accursed country. Your belly is barren, there will be no phoenix rising from your ashes.

If a forest is to regrow, it first has to burn, that is what fools say.

Drivel!

There are forests that never recover from their destruction. They go up in flames like those monks who set themselves alight, and no shoot ever grows from their ashes.

One day mythology will say of Libya that it was a forest born from the hairs on the head of a providential figure, himself the product of a divine dream, beneath a carnival sky, bearing a green standard that flutters in the wind and a book the same colour that contains, like holy verses, both the prayers I offered and those I granted so that my homeland, which became my child, should not suffer either the thunderbolts of demons or the flames of incendiaries.

Libya is my magic trick, my own Olympus. Here in my realm, where I have been the humblest of sovereigns, the trees have grown straight since they stood to attention at the sound of my trumpets. Here, in the land of poets and of scimitars, every flower that blooms blooms because it trusts me, every stream that bubbles up between the pebbles tries to flow to me, every baby bird that cheeps in its nest praises me.

What happened, so suddenly, to turn the ayah on its head, to make my subjects drown out my words with their own?

The sorrow of it!

I am like God. The world I made has turned against me.

Abu-Bakr is restless in the front seat, twisting his head, staring in the rear-view mirror and then turning to look over his shoulder. For the last ten minutes we have been driving through empty suburbs. Looted shops, houses without doors and windows, railings and shutters banging in the silence and the burnt-out shells of cars bear witness to the vandals’ ferocity. They have even torn down the few trees that line the roadside.

It feels as though we are in a town that has died.

On the façade of one building a black flag flutters as a sign of mourning.

Farewell, Sirte. Nothing will ever be as it was for you. Your celebrations will feel like funerals and your banquets taste of ashes. But when you are asked what you did with your talents do not, I beg you, lower your head and point an accusatory finger at the barbarians who ravish you today. Above all, say nothing, because it is you yourself who have despoiled your talents.

We are driving at speed, yet I have the feeling we are running on the spot, so much does each part of town look the same as the last. On pavements strewn with debris and rubble, large dark stains show the places where tyres have been burnt, where people built barricades and were attacked and where men were lynched before being doused in petrol and set on fire. A horrible smell of cremation hangs in the air, which is laden with omens of apocalypse.

Since leaving the school we have not seen one living being, apart from dogs fleeing the fighting, and stray cats. The only human trace we have glimpsed is the body of a soldier hanged from a lamppost, his trousers around his ankles, his penis amputated.

‘What’s that cloud of dust way back there?’ the general asks the driver.

The driver adjusts his wing mirror.

‘It looks like the Shilkas, General. It must be Colonel Mutassim’s unit.’

The general sits back, relieved. As he turns to me to see if I am happy that my son is joining us at last, gunfire rings out. A rebel roadblock ahead. The leading cars in the column turn sharply southwards; the rest of the convoy follows in a thunder of machine-gun fire. A pickup sways under the impact of the bullets, swerves and crashes into a ditch. Its occupants leap out and return fire to cover each other; they are immediately shot.

Our driver floors the 4×4, heading south.

The general hands me a helmet and body armour.

‘The shit’s hitting the fan,’ Mansour groans.

An explosion suddenly slows us. Ahead vehicles are peeling off right and left. The second 4×4 of my personal bodyguard is in flames.

Lieutenant-Colonel Trid sounds his horn, his arm out of the window signalling the drivers to keep moving.