Sandstorm Quotes

“Sufis pray over the graves of saints, which Salafis and other hard-line Sunnis see as idolatrous.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“I am a Muslim, an Arab and a Libyan,” she said. “I have to tell you that democracy cannot work here. It’s not possible with Arabs. Gaddafi did a lot for Libya.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“Some had been inside for twenty or thirty years,” said Enas. “They had never seen the light of day. The family kept telling them to go inside the house, because they might be shot, but they just wanted to be in the sun for a few minutes. There was one old man wearing a diaper—he’d been there for years.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“I thought I would be the only one on my street with a gun,” said a man I met a few days later. “But when I came out I found fifty of my neighbors had guns. Everyone had got them from people they knew in the army.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“A special unit was trained and armed. The Tripoli Brigade was made up mostly of exiles—hundreds of young men who had lived in America, Britain, Canada and the Gulf. They were doctors, dentists, students and the unemployed. Few had any military background, and some had never been to Libya before. They were the sons of families that had left for political or economic reasons, and many had thought they would never live in the land of their fathers, let alone fight for it. Now they were risking their lives for Libya. When the signal was given, they were to advance and seize the capital.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“One day in May, the garbage began to sing.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“I feel ashamed, because my generation was hopeless. No one thought the young people had this courage and wanted to die for their country.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“It was the French who fired the first shot. That evening Rafale fighters bombed a convoy of Gaddafi’s tanks and armored vehicles just outside Benghazi. Operation Odyssey Dawn had begun. A short while later 110 cruise missiles were launched from U.S. ships in the Gulf, targeting radar, communications, fuel storage and air defenses around Tripoli and Misrata, followed by air strikes from British Tornados.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“The LIFG were focused on Gaddafi’s regime and had never attacked civilians or foreigners. But violence was at the heart of their ideology. Negotiating or reconciling with an enemy was forbidden; their beliefs were absolute and incontrovertible. They drew no distinction between civilians and soldiers, only Muslims and non-Muslims.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“The way we Africans look at it, the West thinks they own the world. They have the attitude that you must do as you’re told, or else you’ll be bombed.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“Just outside Benghazi, in a heavily guarded complex unseen by the outside world, Gaddafi built the World Revolutionary Headquarters, a training facility for anyone who might like to have a go at overthrowing a regime he didn’t like. It was part of the mathaba, the World Center for Resistance against Imperialism, Zionism, Racism, Reaction and Fascism.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“Gaddafi became an icon for those fighting apartheid in South Africa. He supported the African National Congress with money, weapons and training, earning the undying gratitude of Nelson Mandela, which caused immense diplomatic inconvenience in later years, when Gaddafi was still a pariah and Mandela the toast of the world.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“Western TV channels sanitize war, censoring out the blood and the broken bodies, but Arabic TV shows the unflinching visceral horror of it—dead babies, flesh flying after bombing raids, heads separated from bodies, everything. Sometimes the most disturbing images are set to music and played on a loop in between programs.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“Bin Laden tried to get Sami, who as the LIFG’s ideological guide had profound influence on the group, to change his mind. “He tried to persuade me that we should fight America from Afghanistan, but I knew that Mullah Omar didn’t agree with it either,” he told me. Two months before 9/11, Sami saw bin Laden in Kandahar. “We had a long discussion. I said he should obey Mullah Omar, but he believed what he was about to do was legitimate from an Islamic point of view,” he said. “Everyone in Kabul and Kandahar knew bin Laden would carry out activities against America, but we had no details.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“In 1982, when Arafat and his Fatah fighters were besieged in Beirut, on the brink of being pushed out of Lebanon by the Israelis, Gaddafi sent him an open telegram suggesting his best option was to kill himself. “Your suicide will immortalize the cause of Palestine for future generations,” he said. “There is a decision which, if taken by you, no one can prevent. It is the decision to die. Let this be.” Arafat is reported to have replied that if Gaddafi would like to join him, he might consider it.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“Educated women, many of whom had traveled, didn’t want to give up their gains, but the veil came back as a political fashion statement. It was happening across the Muslim world, especially in neighboring Egypt, as people looked for a way to show their disgust for corrupt and dictatorial secular governments that were regarded as serving Western interests. While Western women might see the head scarf as a sign of oppression, many Arab women saw it as an expression of identity.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“He is a big fan of children being raised by their mothers at home. “Nurseries are similar to poultry farms into which chicks are crammed after they are hatched,” he says, and meanders down a small detour about how the meat of wild birds is tastier than the meat of factory chickens to prove his point.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“Libya, he said, would now embark on a “cultural revolution” modeled on Mao Tse-tung’s purges, which were still under way in China.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“From the vagina of revolution, true heroes are born!” said Tawfik. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that that didn’t sound quite right in English.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“It was tempting to compare the Arab world of 2011 to Eastern Europe of 1989, when one by one the countries of that region rejected communism until the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet era came to a close. But while the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Syria might be similar to each other in corruption and nepotism, and might employ the same brutal tactics to keep control, there had been no single ideology or dominant power uniting the Middle East. Every country was unhappy in its own way.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution

“Many families had eight or ten children, so Tawfik numbered his cousins in the hundreds. He trusted them all. This was how the uprising gained momentum—networks of family members working together.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution