The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

by Hisham Matar

Back in the terminal, Mother, no doubt detecting my anxiety, had asked a mischievous question. “Who’s returning?” she said. “Suleiman el-Dewani or Nuri el-Alfi?” Suleiman el-Dewani and Nuri el-Alfi are the exiled protagonists of my novels In the Country of Men and Anatomy of a Disappearance, respectively. She wanted to cheer me up, but also implicit in her question was a warning against what she knew I was intent on doing: searching for my father.

“Leave him be,” Father told her. “He’ll get used to it.” It was the cruelest thing he had ever said. Cruel and nearly true. Even then I knew, more from the voice than from the words, and also from the way he stood, not facing me, that he too was mourning the loss. There is a moment when you realize that you and your parent are not the same person, and it usually occurs when you are both consumed by a similar passion.

The first page described the publication as “A journal published by the students of the Teachers’ College of Cyrenaica.” The journal’s motto was: “Education gains the nation its dignity, sovereignty and pride. Where knowledge spreads, prosperity, happiness and security prevail. Education is as necessary as water and oxygen.” This was the sentiment of the time. Libya was trying to drag itself into modernity. The policy of the Italian colonial government did not promote education for the “indigenous” population. Libya’s oldest university was not established until 1955—only two years before this issue of The Scholar was published—by royal decree by King Idris to commemorate the fourth anniversary of independence. Oil was yet to be discovered. Probably because of its association with literacy, the Faculty of Literature was the first academy to be established. Even such a modest start had to rely on foreign donations. Egypt contributed four lecturers, covering their salaries for four years, and the United States paid the wages of the Iraqi scholar Majid Khadduri, who eventually became dean. A year later, in 1956, the Faculty of Science was established; Economics in 1957; Law in 1962; Agriculture in 1966; and Medicine in 1970. This explains the earnest motto of the journal. My father was one of its three editors, who clearly saw the art of fiction as part of the national effort to drive up literacy and education.

Despite having very few resources, Omar al-Mukhtar led Libya’s tribesmen on horseback in what became a very effective campaign. But after the Fascists marched on Rome in 1922 and Benito Mussolini seized power, the destruction and slaughter took on a massive scale. Airpower was employed to gas and bomb villages. The policy was that of depopulation. History remembers Mussolini as the buffoonish Fascist, the ineffective silly man of Italy who led a lame military campaign in the Second World War, but in Libya he oversaw a campaign of genocide.

The Danish journalist Knud Holmboe, who was traveling through Libya at the time, is the only Western reporter I know of to have visited the camps. His book, Desert Encounter: An Adventurous Journey through Italian Africa, is a deeply troubling account and a rare document.

Our gaze was so determined we could hardly see. Like figures moving in a fog. And each one of us worried about losing the others. But grief is a divider; it moved each one of us into a territory of private shadows, where the torment was incommunicable, so horribly outside of language.

Never before had an African figure of Tutu’s stature publicly criticized Qaddafi. Most African leaders, reliant on Libyan handouts, were shamefully servile to the dictator. One of Qaddafi’s rare honorable acts was his long-term and unwavering support of the African National Congress, which made members of the South African anti-apartheid movement even less likely to speak out against human-rights abuses in Libya. Back in 2002, I had sent a letter to Nelson Mandela via a friend who had played a prominent role in the anti-apartheid movement and who knew the South African president personally. In the letter I asked Mr. Mandela whether, given his close ties with Qaddafi, he could inquire about my father’s whereabouts and well-being. The answer, which was given to my friend, was unambiguous: “Mandela says to never ask him such a thing again.”

“Now, remember to compliment him. You can compliment him on the Labor Party’s human-rights record.” “I can’t possibly do that,” I said. “Well, you must think of something.” “Actually, I have,” I said. “I was going to compliment him on his father.” I had read the prominent sociologist Ralph Miliband’s book The State in Capitalist Society. “What? You mean that Marxist?” Lord Lester said. “For all you know he might hate his father.”

More than a few British Marxists have really mediocre but powerful sons who worship capitalism and hate human rights.

Ever since 2004, when Tony Blair went to Libya and relations were normalized, some Libyan friends had urged me to make contact with Seif el-Islam. It was known that on more than one occasion, as Libya’s image was undergoing a facelift, he had released political prisoners. And recently, in 2009, he had done the seemingly impossible: he managed to extract Abdelbaset al-Megrahi—a Libyan intelligence officer convicted of 270 counts of murder for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie—from the clutches of the Scottish justice system. When the plane landed in Tripoli, Seif stepped out victoriously, holding the hand of al-Megrahi up in the air. The wind filled Seif’s sleeve, ballooning the fabric. Shortly after this, Seif bought a house in Hampstead. For several days after I heard the news, I had to drive away thoughts of knocking on his door and shooting him.

In 2003, when I was living in Paris, and a few days after I came close to jumping off a bridge, I sat down and wrote Seif el-Islam the sort of letter I had been writing for years to Libyan and Egyptian authorities, detailing the known facts of my father’s case and asking them to clarify his fate. Over the years I have written nearly 300 such letters. I have not once received a response.

But now, seven years later and at the height of the campaign, I was a desperate man, willing to talk to the devil in order to find out if my father was alive or dead. That was how I was then; I am no longer like that now.

Again - he is no longer like that! Why!

An hour after the agreed time, a group of men in jeans and T-shirts, looking more like a hip-hop band than a security outfit, walked quickly towards our table. Seif had chosen his entourage carefully. With him he had Mohammad al-Hawni, a 65-year-old lawyer based in Rome, from where he served Libyan–Italian business interests. We dubbed him the Intellectual, as his main purpose was to impress upon us that some of Seif’s aides read books.

This is hilarious. The insecurities of the absurdly powerful.

— Two days later he texted again: “Please can you call me 2morrow we need 2 talk.” I did and he said, “Your relatives will be moved to another prison to arrange for their release. And, regarding your father, I will draw you a road map. More needs to happen. You need to trust me. There is nothing in it for me. I will lose more than I gain. If you were me, you wouldn’t touch it.” “Men are their actions,” I said. “Trust me.” A few minutes later I got this text: “Most important, don’t do anything you don’t want. MOSHE DAYAN” I texted back: “Be the change you want to see in the world. MAHATMA GANDHI” He replied: “;->

Son of a dictator texts like a child, lol. But Moshe Dayan. Insulting.

Declan described the relationship of the British government with Libya as that of “leveraged engagement.” “Which, in the Libyan context,” Philippa Saunders said, “means carrots and nearly no sticks.” The phrase “leveraged engagement” reminded me of what Margaret Thatcher used to say in defense of her friendly relations with the South African apartheid regime: “constructive engagement.”

I am nowhere near as thoughtful, yet I find it impossible to be “myself” in the company of others. I am constantly thinking about those around me. If I like them, my opinions sway in their direction, and if for whatever reason they irritate me, I am willfully obstinate. Either way, I am left weary and unclear, regretting ever having relinquished my solitude, and, because I desire the company of others and always have, the cycle is endless.