Today Ajdabiya is in the hands of forces loyal to Muammar el-Qaddafi, opening the way to Benghazi, a rebel stronghold that may fall in a matter of days. Tony Birtley, Al-Jazeera’s correspondent in Benghazi, thinks that rebels in this city of more than 800,000 will "fight this every inch of the way" for "they know they have a lot to lose" (1).
I can’t imagine what Libyans living in exile are feeling. While the rebels were pushing westward, they were so elated, "filled with pride that a new country is being born" (2). Writing in the New York Times, Hisham Matar was convinced that history was on the rebel side, that "the courage and humanity of Libyans has been extraordinary" (3). Now hope is ebbing–amid fears of a bloodbath and brutal recriminations against all those who have opposed Qaddafi’s regime. These fears are very real. People will disappear--to be imprisoned and tortured or killed (4). Children will lose their parents and some, like Hisham Matar, will not know what has happened to them.
Hisham Matar, who lives in London, has not set foot in Libya since 1979. He was only eight years old when his father Jaballa Matar was listed as an enemy of the regime and had to flee Libya. His father returned briefly, allowing his wife and sons to leave, and eventually the family was reunited in Egypt. In Cairo, Jaballa Matar, a former UN diplomat, turned to political activism. In 1990 he was abducted from their home by the Egyptians, who returned him to Libya. He was put in prison, with no means of contacting his family except for two letters smuggled out, the last one in 1995. Another political prisoner reported seeing him in 2002. Now, just as Mohammad Al-Asfar’s daughter asks about her uncle, Hisham Matar’s niece asks him, "Uncle, where is Granddad?" (5). For Matar, this is an arrow through the heart, the question he cannot answer. Is his father dead or alive?
Embedded in Matar’s fiction is the impact of more than twenty years of separation from his father. In his stunning debut novel, In the Country of Men, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, a young Libyan boy must cope with life after his father, an anti-Gaddafi activist, flees the country. While the novel evokes Tripoli in the 1970s, as Matar remembers it, he did not intend it to be "about Libya." The story began "with the voice of the boy, and then it became a book about love, betrayal and powerlessness" (6). In his second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance (published this month) Nuri, whose mother died when he was eight, struggles to understand the sudden disappearance--for no apparent reason–of his father. This is coming-of-age-story, complicated by Nuri’s relationship with his stepmother. As an adult he learns that his father was very unlike the man he had supposed him to be. One reviewer finds "the novel’s strength is its examination of the impact of absence for those left behind" (7).
That this is fiction reflecting personal experience, Matar freely admits. As he put it in an interview: "There’s something very bizarre about having a father who has disappeared" and the reason is that "this is so unfamiliar and unexpected." Is this why he turned to fiction? "I sometimes wonder if I would have become a writer if what happened to my father hadn’t happened" (8).
For years Matar has sought information about the fate of his father, yet he also moved on with his life. And he is not seeking retribution. Instead, he poses for all of us a challenging question: "How do we remain whole and free from hate, yet truthful to our memory?" (9).
ACTIVITIES
READ: Put In the Country of Men on your priority or summer reading list and consider making it part of a World History or World Literature course in the near future.
CURRENT EVENTS: If you want to bring a Libyan point of view to a discussion of the Libyan revolution, assign Cressida Leyshon’s e-mail interview with Matar, posted on The New Yorker blog page.
READ/DISCUSS: Students read Hisham Matar’s moving account, "I Just Want to Know What Happened to My Father." How has the history of Libya intersected with Hisham's life? How does the experience of his family explain the fervor of the Libyan rebels?
LISTEN/WATCH: Prepare students for a writing exercise by playing "Looking for Jaballah Matar" or showing "Hisham Matar’s Search for His Missing Father." In addition (or as an alternative) give them time to EXPLORE the Free Jaballa Matar web site. WRITE: If you were Hisham what would you be doing to find out what had happened to your father?
READ: Matar says that "For years after I lost him I wondered if all of his activism and sacrifice was for nothing." How does he feel now? Read "Libya Calling" to find the answer.
RESEARCH: First have students read an excerpt from Matar’s account in The Independent (first five paragraphs) as preparation. Then ask them to find online sources about Muammar el-Qaddafi’s repressive tactics during the late 1970s: the Revolutionary Committees, attacks on the press, book burning; and the persecution of intellectuals, students, and well-to-do businessmen. They might search the New York Times archive, for example.
RESEARCH: Students read "The Men Over the Hill," a short non-fiction narrative about an encounter a five-year old Matar had with the Leader (el-Qaddafi) and President Idi Amin of Uganda. Find out why Libya and Uganda established such close relations (10).
RESOURCES
Free Jaballa Matar. http://freematar.org
- For many links see the "News" page of this web site: http://freematar.org/?page_id=14
- "In this special documentary, Razia Iqbal reports on the human cost of abduction and disappearance against the backdrop of delicate diplomatic relations and serious trade and business interests."
LISTEN (podcast: 36 mins.): "Guardian Books Podcast: Imagining Libya with Hisham Matar, and World Book Day." The Guardian (March 4, 2011): http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2011/mar/04/hisham-matar-world-book-day-podcast
- Here Matar shares his views "about the perils of mixing fact and fiction" in the first part of the podcast.
