Colonel Gaddafi’s Hat. Alex Crawford

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СКАЧАТЬ hotel feels largely empty. There are lots of dark corridors and there seems to be very little electricity. We’re taken up to the seventh floor. They’ve opened up all the interconnecting doors so the rooms melt into one. The balcony overlooks the Square, with the mosque on the left. One of the soldiers closes the curtains and tells us to keep them closed if we are going to use any lights at all. ‘Snipers,’ he says. Tim and I decide we have to find out where the exits are. We need to know how to get out in a hurry if the Gaddafi forces attack. We need to know where to run to, how to disappear if we have to; that’s if we get a chance.

      It’s dark now and even Dr M is looking worried. ‘I think we go as soon as it is light in the morning. You can come with me,’ he says. ‘I will take you to my house.’ Thank you. Thank you, good doctor. That sounds like the only plan.

      Tim and I go downstairs to familiarize ourselves with the layout of the hotel. When we get to the basement we find the only back door is locked and, worse still, in the room next to the exit there is a man lying on a stretcher. He is attached to a drip but is being guarded by another man who is armed with an AK-47. The man lying down is wearing the green fatigues of the Gaddafi military. I think this is what they call the worst-case scenario: we are not only in the rebels’ headquarters but they have prisoners here too, prisoners whom the Gaddafi regime may well want to try to rescue. Or eliminate. The captive is not responding to questions anyway. I ask where he is from, how he came to be taken prisoner and what he was doing. But no, he will only reply there has been a mistake, he is not a sniper, he was only trying to defend himself. The rebel guarding him is pretty exasperated with the answers too. ‘He just keeps saying the same thing over and over,’ he tells me. ‘He is a liar.’ I quickly take a picture of him on my BlackBerry but the rebels are unhappy at this so I stop.

      We go back upstairs and tell Martin the news. Little fazes Martin. He is a six-foot-three Irishman from a large family, brought up in County Down during the quaintly titled ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. He grew up in a mixed area where Protestants and Catholics jostled each other and even children were accustomed to the place being mortared and were not surprised by the attempts to blow up the British Army stationed there. Martin is bursting with natural charm and has a keen sense of humour. He’s a seasoned cameraman who has been to a host of war zones, including Sudan, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Bosnia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and many others. At this very moment he’s more worried about power. He has a limited amount of juice in his camera’s battery, and we haven’t brought chargers for our ‘day’ trip. No batteries mean no camera and no pictures – and we don’t want that. But he downloads the pictures he has already taken onto the laptop we have brought with us. His memory cards are now ready to be refilled with fresh pictures.

      The doctor tells us the rebels are organizing food for us. Great. We haven’t eaten all day. We sit talking to them. It is difficult to get a sense of how many rebels there are as we stay in one room and people keep coming in and out – mostly to rubberneck the foreign journalists. They express their gratitude to us for being with them and talk about the battle. The men are all defectors, and most have been in the Gaddafi army for at least ten years. They seem to be around early to mid-thirties. I ask to see ID just out of interest and they produce their army identification cards with photos. They are Libyans and an example of the defectors we’ve heard about. I take pictures of them on my BlackBerry as we don’t want to run down our camera batteries. Also there is very little light and Martin doesn’t think any pictures he takes on his camera will be very clear. At this stage we are just thinking ‘conserve energy’. We have no idea what’s around the corner. The men seem friendly enough. Their clothes are grubby and worn, though. Most are wearing what look like very old army uniforms which haven’t seen a decent wash in quite some time. Their hair is straggly and, overall, they look like they have been living rough for a while. But they’re chirpy enough, answering my questions with good humour.

      For them the turning point, they tell us, was when they were ordered to fire on civilians, fellow Libyans. They have little love for Gaddafi, whom they seem to think is quite mad, deranged. They ask about us, about Sky News. They assume I must be married to either Tim or Martin and are a little shocked when I say neither. But what does your husband think? How on earth does he feel about you working with men who are not even relatives? This would raise eyebrows among much of the Muslim population. Does he mind you going away so much? Have you children? Who looks after them? It is all a foreign world to them.

      The food is taking so long and we are shattered. I think I am going to try to get some sleep because I know we will be up in a few hours and on the move again. I excuse myself and take off to the adjoining room and the big, double bed waiting there. I say to Martin and Tim: ‘There’s plenty of room. Please don’t sleep on the floor.’ Tim has absolutely no intention of sleeping on the floor, but it’s going to be very cosy with three of us on the bed. Martin decides to bite the bullet and take his chances with the rebels. He ends up in another room with a bed all to himself. Lucky devil. What our hosts make of this arrangement is anybody’s guess.

      Later the doctor wakes us up when the food arrives. It’s past midnight. None of us feels much like eating now but the doctor is insistent. The rebels have gone to a lot of trouble. No is not an option. We struggle up and sleepily eat our way through a bowl full of rice and a red mixture with chunks of meat and pasta floating in it. It’s actually quite delicious. I never really got a clear explanation how they managed to rustle this up but it seemed to involve a bit of a journey and a fair amount of preparation given the time it took. We flop back to sleep as soon as we have bolted our food.

      The rebels fire rockets throughout the night. It seems to be a message to the Gaddafi forces sitting outside the town – we’re not asleep and we’re not going anywhere. Don’t even think about attacking us.

      Chapter Two

      DAWN ATTACK

      We’re woken before first light. The doctor is anxious to go. ‘We should start to make a move,’ he says. I am standing on the balcony of our room just waiting for the others when I see the red tracers of machine-gun fire on the horizon. I call Martin to get the camera. We’re all watching as there’s more – and then the explosion of a tanker. We see huge clouds of smoke rising from the resultant fire. The cloud is only about two to three miles away. ‘That’s near the hospital,’ the doctor says. ‘They are coming inside the town.’

      I ring the office in London. ‘The Gaddafi forces are beginning an attack on Zawiya,’ I tell Kasia, the young news desk editor on duty. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks. Her voice is very concerned.

      We need to get to ground level and out of here. We are fair-ground ducks here on the hotel’s seventh floor. We all run downstairs. In the foyer, we can see there is barely controlled panic. There are all sorts of men here. Some look like soldiers. Others are obviously civilians, wearing jeans and T-shirts.

      We watch aghast as they rush around desperately preparing for battle. One offers me a flak jacket and a helmet. I put the helmet on, then realize it isn’t a spare one. It is his. I give it back. I can’t take his only protection and, besides, I don’t want to be mistaken for a rebel. The men are busy getting out weapons, unwrapping them and putting them together. There is such pandemonium that grenades are being dropped and rockets are rolling across the floor.

      One man is busy giving a quick demonstration on how to fire an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade). He is bending down on one knee, holding the RPG launcher on his shoulder. He moves it around, then shows how to pull the trigger. The youngster who has been listening intently has straggly, curly hair and glasses. He is one of many who look like university students. It’s a lads’ army. The pupil says, ‘Allahu Akbar’, takes hold of the weapon and runs off СКАЧАТЬ