Ma`a as-salaamah: Mohammad…May Allah protect you!
Franklin Lamb, Tripoli
August 29, 2011
My roommate left our hotel and hopefully Libya last night for his village near Arlit, Niger thanks to the assistance of
one of Tripoli’s Christian Churches. I shall miss him a lot.
It was a recently formed human rights group from the Coptic Orthodox (Egyptian) Church in Tripoli, working to protect
blacks from the still lawless Tripoli streets that enabled my roommate to depart this hotel. The Coptic Church,
according to their Prelate here, has the largest Christian communion in Libya with normally 60,000 parishioners and has
roots in Libya going back hundreds of years before the Arabs spread westward from Egypt.
Mohammad departed none too soon since “security personnel” arrived at the Corinthia Hotel close to 1 p.m. this afternoon
(8/28/11) with gunmen and two “Generals” in fine new uniforms complete with epaulets. Their surprise visit was to check
the hotel rooms for Kaddafi supporters. They claimed they had received “reports.”
The Copts did a good job in getting Mohammad to safety. Most observers here agree that for the immediate future there
will be a whirlwind of wild speculation, accusations and even some serious examination of Moammar Kaddafi’s leadership
of Libya these past four decades. One fact however is incontrovertible to this observer and it is that under Kaddafi,
Christians, whether Roman Catholic, Anglican Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox, the main
Christian sects here, have been well treated and allowed virtually complete freedom to practice their beliefs and to
celebrate their traditions with some restrictions placed on campaigns to proselytize Muslims of which they have not been
any since the Mormons and the “Way of the Cross” evangelicals left some years back.
Most of the churches here currently have volunteers working to help their Muslim sisters and brothers during this
cataclysmic period. My friend Mohammad is one whose life they may have saved.
Mohammad and I have been secretly sharing my room for more than a week since I accidently discovered him hiding and
trembling in the hotel’s garden bushes shortly after the rebel entrance into Tripoli. It was easy to calm Mohammad down
and I brought him a shirt from my room, as his was filthy.
Mohammad is a black African devout Muslim and one fine man. When I saw him looking up at me and trembling, my thoughts
instantly turned to 21-year-old black Mississippian, James Chaney, and the date could have been June 21, 1964. That was
when Neshoba County's law enforcement and the Ku Klux Klan hunted blacks to kill and did kill James and his white
companions Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
The reason Mohammad was hiding outside the Corinthia hotel is that he feared for his life as so many, if not most, black
Africans and black Libyans (roughly one third of Libya’s population) do these days. Bands of young rebel “freedom
fighters” are still roaming some of Tripoli’s streets, itching it seems, to kill some “African mercenaries”, meaning, it
appears, any black man they can find. Although the apparently politically contrived rumors of African mercenaries raping
Libyan women which helped NATO get the UN Security Council to green light its bombing and regime change campaign, have
been debunked as fake by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and a UN fact finding group, some of the macho young
rebels in Libya still insist the smear campaign is true.
Mohammad explained to me that he was never a fighter for anyone in Libya but rather that his employment background, like
his father, uncles and brothers, was in Niger’s uranium mines which only the past few years have begun to recover from
the late 1980’s collapse. Mohammad’s brother Said was killed in the Tuareg Rebellion of the 1990’s and his father sent
Mohammad to Libya to work in construction.
I agreed with Mohammad that he could stay secretly with me until we could get him into safe hands. The hotel has never
been the wiser to my knowledge although my friend Ismail, who works behind the front desk when he is not doing a dozen
other jobs during his frequent 16 hour shifts, probably suspected something was going on because he would give me
knowing glances as I disappeared toward the elevator with a table cloth covering a big plate of food and contrary to
hotel rules of no hotel kitchen food in the rooms. Luckily Ismail is a black Libyan and, if he knew, he did not rat us
out.
With no security at our hotel until the day before yesterday and now packed with journalists, Mohammad took extra
precautions and never left room #1185 except for one night when someone from the Coptic Church came to meet with him in
another room and I gave his floor spot to a French activist from Beirut whose boat to Alexandria was delayed again.
Housekeeping, no longer exists at this hotel, and so no one has entered my room for almost two weeks since the staff
fled. In any case Mohammad and I had a good cover story ready in case events demanded one. Mohammad, we would explain if
caught, was a driver for the Italian Embassy before the Italians temporarily pulled up stakes back in March.
I got pretty good at fixing plates of food for Mohammad from the nightly “Iftar buffet.” Because we are both fasting for
Ramadan, smuggling Mohammad food only once a day was easy enough, especially as some of the new hotel guests, being
journalists from the Rixos Hotel or rushing here to cover the “Fall of Tripoli” from around Libya, are now in the habit
of fixing their dinner plates and sitting around the abandoned hotel restaurants. This way they have more space and
privacy from the cramped conditions in the rapidly deteriorating “dining room” or their working area.
