Yasmina Khadra - The Dictator's Last Night

When I was a boy, my uncle — my mother’s brother — sometimes took me with him into the desert. For him it was a journey that meant more than going back to his roots. It was a cleansing of his spirit.

I was too young to understand the things he was trying to instil in me, but I loved to listen to him.

My uncle was a poet, uncelebrated and unassuming, a touchingly humble Bedouin whose only wish was to pitch his tent in the shade of a rock and sit listening to the wind whistle across the sand, as stealthy as a shadow.

He owned a magnificent bay horse, two watchful greyhounds, and an old rifle he used to hunt mouflons, and he knew better than anyone how to trap jerboas (for their medicinal properties) as well as the spiny-tailed lizards that he stuffed and varnished and sold in the souk.

When night fell, he would light a campfire and, after a meagre meal and a cup of too-sweet tea, he would slip into a reverie. To see him commune with the silence and barrenness of the rock-littered plains was a moment of grace for me.

There were times when I felt as though his spirit was escaping from his body, leaving me with just a scarecrow for company, as speechless as the goatskin flask that dangled at the entrance to the tent. When that happened I felt utterly alone in the world and, suddenly scared of the Sahara’s mysteries, swirling around me like an army of jinn, I would gently nudge him to make him come back to me. He would surface from his trance, his eyes sparkling, and smile at me. I shall never see a smile more beautiful than his — not on the faces of the women I have graced with my manhood nor those of the courtesans I have raised in their station in life. Reserved, almost invisible, my uncle was a man of slow, gentle gestures who rarely showed his feelings. His voice was barely audible, though when he talked to me it resonated through me like a song. He would say, his gaze lost somewhere in the glittering heavens, that there was a star up there for every brave man on earth. I asked him to show me mine. His finger pointed unhesitatingly at the moon, as though it was obvious. And once he had said it, every time I raised my eyes to heaven I saw the moon as full. Every night. My full moon, nobody else’s. Never less than perfect, never hidden. Lighting my way. So beautiful that no other enchantment came near it. So radiant that it put the stars around it in the shade. So splendid that it looked cramped in the infinity of space.

My uncle swore that I was the Ghous clan’s chosen one, the child who would restore to the Kadhafa tribe all its legends and former lustre.

Tonight, sixty-three years later, I seem to see fewer stars in the sky over Sirte, and of my full moon only a greyish wisp remains, hardly wider than a nail clipping. All of the world’s romance is being smothered in the smoke billowing up from the burning houses, while the day, weighed down by dust and fighting, cowers miserably beneath the whistle of rockets. The silence that once lulled my soul has something apocalyptic about it now, while the gunfire that shatters it here and there is doing its best to challenge a myth far beyond the reach of any weaponry, in other words myself, the Brotherly Guide, the miracle boy who became the infallible visionary, who people thought was abnormal but who stands as firm as a lighthouse in a raging sea, sweeping with its luminous beam both the treacherous shadows and the gleaming cauldron of foam.

I heard one of my guards, concealed in the darkness, say that we were living through ‘our night of doubt’ and ask himself whether dawn would reveal the eyes of the world upon us or our bodies delivered to the flames.

His words upset me, but I did not reprimand him. It was unnecessary. If he had had the slightest presence of mind he would not have uttered such blasphemies. There is no greater insult than to doubt in my presence. If I am still alive, it is proof that all is not lost.

I am Muammar Gaddafi. That should be enough for faith not to waver.

I am him through whom salvation will come.

I fear neither tempests nor mutinies. Place your hand on my heart; its rhythm beats out the certain annihilation of the renegades …

God is with me!

Has He not chosen me, of all men, to stand up to the most powerful nations and their hegemonic greed? I was no more than a young and disillusioned officer, whose commands barely rose above a whisper, but I dared to say no to their faits accomplis , to cry ‘Enough!’ to all their abuses, and I changed the course of destiny the way you turn over the cards you refuse to deal. It was a time when heads rolled if men ever stepped out of line, without trial and without warning. I knew the risks and I accepted them with a steely indifference, certain that a just cause must be defended because that is the prime condition on which we deserve to exist.

Because my anger was strong and clean and my resolve legitimate, the Lord raised me above the banners and the hymns for the whole world to see and hear me.

So I refuse to believe that the Crusaders’ bell tolls for me, the enlightened Muslim who has triumphed over every infamy and plot against him and who will still be here when everything is finally revealed. This sham of an insurrection that confronts me today, this shoddy little war being waged against a legend — my legend — is no more than another trial on my path — and is it not the gods’ trials that form them?

I shall emerge from this chaos stronger than ever, like the phoenix rising from its ashes. My voice will carry further than ballistic missiles, and I shall silence storms by tapping my finger on my lectern.

I am Muammar Gaddafi, mythology made flesh. And if there are fewer stars in the sky over Sirte this evening, and my moon looks no fatter than a nail clipping, it is so that I should remain the one constellation that matters.

They can fire all the missiles they have at me, I shall see only fireworks celebrating me. They can move mountains, and I shall glimpse in their piles of rocks only the thousands of clamouring faces that surround me in public. They can unleash all their devils on my guardian angels, and no evil force will deter me from my mission, because it was written even before Qasr Abu Hadi opened its arms to receive me that I am the one who will avenge every wrong against the oppressed masses by forcing the Devil and his accomplices to their knees.

‘Brotherly Guide …’

A shooting star has just raced across the sky. And that voice! Where is it coming from?

A shiver runs down my spine. A tumult of emotion surges through my being. That voice—

‘Brotherly Guide …’

I turn round.

It is only the orderly, rigid with deference, standing in the doorway of what was once a charming living room.

‘Yes?’

‘Your dinner is ready, sir.’

‘Bring it to me here.’

‘It would be better to have it in the room next door. We have blacked out the windows and lit candles there. In here any glimmer of light would betray your presence. There may be snipers in the buildings opposite.’

The orderly walks ahead of me into the next room. In the candles’ unsteady light, magnified by the tarpaulins that have been put up to black out the windows, the place is even more depressing. A cabinet lies on its side, its mirror splintered; a slashed banquette has the stuffing coming out of it; drawers lie broken on the floor; on the wall there is a portrait of the head of the family in a sorry state, riddled with bullets.