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Easter 2005. Cairo.
This is a man’s house, even though your wife has lived here alone for the past 20 years. She has the custom of
rearranging the living and dining areas each few months, and every time I visit
the configuration is decidedly different. Yet with each of these moves there
remains a chair, a place setting, ready for you at the head of the table.
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I imagine you light and agile, always greeting the maid with respect.
I imagine men pausing in conversation,
waiting for you to speak, and your wife wanting to make things graceful for
you; your shirts ironed, your salads
well seasoned, your papers dusted but left undisturbed.
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Libyan opposition leader Jaballa Matar
was kidnapped in March of 1990. Egyptian secret service agents took him from his
home in Cairo, where he was living in exile. The following day he was handed over to the Gaddafi regime.
In 1995 the family received a letter
written in Jaballa’s handwriting that had
been smuggled out of Abu Salim prison. They have had no news of Jaballa since.
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January 25th, 2010. London.
H is meeting with Saif al Islam Gaddafi. We are told that Saif al Islam knows
what happened to Jaballa, that he has access to the file.
I am waiting in a cafe across the street.
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February 18th, 2011. London.
The streets are full of protesters in
Benghazi. I can’t quite believe what we are hearing. It seems impossible but it is true.
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March 28th, 2012. Benghazi.
I met a family at the courthouse. They had driven 6o miles to see the
photographs of men who had died at Abu Salim. There were hundreds of pictures pasted up on the wall. They told me
that every town in Libya has something like it. I told them about Jaballa and
they wouldn’t leave my side. The mother asked if she could take a photograph of me with her five daughters. Her husband took the picture on his phone.
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Gaddafi’s agents never found him there.
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April 30th 2012. Rome.
I have located the sites of two more assassinations, but they are not of dissidents but of Gaddafi loyalists. They are attributed to Al Burkan,
the Volcano. Press reports cite that Al Burkan claimed the killings were
in retaliation for the assassination of dissidents.
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