Personally, this Ramadan, the Iftar feast no longer has appeal for me because we have the very same food every Iftar
which now comes almost entirely from cans. At noon today, the Hotel Front Desk posted the most recent *Dear Guest
Notice*. It reads: “Dear Guests: Please be advised that there will be *no lunch today* due to absence of water supply in
the Hotel. We hope for a water delivery this afternoon and hope to serve dinner tonight at 18:30. Thank you. The
Corinthia Hotel Management.” No water arrived and when I and an American lady who works for the Sunday Times returned
from driving thru Tripoli’s center, at 7:50 p.m. just in time for Iftar, mine consisted of walking through the dining
area picking leftover food bits from plates where diners had eaten and left.
Before Mohammad left, he helped me with my infected leg and told me about a nearby Dr. which made me happy since no
others have been available this past week. But as dear reader may come to understand, I soon became reluctant to seek
treatment from the Dr. who Mohammad recommended although by very great coincidence I have known her wonderful
granddaughter, an Arabic-English language interpreter named Aya, for several weeks.
My most recent best bet for immediate medical assistance was my new friend Dr. XX, “Consultant Urological Surgeon” from
the British Medical Center here in Tripoli (formerly the Swiss Medical Center until Hannibal Kaddafi had that
unfortunate problem with Swiss authorities last winter and his Dad wanted to abolish Switzerland and all things Swiss),
hence the fast name change on the Clinic building. Dr. XX is from New Delhi but studied in England and now normally
resides in Sheffield, England. He spent the past year working here in Libya, loves the people and the country and was
most willing to help me. The problem was that he had to rush to catch the boat out of here for Malta yesterday. Anyhow,
he said I had a couple of days left before I would possibly have major leg problems and he gave me the phone numbers of
two of his colleagues, one an Indian dentist. So far the phones still don’t work well in Tripoli.
Just a word of background about Dr. Fatima, recommended by Mohammad now that I am resigned to get treatment late today,
come what may, following my brief meeting with the good Dr. this morning.
Dr. Fatima is very thin, quite tall, has an unusually large head and a red scarf covers part of her face which is
stained blue. Aya explained that while Dr. Fatima is by background Muslim, her Saharan tribe retains some pre-Islamic
rites and customs and is genealogically connected with the Delvar Nar. Yet Aya also told me that Fatma’s tribe claims
that they are linked with the Angels mentioned in Luke 24:4 where Christ’s apostle describes the scene at Jesus’ tomb
when two angels appeared to Mary. Anyhow…
Aya says Dr. Fatima is capable of teleportation, telekinesis and ESP and while I don’t need any of that stuff just now,
but could later, Dr. Fatima fortunately is also expert in Saharan medicine including leg infections. So the good news is
that I am very soon to be in experienced medical hands. I have no doubt about that and I shall always be grateful to my
friend Mohammad for the referral.
The down side may be what Aya told me about what her grandmother must do to make me well. This may be the tough part for
someone who nearly collapses if some nurse even hints that she wants to stick a needle in me. Aspirin is about the only
medicine I have ever taken because my half German sainted Mother did not believe in her large brood getting sick and we
all minded her over the years.
Dr. Fatima’s “clinic” is in the Medina not far from my Hotel and the area is coming back to life as some citizens are
beginning to peak out and emerge from their homes. Hundreds of shops and outdoor tables with all kinds of new and used
goods have been closed for more than a week. Even the lovely Chadian hospitality ladies who I have good reason to
believe rent themselves from dirt floor rooms off the ancient streets of the medina for ten Libyan dinars an hour (about
$8) or 16 dinar ($ 12.80) for two hostesses, (three additional dinars per hour for air conditioning in the room –highly
recommended!) have vanished. This sad fact alone, according to one of the guys from the UN delegation that ten days ago
got permission from NATO to fly from Tripoli airport to Tunis for R & R and to assess their “findings,” is reason enough for the UNSC to immediately end NATO’s carnage in Libya.
I admit to being a little apprehensive because Aya told me one of the Chadian ladies, who recently returned and works as
a nurse for Dr. Fatima, must first slice my wound in narrow lines and then rub and wash it thoroughly with Saharan sand
and some nasty looking green paste of Sarahan vegetation and insect fluids.
While I sat thinking how that is going to feel, Aya seems to have read my expression and assures me that everything will
be ok because her granny also makes a strong alcoholic drink out of Saharan cactus and I will drink some and feel fine.
“Well, why not we just use that drink rather than sand to cleanse the wound”? I ask.
Aya gave me one of her, “You stupid American!” glances that communicates, “Please don’t bother to question we who know
what’s best for you!”
Aya also promises me that after my “treatment” the now returning Chadian ladies will take care of me for the expected
three day recovery period. I immediately feel better.
If fate rules that these next few days in fact comprise my last chapter, and never having had much interest in being
with virgins, the company of these angels will certainly be as close to Heaven as this hayseed from rural Oregon will
likely get.
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Franklin P. Lamb is the Director of Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut.