My friends and I often like to go to a bar/restaurant called La Tana dell’Orso (“The Cave of the Bear”). It’s run by a cheery Irishman from Dublin and it’s a hotspot for English-speakers. Unfortunately, I heard that it’s closing down, but at least the last experience I had there gave me an understanding that I will keep with me for the rest of my life.
I am not sure how I began talking with this man, and I do not remember his name. He asked if I was from the United States, and I said yes. He said oh, I’ve lived in Cleveland, I really liked it there! I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself, because I know that Cleveland right now is kind of one step above Detroit (these two videos came to mind: 1 2), but I don’t think he realized that. (Later my friends and I mused that perhaps Cleveland was still miles above his living situation in Libya, and comparatively it was nice; but I don’t know what his socio-economic status was there.) So he was saying all of this generally nice stuff about America and that now he was in Italy to work. He spoke English relatively well.
Then I asked where he was from originally, and he replied Libya. So my first question was, “Do you have any family who was there during the fall of Qaddafi?”
That got him started.
He reacted immediately, saying that he was upset about the fall of Qaddafi. It took me a second to register that he was saying that he supported Qaddafi, but it was one of those situations where I made myself swallow it, accept it, and say to myself, Okay, this is probably going to be your only chance to talk to anyone who supports Qaddafi, so keep an open mind and ask as many questions as possible.
For starters, he believes that everything that happened was the fault of NATO. The bombs, the violence, the fighting, everything. It was clear from the beginning that he was very passionate about the subject–he later mentioned that not only was his family living without light and power, but also that his brother was still missing and that he assumed he was dead. “I just want a finger, just a piece of him, just to know,” he said to me. And I told him that I understood. Well, that I didn’t understand because I’ve never had to deal with that kind of emotional trauma, but that I recognized the motivation behind his impassioned words. One of his family members died amongst the violence, and the quality of life has dropped for his family. It was pretty clear just from those facts that nothing was going to change this man’s mind about anything he believed.
Mind you, I had no intention of changing it. I just wanted to know what he thought. I tried to make that as clear as I could.
Anyway, so back to NATO. He also believes that it was NATO who took out Qaddafi. Now, admittedly, I did not follow the events that unfolded in Libya very closely. In fact, I haven’t even done any research since that conversation. But I decided to go on what I knew.
“I’m going to tell you what Americans saw on TV, on the news–what was reported to us about Libya, and I want you to tell me how much of that is true.”
So I brought up how it was reported that civilians were the once who started protesting, and that the violence started when the government was trying to repress it. While I knew that NATO and several countries, including the US, stepped in militarily, I was under the impression that most of the ground fighting was between civilians and Qaddafi’s forces. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong.) I also brought up the cell phone picture that was taken of people carrying Qaddafi’s body through the streets.
He said it was lies, all lies. That NATO had been doing all of the fighting and that the cell phone picture was fake. He said, “Don’t watch the news, you Americans are brainwashed! You only hear one side!”
Not only did I bring up the fact that the Internet provides many points of view for reference and comparison (and he said that he also uses the Internet in order to do exactly that, but I think he said some negative things about it, too; I don’t remember and his English wasn’t clear enough), but I also emphatically tried to introduce the idea that perhaps he, too, was also “brainwashed”–in the exact same way that he was saying Americans are. Of course, he denied that, and said that he was right. This irked me severely, of course, particularly because he wasn’t even in Libya during that time, and he was being a hypocrite.
The biggest point that he tried to convey to me, I feel, throughout the entire conversation was the idea of pacifism. He really, thoroughly disliked the idea that NATO, the US, and other countries felt as though they had the right to come and get involved in Libya’s business; additionally, he doesn’t like how they pick and choose whom to help. “Why don’t they go to Yemen, then?” he said. “They are having a civil war, it is terrible! They go to Iraq, why? They say oh, because they have nuclear weapons, but then they don’t have them. No, it’s because they want oil!” I didn’t disagree with him. I let him know that a lot of Americans agree with him on that subject. “So you say that America should stay in America, and Libya should stay in Libya, and all of the other countries should mind their own business?” I asked. And he said, “Yes, yes!”
So I asked him why he supported Qaddafi. He said, “Because he is my leader!” Alright, I said, but what is so great about him? What did he ever DO for you, for the country? I must have asked this question at least ten times, because I wasn’t satisfied with his responses. At this point, my roommate Nadia had joined in on the conversation, and she stopped me.
“Ariel,” she said, “for them, it isn’t about what he did. That’s such an American idea about what makes a good leader: what they do. But that’s not what they focus on.”
I blinked a couple times. I had…never thought about it like that before. I had never realized that. To be a good leader…how ELSE can you be a good leader? I couldn’t understand it; I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
To supplement my emotions connected to this revelation, I also at some point asked him, “How do you define freedom?”
