Colonel Gaddafi’s Hat. Alex Crawford

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ anxious to get as far away as possible from the Rixos as quickly as possible before the minders come out and find us.

      Bill tries to jump into a taxi but the driver refuses to take him and his team. We head off in another direction, leaving them behind, and flag down a man who has his family in the car. The three of us cram ourselves in, apologizing and thanking him in equal measure. He has a Gaddafi poster on the front of his dashboard.

      We ask if he can take us to Tjoura, where we have heard there has been some protesting by anti-regime people the evening before. He raises his eyebrows. ‘No, no, it’s dangerous. Too dangerous.’ OK, then maybe just to catch a taxi? He drops us off a few streets away and we manage to find a taxi. The man in control of the wheels appears to be the most grumpy cab driver in all of Libya but, crucially, he agrees to take us to Tjoura. Tim has photocopied a piece of paper written in Arabic which has been given to him by the Sky team in the Rixos. It is a letter-headed document from the regime saying we are journalists and should be looked after as we are travelling with the government’s permission and are accompanied by a Libyan representative (minder). This will be our get-out-of-jail card many times over.

      We pass army tanks positioned at the entrance to Tjoura, a city on the south-east flank of Tripoli. But they don’t stop us. Tjoura is important to us for two reasons: it is the site of a nuclear research facility (Gaddafi has long harboured ambitions to build a nuclear weapon) and it is home to a considerable body of the Opposition, known to be the most anti-Gaddafi district in Tripoli. We are expecting there will be a large turnout today after Friday prayers to express this discontent once again. But it’s very quiet. Too quiet. The streets are empty. There are some smouldering piles of ash outside the mosque, but, even though it’s Friday and the time for midday prayers, the doors are shut and there’s no one around. We circle for a while but the taxi driver is not comfortable being here and so we head off towards the port.

      In this vast country – the fourth largest in Africa – most of its 1.76 million square kilometres of land mass is consumed by the Sahara desert. Libya is around seven times larger than the UK but has only a tenth of the population and not a single permanent waterway throughout the country. The significance of Tripoli’s port is therefore huge. But, instead of the trading which is its hallmark, there we see thousands of migrant workers all waiting to be rescued from Libya. Some are from Côte d’Ivoire, which itself is suffering violent upheaval. But to them even Côte d’Ivoire seems preferable to Tripoli. These foreign workers are castigated by the Libyan revolutionaries, who think they may be Gaddafi mercenaries, while also being victimized by the indigenous population, who resent them for taking their jobs (there is 30 per cent unemployment). We film and interview many of them. Our grumpy taxi driver is anxious to go. He wants to get to the mosque, or anywhere else for that matter. What he doesn’t want to do is hang around for some foreign television crew. For a start, what he is doing will be viewed very dimly by the authorities and he runs the risk of jail or torture or worse. We pay him and he leaves, relieved.

      Another man approaches us offering to take his place. He is rotund and middle-aged, with greasy hair, and looks decidedly untrustworthy. ‘Come, I will take you. Where do you want to go?’ he says. He’s seen our interaction with the grumpy cabbie and heard me talking to Martin. ‘Christ, what are we going to do now?’ or something along those lines. I hesitate. There’s something I just don’t like about the man. I can’t put my finger on it and it may well be unfounded but here I don’t want to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. I thank him and move away.

      Another gentleman, in his late sixties, is also watching us. He says in an aside to me that the rotund, persistent man begging to be our driver is an undercover Gaddafi agent. I notice he is weaving in and out of the crowd but never going very far away from us. I have no idea whether he is telling me the truth or not but I instantly like the cut of this older, more calmly reassuring man. My instincts tell me he is OK and right now I have nothing else but instinct to guide me. There appear to be very few taxis and certainly none here. We are outside of the official set-up at the Rixos so we are very much on our own. Our office in London can’t help us either. It’s not like you can call up a minicab company or flag down a black cab.

      Martin likes this man too, and I reckon if Martin and I think the same of someone it’s usually the right impression. ‘Will you drive us?’ I ask him. ‘We need help.’ It’s his turn to hesitate, but only very fractionally, and it’s immediately more reassuring still. He’s not doing this for the cash or because he’s the real Gaddafi agent. ‘Yes, yes,’ he says. We ask to go to Green Square. (This is one of Tripoli’s most notable landmarks, originally called Piazza Italia, or Italy Square, when constructed by the country’s colonial rulers. Then, during the Libyan monarchy, it became Independence Square, only to be renamed Green Square by Gaddafi, to reflect the political philosophy set out in his Green Book.) The elderly gent is a lovely man, very kind and constantly saying: ‘No problem, no problem. Everything good.’

      When we arrive at the Square, there is a demonstration all right but not the type we expected. About half a dozen demonstrators are moving down the middle of the road. Just a week ago – according to witnesses – this square was filled with rebels who were then fired on by government snipers in crow’s nest positions on buildings. It was here that soldiers opened up with live ammunition on those calling for change. But today the small group is waving the green flag of Gaddafi supporters, chanting their love and support for the Brother Leader. We’re disappointed and wonder whether this is going to be the end of our streak for freedom from outside the Rixos. Still, we get out – a little hesitantly – to see what’s going on and film. We realize instantly the marchers are clearly being organized and directed by soldiers on the sidelines. A big banner denouncing the BBC is pinned up on a building. As soon as the small group see Martin’s camera they start chanting enthusiastically. A short time later, a van pulls up in front of the soldiers and it is full of pro-Gaddafi placards and flags, which are handed out to the growing number of his supporters who are gathering or being corralled. The soldiers are more concerned with marshalling the pro-Gaddafi supporters than worrying about whether we have permission or not to be there. And besides we are doing just what the regime wants us to do – filming the support for the Colonel.

      I try to do a piece-to-camera – with Martin filming me walking along – and the small group follows me everywhere, filling the background so the ‘crowd’ looks plump and heaving. Even when I keep fluffing my lines and retrace my steps, they too stop and come back with me as I start my walk-and-talk again. It’s almost hilarious, but also frustrating. I am racking my brains as to how we can show this farce in one of our television reports. I notice a soldier approaching our taxi driver and taking down the old boy’s mobile phone number. We leave shortly afterwards. We have some material for a report, but we’re all thinking the same thing. Are we missing something? Where are the rebel protests? Are they too scared to come out? We want to carry on looking. If there are none, then there are none. They can’t be invented. But we don’t want to be embarrassed by simply not finding them.

      ‘Why don’t we check out Zawiya?’ says Tim, out of nowhere. Zawiya is fundamentally important to the regime because it’s not only home to one of the two most important oil refineries in the country, but it also straddles the road between the capital and the Tunisian border to the west. It is right on a vital supply route – so retaining control of Zawiya is imperative. (The city has been in the news recently because the media group at the Rixos had been taken there on a chaperoned trip about a week earlier.)

      Zawiya was supposed to be an example of a city which had been ‘retaken’ by the Gaddafi loyalists; where a small group of rebels had fought but lost. But when the media bus arrived in the centre they were met by flag-waving, protesting rebels. It was a bit of an embarrassment for the Gaddafi PR team. I agree with Tim. Let’s go to Zawiya. I haven’t got a better plan. We’ve now been in Libya and working on this story for about eighteen hours and got precisely diddly squat from the Opposition. So far we haven’t seen a single rebel or anyone who will call themselves an Opposition fighter or supporter in public.

      Zawiya СКАЧАТЬ