Matar, Hisham. "The Men Over the Hill." Words Without Borders (2007): http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/the-men-over-the-hill/
Matar, Hisham. "Seeing What We Want to See in Qaddafi." New York Times (2-5-2007): http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/opinion/05matar.html
Matar, Hisham. "After Tunisia: Hisham Matar on Egypt." The Guardian (January 27, 2011): http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/28/after-tunisia-hisham-matar-libya
Matar, Hisham. "Hiding Out." Slate (February 26, 2011): http://www.slate.com/id/2286553/
Matar, Hisham. "Hisham Matar on Libya." Posted by Cressida Leyshon. The New Yorker (March 7, 2011): http://www.newyorker.com/online blogs/books/2011/03/hisham-matar-on-libya-1.html
Matar, Hisham. "Libya Calling." New York Times (March 10, 2011):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/opinion/10matar.html
Derbyshire, Jonathan. "The Books Interview; Hisham Matar." New Statesman (January 25, 2011): http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2010/01/interview-father-prison
Nakhoul, Samia. "Libyan Exiles See the Birth of a New Nation." Reuters (March 10, 2011): http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/10/libya-exiles-idUSLDE7271WA20110310
Truth and Justice Can’t Wait: Human Rights Developments in Libya Amid Institutional Obstacles
FICTION BY HISHAM MATAR
In the Country of Men. Viking, 2006. dial Press, 2007.
- Widely-acclaimed novel, translated into more than 20 languages. It was put on the short list for both the Man Booker Prize (2006) and The Guardian First Book Award. In 2007 it won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize.
- Extract: "Mother’s Ruin," The Guardian (December 2, 2006): http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/dec/02/featuresreviews.guardianreview14?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
- Review: Stephen Moss, "Love, Loss and All Points in Between," The Guardian (June 29, 2006): http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jul/29/featuresreviews.guardianreview19?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
- Review: Oscar Turner, "Muammar, We’re All Crazy Now," The Observer (July 16, 2006): http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jul/16/fiction.features2?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
- Review: Lorraine Adams, "The Dissident’s Son," New York Times (March 4, 2007): http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01EEDA133EF937A35750C0A9619C8B63&scp=2&sq=hisham%20matar&st=cse
- Article: Richard Lea, "Matar’s Tale of Latterday Libya Takes Ondaatje Prize," The Guardian (May 3, 2007): http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/may/03/news.ondaatjeprize
- Review: The New Statesman (March 10, 2011): http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2011/03/father-nuri-disappearance
- Review: Tim Adams, The Guardian (March 6, 2011): http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/06/hisham-matar-anatomy-disappearance-libya?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
NOTES
1) "Gaddafi’s Son: Battle for Libya Almost Over." Al Jazeera (March 16, 2011): http://english.aljzeera.net/news/africa/2011/03/201131614230683317.html
2) For the views of Hisham Matar and Huda Abuzeid (whose father, also a dissident, was killed by Qaddafi’s thugs in London) see Samia Nakhol, "Libyan Exiles See the Birth of a New Nation," Reuters (March 10, 2011): http://af.reuters.com/article. Matar’s paternal roots are in Ajdabiya, a town with a long history of resistance and opposition. His grandfather was wounded in a battle against Mussolini’s forces (see "Hisham Matar on Libya" in RESOURCES). Now that Qaddafi’s troops have re-occupied Ajdabiya, any remaining relatives are in danger. Also check Matar’s Twitter account http://twitter.com/hishamjmatar. For other exile responses, see for example, these blogs: Anglo-Libyan (http://www.anglo-libyan.com/); White African (http://whitelibyanafrican.blogspot.com/).
3) Matar, "Libya Calling" (see RESOURCES).
4) See the Human Rights Watch report, Truth and Justice Can’t Wait (see RESOURCES). For arecent traumatic discovery in Benghazi see Sudarsan Raghavan, "In Libya, an Underground Jail a Daunting Reminder of Moammar Gaddafi’s Grip, Washinton Post (March 12, 2011): http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-libya-underground-jail-a-daunting-reminder-of-moammar-gaddafis-grip. Also Richard Cohen, "Gaddafi Has Long History as a Killer–and Must Be Stopped," washington Post (March 14, 2011): http://washingtonpost.com/opinions/gaddafi-has-a-long historya-as-a killer-and-must-be-stopped.
5) Hisham Matar, "I Just Want to Know ..." (see RESOURCES); the niece is the daughter of his brother Ziad (see quotation near end of the piece). Matar describes Ziad’s frightening encounter with Libyan agents in Switzerland in the first half of "Hiding Out" (see RESOURCES).
6) Richard Lea, "Matar’s Tale of Latterday Libya," The Guardian (May 3, 2007): http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/may/03/news.ondaatjeprize.
7) Samira Shackle, "In the Name of the Father," New Statesman (March 10, 2011): http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2011/03/father-nuri-disappearance
8) Jonathan Derbyshire, "The Book Interview" (see RESOURCES).
9) Matar, "I Just Want to Know ..."
10) "Libyan Ventures in Sub-Saharan Africa" (http://countrystudies.us/libya/33.htm) includes some information on Libyan-Uganda relations in the 1970s. Another source is Helen Chapin Metz, Libya (reprint edition: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), available as at Google Books: http://books.google.com; search the book for "Uganda."
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