“Security,” he said. Just being able to live. Being able to go to school, to work, to have his family. What else did he need? Oh, also he told me that in Libya, university-level education is free. I asked him to confirm that at least two times to make sure I heard him correctly. I then proceeded to rage for a couple of minutes. “Freaking LIBYA has free education but AMERICA doesn’t!?!?” …Really. UGH.
Anyway. He said that he supported Qaddafi because when Qaddafi was around, he had “freedom.” His brother was still alive, his family was still living well. They could live, have a life. Basically, Libya had a routine that he was comfortable with, and with the fall of Qaddafi, everything had been disrupted. Every institution that had been run by the government was now unstructured and not working. There’s damage from the fighting. “It will take 15 years for Libya to be stable again!” he said. And he’s probably right.
But these two things: His definition of freedom, and the way they see their political leaders…they just…I was speechless for a couple of minutes. I know I really do try my hardest to see issues from both sides, and that was exactly why I had gotten into the conversation in the first place, but it made me realize how much my American upbringing was really ingrained in me.
“Try to take yourself out of the American mind,” he had said to me. “Try to see it from outside it.”
“Yes, I am trying, I can try,” I replied, “but it is such a part of me that it would be almost impossible to do that. I can ask you to do the same thing, but for you, you are inherently Libyan.” And he acknowledged the truth of it.
And I wanted to cry. In my silence while he and Nadia talked, tears actually welled up a little in my eyes. I know a lot of it was the shock, the overwhelming emotion of this grand epiphany, this bulldozer of an understanding that had pushed its way into both my mind and heart, but my American-tainted thoughts bounced all around my head.
This man will never know or understand any other idea of freedom… He will never be able to change his mindset about the way he sees leaders. Libya could perhaps be so much more. But who am I to say that I have the right answers? That American ideas are the right answers? Because we still have so many problems.
Yet, I learned from my Moldova experience that we still very much take our government for granted. I kept that in mind.
I also thought to myself, this man doesn’t have any comparison. All he knows well is Libya under Qaddafi. It’s what is stable and safe for him. Maybe after those 15 years, I thought so idealistically, as I do, he’ll finally have a comparison and maybe he’ll realize that it’s better. That’s assuming, of course, that something better WILL come out of this. One can only hope.
Like I said, I was trying to keep as open of a mind as possible, but I found it difficult when he started saying that everything Qaddafi said was true. “Go listen to the speech he gave when he last came to America,” he told me. “At the UN?” I asked, making sure, because I knew which speech he was talking about. “Yes!” he said. “Listen to that speech–that is the truth!” “Okay,” I said, “I will go watch it.” And I couldn’t help but feel…I don’t know…I don’t want to say sad for him. I guess sad for him, perhaps as a Jew, because I’m pretty sure Qaddafi said some anti-Semitic stuff in that speech (by the way, I did not let this man know that I was Jewish). But maybe I was just very wary because I remember everyone in America (and Europe…and I think just about everywhere else) making fun of that speech.
Unfortunately, he left the conversation in the middle of a misunderstanding. I was trying to say, “If the American government used the money that they spend on war on education, then it could be free!” He kept saying in response to that, “No! No! America gives Libya nothing!” It took me a little before I figured that he was misunderstanding the word “spend”–perhaps he thought I meant “give,” as in, give money to other countries to aid them (which I know they do, but I don’t know about Libya). I kept trying to tell him that, but at that point his emotions were so heightened and we were shouting over each other and the music playing in the background that there was no way he was going to calm down enough to try and think it through. He then insisted that he needed to go to a different bar in order to meet up with other friends.
We shook hands, I thanked him as best as I could for his time, and he left. Oh by the way, he had a shot, so if he’s Muslim I guess he’s not terribly religious. I was very unsettled by the fact that he left thinking that I believed something that I didn’t, but what could I do?
Not too long later, another guy who knew him came up to us and apologized…apparently he was drunk. I guess I’m bad at recognizing drunk people unless they’re stumbling and throwing up all over the place. Heh.
Regardless, I’m very glad that I had that conversation. I gained a real understanding about the mentality of people under dictatorships. Well, as close of an understanding as I’m ever going to get. They support what they know, what they’re familiar with, what works for them. Freedom for them is just being able to live, and have a life with security. And as long as they have that, leaders don’t have to “do” a bunch of stuff for the country.
It’s so different from America. Is it the correct mentality to have? That’s a debate I’m going to step away from because I’m not educated enough in that area. But this is the point of studying abroad, is it not? It’s to look at the world from another perspective, get inside the minds of others around the globe, look past what we watch on the news, just hear what they have to say and digest it being an unbiased as possible.
I feel like if everyone in the world had the opportunity to do that, planet Earth would be a much better place.
Location: Perugia, Italy
